Gadgetory

of all the cars coming out here at the 2015 Frankfurt Auto Show none is quite as cohesive a technology statement as the new 2016 7 Series now financially not in reach of all of us to be sure but it shows what could be trickling down in the industry soon look at some of these features the key fob in this car is truly amazing it's kind of the big crowd-pleaser it ties into a self-parking technology where you are not even in the car you just press and hold on the LCD touchscreen on the key fob and the car parks itself in a space it identified no one else quite has that in production yet and you can also flip back and forth to see status screens of what condition your cars in pre-charge the climate see if it's got a certain electric or fuel capacity in it this carbon core technology is interesting that's not a pure carbon-fiber passenger cell that technology remains tedious and pricey but here they're using carbon fiber reinforced plastic along with aluminum and high-strength lightweight steel to create a lighter stronger passenger cell it's a hybrid saves about 200 pounds off on overall 7-series not earth-shaking for a car this heavy but weight loss is the holy grail this technology by the way we first saw with the ice series cars i3 and i8 a couple years ago from BMW the new 7 is gonna offer laser headlights as well now Audi got out there early on this with a limited production r8 but this is a real production sort of an introduction know that laser headlights aren't like some weapon in Star Wars aiming out into space and beaming at people the laser doesn't actually escape the headlight module it creates light within it and then that's projected out but the upsides on this are super low power consumption incredible beam range like double your current high beams and these are tiny little laser modules so they'll be able to give the stylist more freedom and less bulky headlight they have to accommodate we've seen a lot of gesture controlling cars lately at CES and if the auto shows but BMW is really putting it on the street here with a variety of gestures for altering the volume taking or declining an incoming call even turning the system on and off or going to navigation there are three major gestures in this car which isn't a huge vocabulary but to see it actually roll out in a mainstream production car and on top of the previous knobs touch screens and voice command shows that we have an awful lot of choices for how to drive our centre stack but gesture may end up being a credible one of those the HUD in the new 7 Series is said to be the largest in the industry and that's an important ever because the HUD needs to be large to really function well you want to get it as close to your existing driving field-of-view as possible and more size more breathing room lets it do that plus BMW already did the best HUD graphics in the industry I think they really use the space well more of something good is even better the new seven goes on sale October of 2015 base price of 83 expect to pay more for all the tech toys of course however what's interesting here is not just the basket of technologies that are standard or optional but the fact that this is a bit of a tacit admission that high tech cars like Tesla are putting some pressure on the premium German cars to maintain their mind share of the tech forward affluent consumers out there with a stronger technology message and not just being the ultimate driving machine