BMW to send its drivers in-car animated holiday messages

The proliferation of in-car screens and over-the-air updates provides an as-yet mostly untapped potential for automakers to communicate with drivers. As an example, here\'s BMW, beaming holiday greetings animations out to its owners.

The New Year\'s greeting is shown above. It will be sent to cars between January 1 and January 7. In some markets, there\'s also a Christmas version that goes out on December 24. The U.S., however, is not one of the included markets.

The feature plays when the driver clicks on a banner that appears at startup. The animation also saves to BMW apps and can be called up at any time via the AI personal assistant by saying, \"Hey BMW, Happy New Year\" or \"Hey BMW, Merry Christmas.\"

The feature will be available in vehicles running BMW\'s Operating System 7.0. (An aside: When will carmakers switch to naming their vehicle\'s operating systems after animals or candy?)

As to the greeting itself, we\'re partial instead to the holiday video sent out by BMW\'s M division: