Publications
Partners
Toronto - Life is short - so why not take the scenic route?
That is the message BMW Financial Services seems to be encouraging with its new
app, the Ultimate Drive.
Released last week, the free app allows users to discover,
share and rate the world's most interesting driving routes contributed by users
worldwide. By incorporating GPS, the app is also able to find routes
surrounding a particular location, and will alert users when new routes are
discovered in their neighbourhood.
"There are plenty of sites that will show you the top
roads to drive," said Pawan Murthy of BMW Group Financial Services, which
provides financing for BMW and MINI vehicles.
"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."
So far more than 600 routes have been added to the app.
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 many
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".
Another route takes drivers along a trip that concludes at
Arkansas' oldest continually operating general store.
"It starts getting very granular from a user-experience
standpoint as to what people will share on the app," said Murthy.
He said this release is the first iteration of an app moving
further towards "gamification", in other words introducing game play
elements to increase customer participation.
A future version set for release in early October will be
more interactive and include a point system aimed at giving customers greater
incentive to participate.
"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," said Murthy.
Most car companies provide free apps for a wide variety of
purposes. One from Nissan, for example, allows owners to remotely manage and
maintain their vehicles. Another from Mazda puts drivers in direct contact with
roadside assistance.
One drawback to the Ultimate Drive is that directions are
not provided natively within the app. But routes can be exported to Facebook or
through email, and can also be ported to another GPS-based map application for
directions.
The Ultimate Drive is currently available only in North
America.
