[snowbimmer]

Originally Posted by U235

They could use more snow, but most of the mountains are open. Pretty much all of Vail is/was open. Things are thin on the advanced runs. I brought three pairs of skis, two are shredded from rock hits, but now that I know base repair is imminent, I'm like, "YOLO" and don't care. We're having a blast! I promise you will find a 15 minute YouTube video of mostly my son skiing at the end of this trip report. My 8 year old shreds double blacks. A couple teaser photos to appease you...

Now yer talkin'. Cool pics. Especially the 2nd one. Thanks.

[U235]

Originally Posted by snowbimmer

Now yer talkin'. Cool pics. Especially the 2nd one. Thanks.

Lover’s Leap at Vail (Blue Sky Basin). There’s always a sick cornice at the top. The next/third shot is a zoomed out version.

[Tr4ckD4ys]

I’m curious: in several of your pictures it looks like your car is sitting very low. This is particularly visible front passenger side wheel well/tire area (your first post has the most extreme example but later posts show it too).

What’s going on there?

[U235]

Originally Posted by Tr4ckD4ys

I’m curious: in several of your pictures it looks like your car is sitting very low. This is particularly visible front passenger side wheel well/tire area (your first post has the most extreme example but later posts show it too).

What’s going on there?

When parked, you can lower the car to a very low position. It only works when parked. When loading the car (as in the first post) as well as unloading at hotels, I often will put it into the super low position to help get stuff in/out. Most of the hotel pictures, it's probably in a lower position. The car wash photo, is in standard comfort position.

The picture in my driveway from the first set of pictures you reference is further exacerbated by the strange pitch of my driveway. If you look at the prior picture, the driver's side has noticeable wheel gap. My driveway pitches from left to right if you're looking at the garage, causing all sorts of weird suspension articulations. If you look at the entire set of pictures from that first post, you'll see the driveway sort of rolls fore and aft and pitches from port to starboard. The picture looking at the rear, you can see how the entire car tilts from left to right, from the front view of the car, you can see the same.

[MattX760i]

Originally Posted by U235

In regards to this cruise control slow down thing, I was able to capture it on video today driving in Eagle County near EGE Airport. The instrument cluster actually indicates this with a curve icon and checkbox and countdown, but you can see in the video that the car automatically slows down a little, then continues to slow down well below the speed limit (yellow signs aren't legal speed limits). After the curve, it speeds up back to your set speed. . If you have a convoy of cars behind you, TRUST ME, this will piss them off.

Speed limit was 75mph, I was set at 78mph. At 0.3 miles before the curve, the car slowed to 76 mph, and right at the curve it went down to 71 mph (under the speed limit) and once the road straightened, it returned to 78 mph. I was not touching any of the pedals. I can't say I'm a fan of this, especially considering the actual speed limit never changed and this was a very subtle corner. As stated, this behavior resulted in middle fingers and flashing lights on a busier I70 two weeks prior...

I believe you can set this up in the iDrive where it will slow down on a curve and speed back up once completed.

[Tr4ckD4ys]

It seems fairly smooth though how it lowers and picks back up speed. At least on the video it does it. Interestingly enough even pre-LCI X7 with DAP had that setting but I never thought it operated as smoothly as the LCI DAP in your video does.

[GOLFFRR]

Originally Posted by U235

... and this is the current situation

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wow!!

[U235]

Originally Posted by MattX760i

I believe you can set this up in the iDrive where it will slow down on a curve and speed back up once completed.

I’ll check it out and see if there’s a setting. Thanks!

[U235]

Originally Posted by Tr4ckD4ys

It seems fairly smooth though how it lowers and picks back up speed. At least on the video it does it. Interestingly enough even pre-LCI X7 with DAP had that setting but I never thought it operated as smoothly as the LCI DAP in your video does.

That was a more modest corner to some I experienced just west of Denver. Regardless, when you’ve got aggressive drivers charging up I70, shedding 7mph quickly will piss people off

[chicagox7]

[QUOTE=U235;30774774]In regards to this cruise control slow down thing, I was able to capture it on video today driving in Eagle County near EGE Airport. The instrument cluster actually indicates this with a curve icon and checkbox and countdown, but you can see in the video that the car automatically slows down a little, then continues to slow down well below the speed limit (yellow signs aren't legal speed limits). After the curve, it speeds up back to your set speed. . If you have a convoy of cars behind you, TRUST ME, this will piss them off.

Speed limit was 75mph, I was set at 78mph. At 0.3 miles before the curve, the car slowed to 76 mph, and right at the curve it went down to 71 mph (under the speed limit) and once the road straightened, it returned to 78 mph. I was not touching any of the pedals. I can't say I'm a fan of this, especially considering the actual speed limit never changed and this was a very subtle corner. As stated, this behavior resulted in middle fingers and flashing lights on a busier I70 two weeks prior...


