New BMW app: The exclusive drive lets drivers share top scenic routes
Posted on August 22nd 2011Welcome back!
Released, a week ago, the free application allows its users to share, discover and rate the world’s most interesting driving routes contributed by the users worldwide. By incorporating GPS, this app will also be able to find routes regarding a particular location, and will alert the users when new routes will be discovered.
Pawan Murthy of BMW Group Financial Services said, “There are plenty of sites that will show you the top roads to drive. The roads that are filtering up (in the app) include others that very few people have ever heard of, and that’s what makes it so exciting.”
Till date, more than 600 routes had been added to the application. Murthy said, “The most interesting routes are those with the best scenery and, for drivers with sporty cars, include many twists and turns. Points of interest and restaurants or cafes with good food, also get a lot of mentions. One user, who added a route just west of Denver that runs along North America’s highest elevated public road warned drivers to ‘watch for bighorn sheep’.”
There is another route that takes drivers along a trip that ends at Arkansas oldest operational general stores. He added, “It starts getting very granular from a user-experience standpoint as to what people will share on the app.”
He said that this release is the first iteration of an application moving ahead of ‘gamification’- launching game play characterstics to raise customer participation. An upgraded version is slated to release in early October which will be more interactive and include a point system aimed at having customer’s participation.
Murthy further said, “We wanted to get Version 1 out so we could expose it to the world and initiate crowd sourcing of routes. Succeeding versions will have a closer connection with financial services.”
Many of the car companies give free applications for a huge variety of purposes. For example: Nissan allows owners to remotely maintain and mange their vehicle whereas Bran Mazda put the driver in direct contact with roadside assistance.
There is only one drawback for this that it does not have directions within the application. But routes can be exported to Facebook or through mail. It can also be sent to other GPS based maps applications for directions. The exclusive drive is presently available only in North America.
By editor in Auto Articles, Auto Events, Auto India News, Auto Industry News, Auto Pricing, Auto Schemes, BMW, Uncategorized

Delyth Mai Williams responded on 28 Apr 2012 at 3:51 pm #
Find the Johnson & Johnson contact lenses you wear and save up to 70% off! Buy them now. Learn more.