Tag: features

Top 15 Useful BMW i3 Hidden Features

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  1. Key and Key fob

We’ll start with some simple ones for those newer to BMWs and the I3. This seemingly simple key actually has many hidden features. Everyone knows you can roll down your windows and sun roof on most BMWs by just holding the unlock button for a few seconds, but did you also know there is a physical key that has a couple of features of its own? Not only can it open the driver’s door, it can also lower and raise the windows if you hold it all the way to the right or left. Well, only the front windows, the rears are fixed in.

A couple other fun key features I found is that if you hit the lock button on your key fob when the windows are opened a little, it will go back up inch by inch and if you have a European version , you can just hold the lock button to close them completely. If your car is plugged into a charger and you lock it, you will also see the charge status. Lastly, if you hit the lock button twice within 10 seconds, it will DE-activate the tilt alarm and the interior motion sensor. Great for leaving a dog in the car.

  • Door Handle

Speaking of leaving things in the car, you don’t have to open the rear door to put something in the back. You can use this handy handle on the back of the seat to lean it forward like in a 2-door car. However, if you do open the door and look in the corner here, you fill find that you have some pull tabs behind a cover. There are these manual pulls all over the car. You can open the charging port, the front trunk and fuel filler door.

  • Fuel cap and charge port has a spot to be stored

While we are here at the fuel door, when you fill your car with either gas or electricity, don’t let the cap dangle, there is a built-in spot to keep them off the paint.

Interior:

  1. Telescoping steering column

Switching over to the interior and controls, there are some fun ones here as well! For example, I recently learned that the steering wheel is not only adjustable up and down, but it’s also telescopic!? How cool!

  • Turn Signal Cancel

Some of the features you use daily also have little tricks behind them. For example, when using a turn signal, you don’t have to push it the opposite direction and turn on the other one accidentally, you can simply tap in the same direction to cancel it. I know it solves a problem that BMW has created by changing how their turn signals work, but cool nonetheless.

  • Follow me home and parking lights

You can also use this stalk to turn on follow me home lights by pushing the stalk away from you. Your low beams will stay on for 30 seconds. This is also why I upgraded mine to LEDs.

Similarly, you can turn on parking lights by pushing the stalk up or down. Left or right side of the car will stay on. Great for street parking or parking in an alley.

  • Put car in neutral/skip neutral

Switching to the other side of the steering wheel, there are a couple of features here as well. You can skip Neutral when selecting Drive or Reverse by pushing the gear change lever past the first click. This one is easy to find after driving the car for a while, but how do you put the car in Neutral? You would think you can just pop it in N and turn it off… but it just goes to Park on its own. To do so, hold the gear lever and the power button for 3 seconds and the release both. Now you are in neutral and car is off.

  • Can turn on radio when car is off

There are a couple of tricks with the entertainment system as well. As an example, you can power on the radio with the car off by simply hitting the volume/power button.

  • Shortcut Buttons

Just to the right of the power button, we have some preset buttons, but what most people don’t know is that you don’t have to use it for radio, you can use it as a shortcut for almost anything in the system. For example, you can make one of them toggle the Hold State of Charge aka turn on the Range Extender or dim the control panel brightness or even switch to different music sources and much more. Fun fact, if you’d like to reset all of them, simply hold 1 and 8 at the same time.

  • Hidden menu

Ok, ok, I hear some of you screaming that you know all of these already, but did you know that this small city car has a drift mode!?

Ok, it’s not actually called a drift mode, but there is a hidden menu that gives you tons of additional information and allows you to enable a roller mode where it will turn off the traction control, stability control, ABS and regenerative braking giving you full control of the rear wheels!

Getting into the hidden menu is fairly simple, you just hold the trip reset button for a few seconds and you are in! Here you can find a few options, including the roller mode which you can press and hold to enable. You can also unlock this menu for a ton more information, like your battery capacity, temperature and other specs not otherwise advertised. To unlock it, enter the sum of the last 5 digits of your VIN and you are in! I will do a full video on this as I think it deserves a deeper dive. We can even check out the CiC iDrive service menu in that video as well. Let me know if that is something you’d be interested in seeing.

