Tantalizing details and spy photos are emerging on the next generation of BMW's iDrive. It will likely be shown to the press this summer and launched in the fall as a highlight of the next-generation BMW 7 Series, the car that launched iDrive seven years ago. Here's what I know (and what I'm guessing) about the next iDrive, followed by my checklist (wishlist) for an intelligent cockpit control system built around a smart controller.

iDrive will continue as a control wheel mounted on the console between driver and passenger that lets you oversee entertainment, navigation, climate control, and phone. After years of scoffing at the presets (buttons) that Audi (and now Mercedes-Benz) array around the controller as unnecessary in a well-designed system, BMW will have them, too. On BMW, they'll likely be mounted immediately in front of the control wheel and with distinctive shapes, which should make it easier to access them by location, without looking down from the road.

One spy photo shows buttons marked CD and Radio on the left in a fore-and-aft arrangement, a Menu button in the middle, and Telephone and Navigation buttons on the right, all immediately ahead of the control wheel, with Back and Option buttons behind the controller. That should reduce frustration experienced by new owners who figure out the turn-to-adjust and press-to-select functions of the control wheel but perhaps not the slide (actually, push in one of the four compass directions) motion to reach the menus initially.

According to one BMW fanatic, Jonathan Spira, technical editor of the BMW Car Club's BMWCCA.org, in addition to offering a newer and friendlier iDrive, BMW will join the parade of automakers using hard disk drives for storage of navigation data, MP3 files, and phonebooks. A 40GB drive may make into the new 7 Series this fall, as well much of the rest of the line (1 Series, 3 Series, 5 Series, 6 Series, X5, X6). And for those who fancy arcane terminology, he says the system will be called a Car Infotainment Computer (CIC) rather than the previous Car Communication Computer (CCC). The in-dash LCD display may have a resolution as high as 1280 by 480, which sounds impossibly wide (not 16:9 but 24:9 if the pixels are square). One possibility: It could be the first use of the Sharp dual-view display technology, which aligns alternating pixels at the driver and passenger and they see two completely different images. If so, driver and passenger each would see a VGA-resolution (640 by 480) resolution image.

My iDrive wishlist
That's what likely to happen to the car that ushered in the cockpit controller era, the BMW 7 Series. Here's what I believe should be in a contemporary cockpit to make the controller as useful as possible.

Button presets close to the controller. Purists (BMW executives) say once you get past the brief (their words) iDrive learning curve, the fastest system is one where your right hand never leaves the controller to press other buttons. Maybe so, but lots of real-world users have grown frustrated with the learning curve that seems to stretch on for months, in some cases. Or that the household's non-primary driver never masters.

Haptic feedback. The control wheel provides force feedback: increasing tension when you near the end of a selection list, little bumps/clicks when you pass over a radio station as you tune, a snap-to feature that pulls the controller/cursor to an intersection as you approach it when setting navigation destinations. BMW had it early on, then dropped it, reportedly because it sucked the life out of the cheap, slow microprocessors employed at the start of the decade. Moore's Law has solved that problem.

Redundant dashboard keys. Sure, somewhere in the recesses of iDrive and its kin, there's a control to turn down the volume or make the screen less dim. Those really should be buttons or knobs on the dash as well. For navigation volume, the right way is to make the radio volume control modulate the navigation volume when it's speaking (how iDrive handles it already). For the display, a small brightness adjustment knob is essential. And there should be a half-dozen programmable presets for navigation destinations, frequently used phone numbers, and entertainment favorites.

No gearshift lever, no ashtray. iDrive and similar is more important than the shifter. (Purists, post hate mail below.) On all but full-size cars, there's not enough room for all on the flat console surface between the seats. Gearshift buttons on the dash or a small, Prius-like lever work fine for getting into gear; for those who want to be sporting, the automaker can offer paddle shifters on the steering wheel. Many cars got rid of the ashtray in the U.S. but left a cutout for change that still takes up console space; I'm talking about engineering it out altogether. Sorry, smokers, you'll have to get one of those cupholder ashtray inserts.

Cupholders forward of iDrive. Some cars put the cupholders to the right of the controller, so passengers can't reach around to work it. Some (ahem, Audi) put them behind the controller, which makes the controller nearly impossible to use unless you opt for the wimpy 6-ounce water bottles. BMW on its 5 Series makes the cupholders into dashboard swing-outs that are rickety and will scrape the passenger's knee getting out of the car.

LCD display in every vehicle. Not just the navigation-equipped models. Then you can do away with the separate LED or vacuum fluorescent panels for HVAC and radio controls that add clutter (and are there because they're needed on the non-navi cars). If there's no navigation, a smaller, cheaper LCD display can be used. (As BMW does on some cars already.)

Dual-view displays. Five years from now we'll wonder what took so long to make it happen. The front seat passenger can watch a movie without the slightest chance of it being seen and distracting the driver. Or the passenger can fiddle with the audio while the driver stays focused on navigating. And the setup options that most automakers won't let you set unless the car is parked - those could be seen on the passenger side only.

Transflective display option. These are the displays that get brighter in sunlight rather than faded. They're on military laptops and on the BMW 3 Series convertible, where it's possible to read the navigation display with the top down while wearing your darkest sunglasses. If transflective can't be standard, then make it a $100 option - one you'd be crazy not to take.

Roller wheel steering wheel controls. Steering wheel controls are convenient. For adjusting volume, sliding among radio stations, or scrolling phone lists, the roller wheel is the best way to go. More cars should have them, even if it looks like they're imitating Audi (they are). Cost-conscious Ford liked the roller-wheel concept so much it glued a faux roller wheel over a standard up-down push button for the look, but not the efficiency, on its steering wheels.

Hard drive today, flash drive tomorrow. When you add a hard drive, it costs more, but you do save the cost of the second optical drive used only for the navigation system. The prices of flash memory hard drives are coming down, and capacity is not an issue with the announcement that Samsung has a 256GB solid state drive. When the car is parked, say overnight, it could get updated points of interest, gas prices, and other things that may come too slowly over today's (but no tomorrow's) cellular networks.

VGA HUD. Today's head up displays are typically 128-unit elements (pixels) across which is enough for only text and simple graphics. Imagine a VGA-resolution HUD (640-by-480) that could provide even more information, such as moving maps or a night vision display. If it turns out that putting more information at the base of the driver's line of sight is an improvement, not a distraction.

Glass cockpit. The instrument panel on the Mercedes S-Class is a single 10-inch LCD display, which means the instruments could be reconfigured to any size or shape you want, and could drop in the navigation map or, as Mercedes has done, its night vision system.

What would you like to see in the next iDrive? Post your comments below.