I’ve been following the trip- looks awesome and very jealous. Much more fun than my round trip drive to the east coast from the Midwest with the family. At least 3 times during the drive my ‘23 X7 starting slowing fairly quickly for no apparent reason. Once on a corner, another after someone left my lane and the third ??? No idea why. In each case I quickly hit the gas took back control (hands were ont he wheel, using cruise control- 23 doen’t have highway assist plus). As for the slowing down on the curves, this was noted in another thread as well. Seems there are settings that can be adjusted for this (see below).

https://www.bimmerpost.com/forums/sh...php?p=30780522

While I’m sure we’re all responsible when the automated features are on, I just saw an article about truck safety featuer going wrong and causing an accident. The truck stopped suddenly on the highway (it’s automated safety feature was triggered when someone cut them off crossing multiple lanes). The truck driver should have disengaged after the car left the lane and didn’t. Thus the truck stopped. Someone behind the truck hit it and was badly injured. Plaintiff’s attorneys won a $16.6m judgment against the company/driver. Best to keep that foot near the gas when using these features!

https://www.propertycasualty360.com/...20240003102548

[chicagox7]

Originally Posted by U235

Eco Pro for most of it, also I lower to the lowest mode. When it was snowing I left it in Comfort and Comfort height

Had not thought of using Eco Pro while on my round trip from the Midwest to the east coast. Does that impact the ride comfort at all?

[djacinto]

As a fellow austinite, I love seeing my fellow Beamer squad around the country!

As a former BMW employee there are unfortunately no work around for the honking as far as I know in the new cars. The honk when leaving a running car is quite annoying and I wish there was a way to keep it from doing so but safety first!

Glad to see everything is up to par and more, I look forward to see the rest of the trip!

[U235]

Originally Posted by chicagox7

Had not thought of using Eco Pro while on my round trip from the Midwest to the east coast. Does that impact the ride comfort at all?

No impact to comfort, it seems if anything it’s more comfortable as the car really doesn’t downshift and just cruises along. It also activates more coasting.

[U235]

Originally Posted by djacinto

As a fellow austinite, I love seeing my fellow Beamer squad around the country!

As a former BMW employee there are unfortunately no work around for the honking as far as I know in the new cars. The honk when leaving a running car is quite annoying and I wish there was a way to keep it from doing so but safety first!

Glad to see everything is up to par and more, I look forward to see the rest of the trip!

The trick to avoid the honking is to use remote start from the phone. Then you can do whatever you want unimpeded! In fact, last time at the hotel, I did remote start, then moved the car to the loading area, then I shut it off. Then I did remote start again and loaded the car entirely without a single honk!

[turnem05]

Originally Posted by U235

We're about to leave, some last shots, including the car packed out.

I definitely have a lot more visibility through the back, basically no obstruction. We definitely brought more this time as well. The kid's area doesn't seem as crowded either with the seat basically all the way back.

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Where did you get the holder that goes between the seat and the center console? Looks like it has a way to fish a charging cable in there to get around the abysmal wireless charging that BMW offers!

[U235]

Originally Posted by turnem05

Where did you get the holder that goes between the seat and the center console? Looks like it has a way to fish a charging cable in there to get around the abysmal wireless charging that BMW offers!

Yeah, after my phone got nuked, I stopped wireless charging. I got a set of these: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0C85HJ89D/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

These fit my Volvo perfectly but it’s not thick enough to fit in the BMW without falling down. They make dozens of sizes/thicknesses (so probably get a thicker one than the one I shared). I just jammed a small towel underneath and it’s fine. To your point, there’s a little hole to route a charging cable through. I use the USB-C port on the rear console to feed it. It works great!

[Laguna Seca Blue]

Lol at the brake checking story while using active cruise control on I-70.

Just FYI, Colorado drivers already have some strongly held pre-convienced notions of wealthy Texan driver’s (in)ability to navigate windy roads. This ex-Coloradan included. I lived just outside of Telluride for a few years, and all the Range Rovers with Texas plates (there were a lot of them) would come to near standstill when they had to maneuver through a few bends haha

[U235]

Originally Posted by Laguna Seca Blue

Lol at the brake checking story while using active cruise control on I-70.

Just FYI, Colorado drivers already have some strongly held pre-convienced notions of wealthy Texan driver’s (in)ability to navigate windy roads. This ex-Coloradan included. I lived just outside of Telluride for a few years, and all the Range Rovers with Texas plates (there were a lot of them) would come to near standstill when they had to maneuver through a few bends haha

Exactly!!! I mean when everyone is cruising at 80 and then someone drops down to 70 for a trivial bend, the people behind don't know it's stupid auto-cruise control, they just think you're an inconsiderate idiot. That's why it's so frustrating, it's not like you can tell them to send the middle fingers to the engineers in Bavaria

[ChrisM4]

Nice write up. I just returned from a 5,000km road trip to the east coast of Canada back to Ontario in our ‘22 X7 with roof box. Beautiful driving on the way out (20 hours over two days) and a pretty blizzardly return on our last day driving yesterday for part of the way through Quebec.

