BMW lets 5 Series owners play Big Brother

BMW has released a teaser video for its upcoming seventh-generation 5 Series, showing off a new feature that allows the driver to check on their car’s surroundings remotely through the use of a smartphone app.

The Remote View 3D feature is a first for a BMW and uses the 5 Series’ cameras to provide information about the vehicle’s surroundings, in case you want to see what your BMW is doing when you are not there.

The new 5 Series will likely feature significant new technologies in a bid to outplay its direct competitor, the recently-released Mercedes-Benz E-Class, which comes with a swathe of new safety tech such as automatic lane changing, automatic parking and a system that can differentiate between various on-road hazards – such as a human, kangaroo or plastic bag – when trying to avoid a collision.

It has traditionally been the 5 Series and E-Class larger siblings – the 7 Series and S-Class, respectively – that first showcase the latest technologies from the German powerhouses, however the new E-Class and the 5 Series prove that the dynamic is changing.

The teaser video accompanying the release shows a blurred 5 Series, however the accompanying photo shows the app being used on a smartphone, with a source folder on the top-left corner of the screen titled ‘540i’, indicating that the current 535i will become the 540i, similar to the recent 1 and 2 Series updates where the 35i variants changed to 40i.

It is the second teaser relating to the 5 Series, with a previous release showing the camouflaged 5 Series surrounded by a pair of robotic arms that are able to scan the car with a margin of error of less than 0.1mm, allowing for the detection of even the smallest of design faults.

Any cues to the design of the new 5 Series would have to come from spy shots published in May that showed the new-gen model in sedan, Estate and GT guise.

Styling is likely to be evolutionary and follow the lines of the latest 7 Series that arrived in showrooms last year. The 5 Series will be built on the 7 Series’ new platform, which benefits from the liberal use of carbon-fibre reinforced plastic (CFRP), resulting in a lighter frame.

Online publication BMWBLOG has speculated that the new 5 Series will be released in October, which could coincide with the Paris motor show, which kicks off at the very end of September.

The 5 Series update should help BMW catch up to the E-Class, which is leading its segment in Australia with 614 sales so far this year to the end of July.

The ageing 5 Series is in second place with 348, followed by the Audi A6 (281), Jaguar XF (280), and Lexus GS (124).