  • Coat Hanger
  • Power plug

If you haven’t seen my camera install video, you might not know that there is a power plug right under the air vents, super convenient for charging your phone. Also, there is a hidden coat hanger behind this little cover. All you have to do is flip it around.

Engine/Driving:

The last few items I wanted to mention have to do with the engine, driving and storing the vehicle.

One features that’s hard to figure out yourself as a driver is that when braking really hard, the car will also illuminate the lower lights, giving more of a warning to the cars behind, but not only that, if you open the rear hatch and your lights are no longer visible, the lower set will take over and work as regular lights and brakes! Great thinking on BMW’s part here!

  1. Rex Emissions Mode
  2. You can check oil level unlike other BMWs

Luckily BMW did more thinking around the range extender engine which leads me to the next hidden feature, you can put the car in emissions mode. This will turn on the engine and run it for 20 minutes to bring it up to operating temperatures and prepare systems for emissions testing. Your battery charge has to be under 75% as it will charge the battery as a side effect. Could be useful in an emergency! To turn it on, open the hatch, turn on the ignition and then press the accelerator pedal 3 times and hold on the third. Release and press the brake button followed by the Start and Stop button. The engine will start at this point. Another fun fact about this motorcycle engine is that it actually has an oil dip stick, so you can check the oil level unlike most other BMWs. Nice!

  • Long storage hidden feature, hack:

The very last trick that could be useful for some has to do with storing a BMW i3 over longer time. BMW says not to allow the vehicle to sit idle for extended period of time on low charge, so it must be close to fully charged to be stored. This will work great for the high voltage battery, but you will still be risking killing the 12v battery since simply having the car plugged in will not charge it. So, to circumvent this, what you can do is set up a departure time once a week, this will power on the car and charge your 12v battery at the same time saving you a headache in the future.

Summary:

Wow this turned out to be a pretty long video! So, I hope you have learned something new or interesting about a BMW i3 and if you are a hardcore enthusiast, I’d love to hear some of the things I’ve missed. Also, if you’d like to access some more truly hidden features, check out this video where I show you how to code your car for more range, true control of the range extender and even adding a sport mode! Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one!

Top 10 Useful Lexus RC Hidden Features

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Top 10 Useful Lexus RC Hidden Features

Intro:

Hi guys and welcome back to the SimpleCarGuy channel. Today we will talk about some hidden features, tips and tricks and things you may not have known about the Lexus RC range!

If you have been driving a Lexus for years, I’m sure you already know most of these and I’d love to hear some I haven’t mentioned in the comments down below. If you are new to the brand, stick around and I hope you enjoy the video.

Things you didn’t know:

Chassis Construction:

The Lexus RC is a little bit of an assortment of parts, but in the best way possible. It borrows it’s front subframe from the larger GS, midsection from the old IS250 convertible and the rear section comes from the 3rd gen IS. This makes for a great handling car that has a shorter wheelbase than the IS, but the body is just as long. To be clear, I know this is a unibody car and there isn’t a chassis as such.

Moving Instrument Cluster:

The first thing you notice on this car as soon as you start it up is how cool the dashboard is. I love mechanical things and this makes me very happy in how it moves so mechanically but yet so modern at the same time.

The Roof Panel:

Next is the roof. The roof panel on the RC range is not traditionally welded or clued on like on many other cars, its actually laser welded using a laser brazing technique to provide better rigidity and eliminate rain channels for a smoother appearance.

Vortex Emulators:

Speaking of smoother appearance, this car has these little fins all over called the vortex emulators that create a spiraling vortex or cone of air to reduce drag. It does this  by lowering the levels of adhesion as air leave the body. Very cool!

