'Multitasking' Young Buyers Are Why BMW Is Ditching Physical Buttons

Young people, how do you feel about "multitasking" while driving your car? BMW Australia's CEO seems to think you're all a big fan of it, and that's why its latest generation of Neue Klasse vehicles, like the all-new iX3 and i3, do away with physical buttons and other switchgear in favor of bigger screens and more voice controls.

The Neue Klasse iX3 doesn't offer things like physical climate or radio controls, and even the iDrive knob, a staple of BMW interiors for over two decades, is now gone. There is now just a small cluster of buttons on the center console and nearly nothing on the dashboard, and just about everything is controlled by the parallelogram-shaped touchscreen or by a passenger's voice. A big reason for this shift, according to BMW Australia boss Vikram Pawah, is that these are the ways young people more commonly interact with technology.

"We can see that voice and touch are becoming more and more common. Maybe it's a generational thing as well. You would see that a lot of the younger generation, maybe 45 or below, they're tapped into these technologies at a faster pace, using voice, using touch. They want things done quickly, and they're multitasking. And we have to keep that in mind. That's how customers are evolving," Pawah told Australia's CarExpert. "They are multitasking."

I'm not entirely sure what Pawah means by "multitasking" behind the wheel. If he was referring to texting and driving, we definitely shouldn't be doing that. But he did refer to the bevy of near-casual conversation things you can say to the iX3's voice assistant to change settings in the car or have it perform functions for you, maybe while you're focusing on driving, like "Can you move the air away from my face?" and "I want to have a coffee that I had last week".

Pawah isn't unaware that this sort of tech is alien to the older generation, though, and he knows BMW has to work to make sure what it's offering is simple and intuitive. At least intuitive enough for the average consumer to actually use, according to CarExpert. BMW's goal is to make the adoption of change a bit more palatable and intuitive for consumers, and so far they're doing a pretty good job, based on my use of Neue Klasse software. 

In many ways, BMW has been down this road before. An Australian spokesperson for the automaker pointed to the 2001 introduction of iDrive as another spooky moment for the general buyer that has very much withstood the test of time.

"People always feel uncomfortable with radical change. Do you remember when we introduced the iDrive back in 2001? And you remember what the world's reaction was to the iDrive, and now look, there's hardly a car you get into where there's not an iDrive," the spokesperson told CarExpert.

While I don't dislike the idea of voice controls and touchscreens in cars, I'm not sure if framing them as a way to more easily "multitask" is the right way to go about things — especially for a company that touts itself as the producer of the ultimate driving machine. Remember, I'm far from a Luddite when it comes to car interiors; I just don't think this is the way to win people over.