[gavinwong]

Netherlands based here. Noticed last week that the park mobile app in idrive stopped working as in it no longer gave you the nearest parking meter, and also wouldn’t let you start your on street parking in the app.
Did the usual stuff, log in and out, driver profile, I drive reboot, tried reconnecting the car in the iPhone app. All no joy. Contacted connected drive and they responded to say that they have disabled the app based on them launching their own parking app service in the next few months.
I Hope it’s good. As here in the Netherlands I found the integrated app the only useful app in idrive. Always worked, and being able to drive off knowing it stopped your parking session was great. Especially when others were using it, as they could start and stop the parking based on screen prompts.
Eager to see what bmw have in store, though not getting my hopes up

[Mjlbakker]

I don’t have more info but I really like the feature as well. Looks like BMW is going for their own parking business model obviously.

For me it’s not an issue to change to BMW if it works as smoothly in-car as it does now.

[gavinwong]

Agree, no issue as long as it works smoothly. Guessing they’ll integrate it into the my bmw app. Interested to see what their subscription / fee structure will be.

[gavinwong]

So I noticed today that bmw has added a parking app to their app section in idrive.

I used it today to park on the street, and when you click through the process, it actually shows it’s being done through easy park (formerly park mobile).

However, when you start a session, it doesn’t show in the easy park iOS app that there is a parking session active. And within the bmw app on your phone, it only appears once a parking session has finished. No current duration, expiry time etc.
It also charges your payment card straight away, vs easy park billing you monthly.
The transaction charge is the same too.

It also doesn’t prompt you when you park now either. You have to go into the app menu when your ignition is off and start it from there.

My guess is it now makes it easier to have a single parking app within the car when you have different parking providers in different countries, vs having to have multiple apps on your phone or multiple apps in idrive. For example I know mi permit runs in the uk, so this app technically means it uses whichever parking system is in effect vs having multiple accounts with parking providers.