RC stands for radical coupe:

[Point to emblem] Now this is something I just learned recently when starting to read about this car. The RC in RC300 stands for Radical Coupe.

Rear Seats:

Actually usable. I can easily go in and out and can be lowered almost flat.

Hidden Features:

Mirror Tilt:

A not so obvious but useful features on the RC is the mirror adjustments. Of course, you can normally adjust your mirrors, but what if you don’t like how they behave when you are in reverse. Luckily, Lexus allows you to change how far the mirror goes down when in reverse. Once in reverse, simply select the mirror you would like to adjust and the next time you put the car in reverse, it will be set to where you want them.

Traction Control:

You can fully disable the traction control and on the F cars put it in track mode by selecting sport plus mode and then holding the traction button until the dash lights up.

MODE button:

Want to turn off the stereo without taking your hands off the steering wheel? Simply hold the MODE button and the radio will turb of fin a few seconds. You can use it to turn it back on again as well.

Extra Tilt:

Tap the steering wheel tilt button 4 times in any direction and it will give you more tilt; it works after the tilt is at its max and gives it more tilt. Hopefully, that makes sense.

When you’re moving your power adjustable steering wheel down and it stops, don’t give up, you can actually lower it farther. After the steering wheel stops, continue holding the down button for six seconds. Push it down again, and the steering wheel should go even lower.

Physical Key:

You can pull out the physical key and open the door behind the handle.

Lower Windows and Sunroof with Key:

Your key can also lower all windows, open the sunroof and start the engine on some cars IF you ask your dealer nicely to unlock that feature for you. Press the lock button 3 times and hold on 3rd  press for 5 seconds to start the engine and if you do the same combo but with the unlock button it will lower all windows open the sunroof.

Rev Matching/Downshift Blip:

Sun visor:

 Telescoping sunvisor

Conclusion:

I’ll be honest, I was surprised that I was able to find any hidden features on a Lexus as these are more known for making awesome daily drivers with the comfort and reliability that’s unmatched in this space. Luckily there were a few interesting ones to mention and I hope you enjoyed learning with me. I’d love to hear from the owners, I know there aren’t that many of you and see what you have to see. Thanks for watching and I’ll see you in the next one!

BMW R Nine T Hidden Features

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Hey guys and welcome back to the SimpleCarGuy channel. Today we are taking a look at some hidden features, tips and tricks and thing you may not know about the BMW R Nine T, also known as the best modern retro styled roadster.

If you have been riding bikes for longer than I have been alive or have had BMW bikes for a while, I’m sure you already know all of the ones below but hey.. maybe there is one that you don’t! If you are a pro, I’d love to hear some tips and tricks below in the comments so we can all learn something cool or new. For everyone else, stick around and I hope you enjoy the video. Let’s get to it!

So, what are some things you may not know about this bike?