The X7 on good snow tires is unflappable in bad weather, I was really impressed. We have the BMW roof box and averaging around 120kmh for the trip did 10.8L/100km fully loaded with four people, two small dogs and a ton of luggage. Not bad considering the terrain, wind and roof box. (New Brunswick is quite hilly with the Appalachian mountains)

[U235]

We made it from Telluride to Lubbock, Texas. I made the call last night to skip staying in Clovis and push to Lubbock. I was unsure what winter weather we'd face, but it wasn't as bad as forecasts had expected. We had about 2" of snow on the ground in the morning, and we had winter conditions through Lizard Head Pass. As we made it back down towards Dolores, Cortez and Durango, things cleared up nicely. We ended up in some slush near Cuba, NM before ending up in clear conditions from Albuquerque on.

Ultimately, it was ~650 miles. We got our best fuel mileage to date given the gradual decline. Despite initially filling in Montrose and climbing to Telluride, we still made great gas mileage. We made some strong high speed passes and were cruising at 81-82 mph for much of the trip. We filled in Albuquerque, and I will likely fill up tomorrow in Post, TX before making it back to Austin. I expect another great MPG report.

Here's they Fuelly log showing Montrose to Albuquerque, 26 MPG! Also, here's the total trip of Telluride to Lubbock, TX as reported by the car (reported as 27.1 mpg). It was a bunch of up and down, cold weather driving, and some strong passes in New Mexico to get around single lane big rig passing. The car did admirably. Pics and further report in next post.

[U235]

Here are pics from the drive, leaving Telluride over Lizard Head Pass. We went through Dolores, Durango, Aztec, Cuba before coming into Albuquerque.

Again, the car never slipped, it was steadfast and surefooted. The car reported temperatures at 0F, but we never felt any issues and was able to keep up with the few cars on the road and basically stay at the recommended (yellow speed limits) through the corners. While I didn't push the car, I did have to enter the highway to avoid traffic and the car just went, no slipping. I pulled over to the shoulder once to re-verify navigation and again it had no issue getting going uphill in 1-2" of powder.

Here are the pictures. The picture of the car parked was the slush field in Cuba, NM. Regrettably, we saw a handful of cars wrecked out due to weather, including an 18-wheeler Amazon Prime rig that jack-knifed and went down a ravine

[U235]

Here are some other updates:

1. I found the settings (thanks to everyone here) to disable the slow down during the bends in iDrive!

2. This morning, the valet got the car and pulled it up to the front entrance of the hotel. I was loading skis, and my wife (on the 6th floor of the hotel) texted me, "The damn car horn is honking again." This was at 620am, but she could hear it 6 floors up! I was able to disable the lock upon walking away, but in the short time of the valet giving me the keys and me trying to load skis, the car went all honk possessed again. Such a poor software design!

3. While loading all of our stuff this morning, at some point a person or a bag briefly touched one of the electric seat folding buttons. The car immediately reported that the third row left and right seats were not properly secured (despite being completely down). I could not rectify these errors no matter what I did. I pressed every button, things were clearly locked. Ultimately, I had to unload the entire car, electrically raise the third row entirely, and then put it back down to clear the errors. Between this and the aforementioned 6th floor horn honking shenanigans, my wife again commented how we never had these ridiculous issues with our Volvo...

4. My wife and I had to make a pit-stop in some tiny New Mexico town. We left our son in the car, and I locked the car while we went into the bathroom. I came back after a pee to the car alarm going off and many random people staring at it. My wife left her phone in the car, and despite the settings changes, apparently the car wasn't happy a key (phone) was left inside. It was super embarrassing. One guy with his son said, "I thought the alarm went off just because we were looking at your car!". It was embarrassing, seriously BMW needs to figure this key crap out! Another comment from my wife about the car being a technical nightmare...

5. I let my wife drive for a little while. She's honestly not a fan of this car because of the ridiculous electronic locking and seat issues. That said, she had to make some single lane passes at very high speed and ultimately said, "Wow, this thing has more power than anyone would ever need, it's so much more confident than the Volvo and so much smoother. I just wish it was easy to operate all the electronics."

At the end of the day, my wife and I both felt less fatigued and were just blown away with the comfort, power and all-weather capabilities! Despite the now seemingly hilarious key honking issues, this truly is the best vehicle to soak up long miles in any climate!