BMW to fit Sat Nav as standard on ALL new cars

BMW has announced that by September 2015 all new BMWs sold in the UK will be fitted with BMW’s 6.5″ Screen with iDrive, SatNav and Traffic Message Channel.

When Google provides Sat Nav for free on Smartphones and even TomTom will turn your phone in to a fully functioning Sat Nav for about £1 a month, it’s ridiculous that car makers still charge through the nose to have Sat Nav fitted. But that looks about to change.

BMW has announced that it will be fitting Sat Nav as standard across its entire range by September of this year, a move we hope will be seen and acted upon by other car makers, particularly in the ‘Premium’ sector.

To be fair to BMW, Sat Nav is already standard on their more expensive cars, but from July the 2 Series Convertible and 2 Series Active Tourer will get regular Sat Nav as standard, the Z4 will get Professional Navigation at the same time and from September the 1 Series and 2 Series Coupe will get it too.

BMW tell us they have long lead the way in terms of standard spec (although many will remember when the only thing you got as standard on a BMW was the steering wheel), and we can’t argue that with Sat Nav added to stuff like DAB and Bluetooth as standard equipment in every BMW, it raises the bar and challenges other premium makers to follow suit.

BMW rolled out a talking head from CAP to comment on the news. Jill Knight said:

BMW introducing navigation across its entire model range is a first for any mainstream manufacturer in the UK and will inevitably pave the way for others to follow.

As well as having standard navigation across the range all BMW models will see an improvement on their residual value from between £300 to £600 (model dependant) so this is good news all round for the customer.

You’ll still be able to spend money on Sat Navs with BMW by upgrading to Professional Navigation with its 8.8″ screen, Real Time Traffic, BMW Online and BMW Remote, but even the price of that has been cut to a (still not cheap) £900 on the 1 Series Hatch, 2 Series Convertible and Coupe and £1,395 on the 2 Series Active Tourer and Gran Tourer (where you also get heads-up).