As part of my research, I went to a BMW dealership and interviewed two salespeople about BMW’s and how they are different from other cars.
Performance:
ABS (anti lock brake system) was invented for airplanes. Many cars today have ABS to help them not to slid on icy roads. Dynamic stability control, if you’re in a hurry and you want to get around a corner fast this is what the BMW’s do: the inside tires slow down while the outside tires would speed up to go around corners faster. BMW’s cars have rear wheel drive. The engine sits farther back to keep the car even. The hydraulics keeps the wheels even. The car weighs less therefore it’s easier to steer.
Safety:
The air bags release hard if impact is hard, but if impact is light the air bags come out slow and easy. BMW’s air bags stay inflated for 7-9 seconds, for the second impact other cars air bags don’t last as long so you will get injured quite easily. If you don’t have a passenger in the front, the air bag won’t go off because the seat can detect the weight, so if it can’t feel anything, the air bag won’t go off. The car measures how hard the impact is, so it knows how hard or how soft the air bag should come out. The front and rear ends of the car absorbs the impact smoothly, force on body less light weight material. “Head protection system” (HPS). On the other cars they have very thin strip of padding under the window but the BMW have a big tube, (the BMW people call it THE GERMAN SAUSAGE!) it stays inflated for 7-9 seconds so if you hit your head on the side of the car it won’t hurt as much because the tube is so big. Pyrotechnic release in the seat belt pulls the person back like a gun shot and prevents the people in the car from going forward and bashing their heads on the front and from the air bag crushing their heads and from getting burns from the air bag because of the pressure.
Future features:
BMW will have new computerized parts in their cars like intelligent drive, that takes all buttons on the console to program to vent the inside of 15 minutes before arrive, auto parallel parking as in the car parallel parks for you (SWEET!!), computer 745, if something’s wrong with the engine, the car will communicate with the factory by satellite and the factory will come and help you. Eventually, BMW will have auto drive (car drives itself) (MEGA SWEET!!)
Helping the Environment:
BMW’s cars are 85-100% recyclable for example, the plastic components get melted down and used for different cars.