2018 BMW Active Tourer Driving Autonomy

7 min readOct 28, 2022

2018 BMW Active Tourer 225xe (PHEV) driving autonomy features: a lot to be desired in future BMW models.

Driver Assistance Package

When upgrading the car four years ago, I aimed at improving driving safety and comfort. In the past, I suffered episodes of microsleep on longer journeys a few times, so I was aiming to minimize the risk of an accident in cases of fatigue or reduced concentration. Therefore, adaptive cruise control and line guidance assistant were mandatory features in my next car.

While combining various add-on packages I ended up purchasing also automated parking assistant and high beam assistant, besides other extras which are common on modern cars these days. So, let’s elaborate a bit on how the driver assistance package I bought worked out for me in real life usage over the past four years.

Overview of the main driver assistance systems | BMW.com — www.bmw.com
Driver assistance systems can play a supporting role and increase your driving comfort. We present you with the most well-known systems.

(If you want to learn more about all the different BMW’s driver assistance features, please check the article linked above.)

Adaptive Cruise Control

Let’s start with the most advanced feature: the adaptive cruise control with stop & go feature and steering assistant capability. My take on it? It’s great when it works, and I would not want to go back to standard cruise control ever. It is so much safer and convenient both on motorways and regular highways. Especially driving longer distances on single line highways in heavy traffic becomes much easier, because the car takes care of constant changes in pace, slowing down and accelerating according to other cars without the need for my intervention.

However, the implementation in my 2018 2 series Active Tourer suffers from several limitations, which limit the utility of the adaptive cruise control feature. First, something BMW did not mention in its feature catalog, it is limited to 140 km/h (87 MPH) only. Regardless of legal limit in my country, which is 130 km/h (80 MPH), everybody knows that if you want to go with the flow 140 km/h is too fast for the slow line and too slow for the fast line. I don’t even mention that the 140 km/h limit applies on German autobahn as well. If I want to go faster, I need to take over and drive myself or switch to manual cruise control, which is dangerous, when you as a driver get used to driving with adaptive cruise control most of the time.

However, an even bigger inconvenience than the speed limit is the fact that the adaptive cruise control often gets blind and disengages asking the driver to take over control of the car. I completely understand that handover happening during a snowstorm, heavy rain, or foggy weather. The problem is that it also happens when driving towards a setting sun. Guess what: having relatives in northeast of the country, I usually take D11 motorway back to Prague on Sunday evening and thus the adaptive cruise control shuts off on almost each and every trip at least once.

Adaptive Cruise Control with Steering Assist engaged (note the wheel icon in the center)

The third limitation is that the steering assistance feature is intended to help in traffic jams only, so it only works up to 60 km/h and only on autobahn and motorways. Once again, I could live with 60 km/h limitation, understanding the state of technology five years ago and safety concerns. The bigger part of the problem is geofencing of the steering assist functionality combined with inaccuracy of maps used for geofencing. When I bought the car, I could not use the steering assist on Prague’s main artery when stuck in a traffic jam, because the car claimed it is not a supported type of road. As the BMW maps and navigation improved over the years, it is letting me use this feature in more places but still, the utility is quite limited.

My last remark on the adaptive cruise control functionality is that BMW tends to simulate quite an aggressive driving style. For example, when approaching a slower car ahead it keeps the preset speed as long as possible followed by sudden breaking and rapid acceleration pattern. I did a test drive of 2021 Subaru Forester with EyeSight adaptive cruise control last year and its behavior was much more refined and seemed more natural to me.

On the other hand, I like that when overtaking a car in front of me, the adaptive cruise control starts accelerating as soon as I hit the turn signal lever, so there is no delay the overtaking maneuver is very natural and there is no need to hit the accelerator most of the time.

Other Perks

Automated Parking Assistant

We were initially amazed by the automated parking assist feature. It felt like a sci-fi was becoming a reality. The car executed the parallel parking maneuver autonomously while steering and indicating when to go forward and when to back up. It was a neat trick to showcase to relatives. However, in real life we realized that we can’t take advantage of this feature as often as we would like.

The main issue is that you need to really slow down to let the car accurately measure available parking spots, and the car needs to pass by a suitable spot by couple of meters and then back-up to the slot. It takes the parking assist more time and space than it takes for a human driver. On busy streets, we would find ourselves with a queue of other vehicles behind us at the moment when the parking assist beeped and indicated it had just found a suitable parking spot. Many times, we just had to abandon the automated parking maneuver, because of the cars stacked behind our back.

Line Guidance Assistant

Line guidance assistant in BMW Active Tourer vibrates the steering wheel when a line is being crossed without engaging the turn signal prior to the maneuver. Initially, I really liked this solution because it is much less intrusive than warning beeps some other automakers use. When we drove my father’s Mazda CX-3 on our journey to Slovakia, I turned off its line assist after less than an hour of driving, because the constant beeps on twisty country roads became really annoying.

The problem with BMW’s line assist is that the steering wheel vibrations are too gentle, and I got used to it. Back in 2018, during the first year of car ownership, we were about to drive back home from Croatia. We wanted to avoid the queue at the border, so we got up early and by 5:30 am we had already hit the road. A few minutes after getting on the motorway, shortly after 6:00 am I suffered a microsleep and when I woke up, I was already halfway in the fast lane and there was another car right next to me in that lane. Luckily, no accident happened. We immediately took a break and got more coffee. However, since that time, I turn off the line assist most of the time and explicitly turn it on only on motorways. The aim is to prevent my haptic senses getting used to the steering wheel vibrations, so that when they occur, I really register them. Luckily turning the lane assist on and off is just one press of a button on the center console.

High Beam Assistant

The last item to mention is the high beam assistant feature. Again, a perk I did not have in my previous car, but one that I quickly got used to and would not want to be in the business of switching the high beam lights on and off manually again. The implementation in 2018 Active Tourer works fine most of the time.

Conclusions

Cumulatively, the driver assistant package I got in our 2018 Active Tourer increased driving comfort and safety, and I do not regret paying for any of the extra features. At the same time, the 2018 implementation of those features clearly has limitations which might not be immediately obvious. Using them safely and effectively means understanding those limitations and taking them into account. Even today, when buying a new car, make sure you test those driver assistant features thoroughly. Even if the spec of your new car ticks all the boxes, your mileage may vary as not all driver assistant features across different car manufacturers are equally mature and reliable.