  1. If you have owned a modern bike, you probably think that you can just turn off ABS or other safety features with a button, but on the BMW R Nine T you cannot turn off ABS unless you have the new version with throttle by wire. In this case your bike will have traction control as well and you can turn off both using the ASC button.
  2. You may not be able to turn of ABS, but did you know that this bike has an OBD2 port? With a $15 dollar adapter, you can scan the bike, see live data and if you have BMW software or buy a fancy motorcycle scanner, you can do so much more! Very cool.
  3. So, we can read this bike’s computer, but we can also plug in a dedicated GPS or phone charger by using the onboard power socket that’s hidden on the left side of the bike here. This socket is protected just like BMW cars where if the battery voltage falls below the level required to start the bike, it will be deactivated.
  4. If your battery does go below required voltage at some point, you are in luck, because this bike has a built-in trickle charger port. Since the BMW R Nine T uses AGM batteries which can be a little finicky when it comes to charging, you have to follow some steps. You must leave your motorcycle on the trickle charger over winter if not riding or the battery will be trash by spring. IN fact, this bike has had a new battery installed after only 800 miles because the previous owner left it over winter and the fact that it took 2 years to do that many miles. In fact, I have already done about that many miles in the few weeks I’ve owned it. BMW Recommends to plug the bike in if not redden for more than 4 weeks.
    1. Some additional notes on this, you cannot jump start the bike from this socket. The wires are not thick enough and rated for high current and can cause a fire.
    1. It’s also recommended to only use this socket to charge as onboard electronics monitor this socket and know when the battery is fully charged and switch off the onboard socket to make sure if you get a cheap battery tender, you won’t fry your bike or battery. If you’d like to charge you battery directly, it must be disconnected from the bike first.  
  5. The next item on my list is the TPMS or the lack of TPMS sensors on this bike. This is, again, old school so kind of expected, so check your tire pressure. When I picked up my bike and rode it home, I was wondering where was this great handling that everyone has been talking about. The bike kept trying to stand up and was slow through turn. The 15 pounds of pressure made a huge difference and how the bike is very confident on the road and the difference is huge. This is a bit motorcycles 101, but no dumby light here, so check manually.
  6. Speaking of dumby lights, that’s all you get for fuel level as well. There is no fuel gauge on this bike, but you will be informed with a simple light once it’s on reserve.
  7. Number 7 is a parking light. This is pretty common in Europe as far as I understand, but pretty rare on bike in the states. To turn it on, switch off the ignition and then immediately hold the indicator switch to the left until the lights turn on. Cycle the ignition to turn it off.
  8. A feature that surprised me on this bike was actually the auto-cancel indicator switch. If you forget to turn it off, it will actually turn itself off after 10 seconds or 300 meters (almost 1000ft) of driving.
  9. Going back to the battery, if you even need to jump-start the bike, you have to use the connection point on the positive battery terminal under the seat and the negative terminal on the right-side cylinder. Now, of course, the seat cannot just be opened, so it has to be removed. Luckily, you only have to remove 1 screw to remove both seats. Your bike should come with a key for this screw, but I got mine used so I use an actual socket. My replacement Is on the way.
  10. The last thing you may not have know is that you can removed the baffle in the exhaust known as the DB killer to improve the depth of the exhaust sound. It only takes 5 minutes and very easy to do. I have a video on how to do that exactly if you’d like to check it out. It’s also easily reversable if you don’t like it.

A few things you should know about the bike is how to check your fluids! I feel like it’s even more important on a motorcycle than it is on the car. As an example, to check your oil, you have to make sure the bike is warmed up and on leveled surface and hold the motorcycle vertical. Then you have to wait 5 minutes and check the little window. The oil should be between top and button. This and much, much more is in the manual for the bike. People complain that manuals now-a-days only have stuff like don’t drink battery contents, but this manual is actually very useful. You can even learn how to remove and reinstall front and rear wheel. Speaking of wheels and tires, this motorcycle has quick release front axle. Who knew such thing even existed!? I was also surprised that on a modern, although retro looking bike, you would still have tube tires, just like on my 1976 Honda CB360!

Well, that’s all I have or you guys today, I hope you learned something new or at least found it interesting. I’d love to hear your opinion or features I don’t know about in the comments down below, like the video and subscribe to the channel for more content and I’ll see you in the next one!

BMW X6 M50i – First Impressions, Overview, Features, Interior, Engine, Exhaust Note

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Introduction/Overview:

Welcome back to the SimpleCarGuy channel. Today, I have something special, A BMW X6 M50i! It’s not a secret that I like small funky cars, so what am I doing with this high fashion SUV? Well, this one is a little bit different from the rest. Not only is it an SUV, but it’s also a COUPE in a way and oh yeah, it’s definitely funky. In this video, we will take a look at the exterior and talk about its distinctive looks, check out the interior, including the tech and other fun features, go over the engine and listen to that sweet V8 under the hood and then take it on a short little drive.

If you’d like to see more videos about this car or even other BMWs, hit that like button to support the channel.

