The addition of the newsfeed was not advertised by BMW, but accidentaly discovered by online magazine The Diesel Driver. It is the first feature to expand the information services in US based BMW (so far limited to weather, stock market and fuel prices) to include world news, business news, sports coverage and entertainment news.
Unfortunately, BMW has not officially announced the introduction of the feature yet. Several BMW forums however are already talking about the feature, pointing to the fact it is still being tested. According to some, the CNN newsfeed will only be available for the BMW Assist Convenience package, but for a few days it is being offered to all drivers.
To get to the newsfeed, you should click BMWsearch and the feature will appear together with "Fuel Prices Search," Weather and "Business Search".
To keep the driver's eyes on the road, the selected news is being read by the car with the use of a text-to-speech technology. Each of the news articles coming via the feed are limited to one or two sentences.
In Europe, such a system already exists, as drivers here have acces to news via BMW Online. In North America, those who have discovered the feature are now wondering whether it will be limited to CNN or it will expand to other sources as well.
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