Love my F57 and the F60 before it…these next ones are…a swing and a miss.
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Apple Preparing to Add Support for Digital Car Keys on MINI Vehicles
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Best buy sales? Ick. Good prices but don't return anything. Costco.
Mini's? More ick. Ranks right down with Landrovers for quality. Pricey too. Buy a Subie
Mini's? More ick. Ranks right down with Landrovers for quality. Pricey too. Buy a Subie
Agreed. However I really like the new interior - as a “device.” It’s very attractive.
I have an R56 Cooper S manual that I adore, and I have thought about placing an order for a 2024 before they officially kill the manual for 2025 as they’ve already announced. I love the toggles, knobs, and overall complication of the interior.
Great car. As long as you have a torque wrench. But is really a winner.
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We bought the final special edition Clubman this year - and I’m really bummed that they’re about to yassify the console for all the future cars. The switchgear and buttons in the interiors up till now have been one of my favourite things about BMW-era MINI (this is the second one we’ve had).
Yeah. Ours is the Cooper S too, in the Untold Edition finish. I absolutely love it, and had we not also bought a new SUV this year as well I’d have bought another in a different colour. It’s a great shame, IMO, that they’re killing this model off.
I don’t get why Mini is killing the Clubman, even the somewhat neutered current version is a great mix of fun and usability. This decision and the step away from the hyper-customization that made the original BMW mini such a trendsetter, will probably drive me away from the brand. Gotta admit I don’t get some manufacturers decisions these days.
Call it the assembly line mini.
And they continue to mess up iDrive.
Mini should have also kept around that Jungle Green Metallic paint colour. One of the nicest exterior car colours in automotive history IMO. No images online do it justice. IRL it’s beautiful, and dynamic and interesting. It’s brighter in person.
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What legacy carmakers are doing is getting any feature mature enough to roll it out – contrary to Tesla who are always letting their cars mature with the customers.
Not any more, actually. They used Peugeot engines in the past, which were absolutely hideous. But they’ve used BMW engines for the past 5 years and really improved the cars by that.
suspect the update is to pass a certain amount of the app's control to manufacturer and once all the big car manufacturers have got you hooked on their iOS widgets they'll role out subscription mode and terminate perpetual, the future looks better every day
Honestly carrying keys in my pocket has been one of my biggest gripes for years. I'm sure im in the minority but since I was about 20 i've not wanted keys rattling around in my pocket. A friend even went as far as to "hide" his car key on top of the back tyre so it didn't ruin his trouser fold. That was great until one day he tried to retrieve them and pushed them down the back of the suspension where he had to get on his hands and knees in the pissing rain to retrieve them 😂
I never went that far but my Model S is too old to have no key so I have to take it's little car around with me as a fob, but it makes total sense to me to replace that with my phone so I have on less thing to carry, lose, drop out of my pocket etc. I'd also like that to be my door key but in the UK with a multi locking point door there's still no easy way to have a smartlock with you spend also on an electric lock for the door too - which comes with added issues like a physical latch if you want the door to remain open for the door...and if you forget to turn that latch off at night, you've just left the door unlocked again.
Hopefully one device that unlocks everything that cannot be cloned is the way to go for safety and security. I know people complain about flat batteries but my car has a charger - the phone is always on it's charging pad when I go out, i'm rarely back home with less than 80% battery and even if I was, the car has a phone charger!
This is true, but it's killing them. Legacy automakers are knee deep in bad debt. They're on the verge of having to back out of the China, which is the second largest market in the world, because they won't abandon ICE. And they're only doing that because they failed to see that Tesla was on to something ten years ago and can't catch up. Toyota, for example, are still denying the inevitable... even when worldwide adoption rates are screaming. You have whole automakers such as BMW shutting down ICE production in their home country, VW on the verge of collapse, GM and Ford about to be slapped with a $15,000 penalty on ICE cars in China (which they can't afford)... I keep telling people: the EV thing is happening, pay attention!
This whole thing sort of feels like WW2, where the whole country was ignorant to what was happening around them. I can't imagine how hard it's going to be for people in two or three years when they're all but forced into it. Talk about a political/social tsunami. It's going to be quite ugly.
I completely agree. When my car was new it was a nice gimmick to use a few times. But it just seemed pointless as it’s zero effort and actually good to have the key always with me anyway. It has been slightly useful as a backup. If I am outside and not driving but need to open the car, then it’s been good to be able to do so with my phone.
The car also came with a physical credit card like digital key. Aside from looking great, I can’t imagine any use for that.
What? You don’t want your car interior to look like a generic tech YouTubers video backdrop?
Tesla are strange somehow - advanced in some areas, but they don't/won't do Carplay and their utterly pathetic bluetooth/smartphone/music integration is worse than most cars (e.g. my previous BMW 118i) from 2016 (i.e. I could see the phone library in the car and select etc) whereas Tesla can only play what is already selected on your music app on the phone, so primitive..
As an owner of several Mini's and Mini Countryman's, Looking at that interior, and the images online of the new countryman, No Matter how good the CarPlay and CarKey tech is, I'll not be updating, They look awful
90% of the reason for this interior design is to make more money on each car they sell. They hide behind environmental jargon to sell cars for more profit. The interior design is mostly ruined. The exterior is fine.
100% agree with all that. I’ve got the credit card too and used it once to see how it works. And thinking about it, to start the car the phone needs to be on the charging panel so actually is more hassle than the key that can be in my pocket. (I’m assuming a fellow BMW driver 😀)