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It's been 3 weeks since I got the car. I've already done 1,200 plus miles and it's been brilliant. Moving from a F32, I was initially bit apprehensive worrying about the size and road handling. But I've been proven completely wrong on both accounts. Car doesn't feel any big to drive and handling with EDC on is absolutely brilliant. You can easily forget you are driving a 1.7T car in the way car handles itself.

Over the past 3 weeks, I've tried most of the tech in the car and thought it would be good to do a review. Give me a shout if there are other areas anyone likes a view on.


Traffic Jam Assist

This has to be one of my favourite features of G30. Yes, it's only an assist and not fully autonomous. But in the right conditions, it makes driving in the city/traffic so much easier. Car is completely capable of steering itself and following a car in front of you. That said, car expects you to keep your hands on steering wheel and warns you every 30 second or so. One negative is Traffic Jam Assistant only works on roads that are relatively straight. As soon as you come to a stretch of road where the road curves beyond a certain angle, it disengages asking you to take over. This isn't a major issue as it gives you both visual and audio warning.

Check out the video I made driving around the city using traffic jam assistant -

Driving Assistant Plus

I know Driving Assistnt Plus is number of systems (Active Cruise Control with stop & go, Steering & lane control assistant, etc.) working together. But thought it would make sense to cover them together as that's generally how I've been using them. I've driven easily 400 miles over the past 3 weeks using the Driving Assistant Plus system. It works very well and I haven't had any issues at all. Initially I was apprehensive about people cutting into your lane and whether the car would recognise them in time. It's dealt with all those types of scenarios on Motorways without any issues. Just like in Traffic Jam Assist, it only deals with relatively straight roads. If you are coming into a sharp bend it usually disengaes although I'm not exactly sure what is the angle at which it does that. I'm sure it's on the technical manual but haven't gone through it since I got the car.

I've had no problem in changing lanes using the system. It's been very responsive. All you need to do is to hold down the turn signal until the green lane markings start blinking at which point car will move on it's own to the desired lane. At time, it's moved across when i personally wouldn't have moved but they were still fairly safe.

Ocaasionally I've used only the lane control assistant. But I find this dangerous as I usually forget that I'm supposed to accelerate and break. So, I hardly ever use this on it's own now.

Overall, it takes a bit of time to get used to using the complete system. You need to build up trust on the system and know it's limitations. One thing for sure it that autonomous driving is still a fair way away as these systems require you to keep an eye on the road given it's limitations. I like that all the assistant systems are shown on Heads Up display which makes easy to keep track of whether they are working or not.

Here's another video that I made on motorway driving -

. Think I need to figure out what's left & right


Remote Parking

I wasn't entirely sure when I specced this one. It was more the novelty than anything else at the time. However, having used this number of times in tight parking spaces, I would absolutely spec this again. It's a bit awkward to get out of the car when the car is not entirely in a parking slot and use the remote. However, once you overcome that, you do realise it's very quick. You can easily park the in less than 30 seconds from start to finish. It does stop a bit earlier than I'd like to in certain spaces. But I reckon, car needs to allow for some margin of error. Just see the pic here to the gap it usually leaves although it's not entirely consistent. I think there are other factors at play than purely the distance.




Hotspot

It works well if someone needs a data connection. I don't believe that I would take a package once my free data runs out. I was just interested to see what speeds this would deliver. In Edinburgh city centre it delivered 7.4mbps download and 5.67mbps upload speeds. Nothing really ground breaking as my phone would do much faster.





There's loads more to cover from automatic parking to other features of the iDrive & connected drive. I'll get to them if there's any interest or specific questions. All those who are waiting for your car, I can assure you that you'd be delighted when you get the car.

[zugellos]

ADS-UK, not sure if you’re aware...but there is a separate forum for the G30.

Found here...
http://g30.bimmerpost.com/forums/index.php

I appreciate the review nonetheless.

[ADS-UK]

Originally Posted by zugellos

ADS-UK, not sure if you’re aware...but there is a separate forum for the G30.

Found here...
http://g30.bimmerpost.com/forums/index.php

I appreciate the review nonetheless.

Thanks. I posted it by mistake yesterday. Couldn't find a way to move the thread, so started a new on G30 as well