Exterior:

Let’s start with the exterior. Some people believe that every new car, especially from a luxury brand like a BMW is beautiful. That has proven to be controversial when you take a look at the new 4 series with its gigantic grills and the same can be said for the rear of this car.  The front of the X6 is unmistakably BMW with slightly oversized kidney grills and an evolution of the angel lights. It’s striking and aggressive and in this white color, it’s all on display. Car makers can get away with funky lines and some design choices by painting the car black or some other dark color, but here.. you can see it all. This brings us back to the rear of the car where there is a lot of this ‘design’. This X6 has quite a distinctive look that you really have to love. BMW clearly went for style over function with this design sacrificing the room and convenience of the X5 with the slopping rear hatch design. Even if you don’t love how it looks, which you should if you think of getting one, IT IS subjectively speaking quite interesting to look at.

Going around the car, there are a few things to pay attention to. At the front, we have these beautiful full LED or even optional laser headlights and of course full LED taillights in the back as well. I don’t even think there are any non-LED lights left on this car, but I could be wrong. Here at the back, we can also see the defuser that BMW puts on their M-Sport and M cars, it’s given the back a little more segmentation, which could be a good or bad thing. We can also see the quad exhaust pipes that fit into 2 pods. These sound fantastic, so stick around to hear it from the back as well as from inside the car. Another fake item on the exterior that I find kind of funny are the fake vents, not really sure why they would include these as BMW isn’t really know for these.

Thinking of other cars in this segment, what is the X6 really up against as far as looks? There isn’t anything very interesting other than the Lamborghini Urus, but that’s almost in a different category. I much better prefer this to the Mercedes GLE Coupe or the Audi Q8. I think we need to embrace cars and SUVs that look different. We can’t complain that all cars are boring and look the same but then also hate on the makers that try something different. Now, let’s go check out the interior and see what we can find.

Interior:

Alright, so what do we have here? From the start, it feels very rich and luxuries when you get inside and even though it’s very unique looking on the outside, it’s not nearly as unique on the inside. This X6 replaced the X5 I made a couple videos about a few months ago and you can clearly see the interior design has elevated in this generation car. It’s definitely not a complete overhaul, it’s more of an evolution, the screens got bigger, some buttons disappeared, but if you’ve been in a current gen BMW, you have experienced this interior as well. Of course, the fit and finish and the quality of the materials is on another level and it adds many extra features inside that separate it from the more basic BMWs, such as the heated door and middle armrests and it even has some unique features that are not found on the X5 like this door handle area. It feels big and spacious with these amazing 20-way adjustable seats that can adjust just about anything you’d ever want to adjust. (see if they have massage). Speaking of comfort, I think this M sport steering wheel is one of the best in industry, something you’d want to hold on to for hours at a time.

Now let’s take a quick look at the center console area. This interior feature 2 12-inch displays, one for instrument cluster and one for the iDrive or as BMW now calls BMW Live Cockpit Professional. You can control pretty much anything on this car from this screen, which BTW is a touchscreen, but luckily you can still use the physical controller to perform all functions, which I love. I’m also glad that the HVAC system hasn’t been completely moved to the iDrive and you still get physical buttons that you can hit while driving. They might be a little small, but thankfully the trend of removing physical buttons hasn’t hit BMW yet.

Being a new BMW, it has very impressive tech and one of my favorites is the backup and 360-degree camera system that overlays a 3D model making it kind of fun to use. Camera views can also be recorded and even viewed from the phone that has been paired to the car. The sounds system is just as impressive, it has nice deep bass and high-quality midrange and of course you can connect using Apple CarPlay or Android Auto to stream your favorite music.

Moving to the back, the seats here are actually fairly comfortable and have plenty of space for someone that’s 5’10 with a few inches to spare. No issues with leg room either even with the front seat generously moved back. The way they achieve this is by basically making bucket seats in the back, dropping you back and down a little so you actually do have plenty of space and don’t feel cramped at all.

Trunk space is of course not as big as the X5, but the owner of this vehicle was able to fit plenty of stuff while moving and remember, style over function.

