[autoJeff]

Has anyone already created a converter to the bmw-routes.com format from, say, KML format (google earth)?

If you don't know, bwm-routes.com is a google maps mashup that lets you plan a multi-destination route and then easily upload it to your car. European cars get to send routes to the car over the air similar to the google maps send-to-car feature. North America cars don't have access to this capability.

All cars, including NA cars, can upload routes into idrive via the USB connection in the glovebox.

Unfortunately, North America VINs don't get full access to the bmw-routes functionality. Even less now than before. You used to be able to plan and save a route that included USA addresses, then save to .zip for manual upload via USB. Now the google maps mashup does let you plan a route using USA addresses, but if you do then you cannot save the route to a .zip file. Fortunately you can still plan a route in Europe and save to .zip even if you don't have a european VIN. (I guess that's good for european delivery.)

I've been wanting to write a converter from google earth KML to BMW's format but I never seem to find time to do it. It should very be easy. There already exist libraries that understand the KML format (and other common formats too). BMW's .zip file contains a simple directory structure and an XML file with a simple format.

BTW, if you go to bmw-routes.com and don't read German, you can switch to English using a difficult-to-see link in the lower left of the home page.

[m_thompson]

The XML file upload to the NAV has been disabled on the current NAV firmware for USA cars. If you get your NAV firmware updated you will loose this feature. Late 2010 and 2011 USA cars don't have this feature.

We used this feature every day during Euro Delivery and it worked great!

[autoJeff]

Originally Posted by m_thompson

The XML file upload to the NAV has been disabled on the current NAV firmware for USA cars.

That is so disappointing. I don't see how disabling it reduces their support cost. They weren't supporting us anyway. It's such an obscure feature that the mainstream owner doesn't even know it exists.