Engine:

This new X6 comes with two different options for the engine, the B58 straight 6 turbocharged engine that’s in other M-Sport cars and also in the new Toyota Supra, but those are much smaller and lighter cars, so for this beast, you want the n63 TwinTurbo V8 engine.

It’s important to understand that this is the n63TU3 engine which is the updated version of the engine you got on the last gen 50i cars like my F10 550i. Of course, this one makes 80 more horsepower and 70 more pound feet of torque so it’s definitely been worked on since then. To be clear, it is not the S63 engine that comes on the X6 M, but I think that’s a good thing. Sure, you get less horse power, but these are much more reliable and cheaper to maintain and fix in the long run AND who can complain about 523 horses and 553 torques under the hood of a family car? That’s pretty insane if you ask me especially since you get M level performance with the room and comfort of an SUV.

This beast can get to 60 miles an hour in about 4 seconds if you use launch control, but sadly this isn’t my car, so I will not be showing you this as it is taxing on the transmission, BUT if we can get 1000 likes on this video, I will convince the owner to try it and we’ll make a video about it.

We don’t have any data yet, but with it being the 4th iteration of the N63 engine, it should be fairly reliable over the years and hopefully last a long time, but time will tell.

One thing I know this engine isn’t very good at is fuel economy. You won’t get what anyone would consider good fuel economy out of this, but honestly.. who cares. If you go for the m50i version, you clearly care more about the raw power aspect rather than saving dollars at the gas station. I think it’s finally time to start it up and see what it sounds like.

Exhaust Note:

Since this is an M-Sport car, the engine sound is very important to the overall experience. When you first start the car, you can hear the aggressive V8 rawr and come to live. It sounds great on the outside no matter where you are. On the inside, the engine sound is pumped in through the speakers, so it can sound very loud on the inside, but luckily it can be turned off and you get to hear real exhaust without any fakery. There are a few options to pick from, so you get to decided depending on who you have in the car and what kind of impression you’d like to leave on them. I’d probably turn it off completely and just enjoy the raw engine sounds.

Driving/Summary:

Woooohooo! Wow that is not something you expect from a 5200 pound SUV. The acceleration on this X6 feels very strong and it definitely pushes you into the seat even with half throttle. And the sound, it sounds like a hot rodded V8 when you punch it, yet it is refined to the highest German standards.

As most big BMW cars now-a-days, this SUV has xDrive and being in Chicago, this is a huge benefit and reassurance you won’t get stuck in the snowy winter. Luckily the xDrive here is rear biased, prioritizing the rear wheels and allowing for some fun and better driving characteristics balancing the car out by having the front wheels concentrate on the steering.

Being a big car, I was expecting it to drive.. well, like a big car. But honestly, it doesn’t, It feels like a very sturdy sedan. Somehow, BMW has managed to make this feel sporty. planted and handle well, especially in sport mode where the steering goes heavy. It reminds me of my e92 335 I had many years ago with it’s heavy hydraulic steering. Unlike the e92, you do sit very high up in the air and it almost feels like it wants to understeer, but all things considered, it’s really, really nice to drive, everything fits me perfectly and is very easy to reach from the driving position as well.

Other than the exhaust sound, it’s very quiet inside and some of these even come with the acoustic glass option, so you will definitely be very well insulated from the outside.

Well, that’s about all I have for now on the BMW X6 M50i, if you’d like to see more videos on this car, leave a comment down below and let me know what exactly you’d like to see. Don’t’ forget to subscribe for more car videos and I’ll see you in the next one.

Top 10 Useful Chevy Volt Hidden Features

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Just bought a Chevy Volt or renting out for a weekend? Find the top 10 useful hidden features on the Chevrolet Volt. Some of these are more useful than others, but all are interesting tips or tricks that you may not know about the Volt. I got over some hidden storage compartments, infotaiment features, hidden menus, accessory mode and so much more!