I have searched, but . . .

Is there a way for me to tell my car's speed using the MINI Nav system's GPS?

I know that many (most, all?) portable GPS's tell you your speed, but I can't seem to find this feature in my onboard system. Am I missing it? Does the system get its velocity info from my speedometer?

Thanks for your help.

 

I don't think BMW wants you to know just how far off your speedo is from reality. You are right, it would be a nice to have feature.

 

Yeah . . . Last night, I had a friend drive 50mph while I followed behind. In order to keep pace with him, my speedo needed to read 55 or 56. Then this morning, I borrowed his portable Garmin. According to that, too, my speedo is reading about 10% fast.

This is with the stock 175\65\15s. Now tomorrow, I'm having my new Rotas and 205/55/16s put on. That should slow down the speedometer some. BUT the 10% error with stock tires seems a little outrageous.

 

I have the same question. I bought my 06 MCS in Sept of this year and had no idea that the speedometer was "optimistic". But my Mini has a factory NAV in it and a setting for alerting you when you're above a specified speed limit. The speedometer display is analog when you have the Nav system and I wondered why it seemed that an alert would go off 5mph or so above what I set the governed speed to be. I thought that it was just a delay between the speed and the alert from the Nav. I found this feature to be annoying because I was always setting off the alert and had only set it up because I wanted to play with EVERY SINGLE OPTION of my new mini. But there is an awkward button when you're programming in the speed that you don't want to exceed where you can have it read the speed that you're at now and use that speed for an alert. That is when I noticed that there was actually a variance between the nav system and speedometer.

My question is, and I'm pretty sure that I already know the answer to this, is there a way to get that speed reading to always display on the Nav system? I know that the temp is always displayed. It would be nice if there were some way to choose the information on the nav.

 

I have a 06 JustACooper with the factory NAV also. I too have the same question. It would be great to be able to display the actual speed through the NAV or in the digital readout screen where the temp is displayed. I have only had my mini since Jan 09, and to this point, I am clueless. A strategy to display speed digitally would be much appreciated.

 

I have found that the digital display on the tach matches the analog display of the center pie pan. What is strange is I have the Scangage II hooked up and I chose to display the mph. It is correct and always lower than the MINI displays. I have verified the Scangage with my garmin GPS, they are within 1 mph of each other. Seems strange that the on board computer knows the real speed but MINI chooses to display something that is faster than actual. If the correct speed is already there why can't they just display that? I do not have NAV built in, just me Garmin.

 

pollygirl and bigsoup52: In an '06, digital speed display isn't possible if you have factory Nav. People have looked for ways to get around it, but it seems hacking the computer firmware would be required. This may not be helpful but I think there is a speed display in the Nav diagnostic screen. Go into the settings screen, then press and hold the Menu button for 10 seconds. You should be able to navigate around several diagnostic screens and I think speed is one of the values displayed.

 

Thanks rkw...Now I can't wait until the end of the work day so I can try your suggestion...aargh!

 

I trolled around in the settings a little bit for the Nav system (a few weeks ago for something else unrelated to speed)... but I admit that I was too afraid to mess with too much without knowing much about it. The thing that made me wonder about if the speed could be displayed digitally on the speedometer is that when the governor/alert goes off on the Nav system, the speedometer switches to a digital read out for speed. Granted, it's the same speed as what is programmed in the Nav system for the speed alert, but that tells me that there is a placeholder for digital speed on the regular speedometer somewhere. Too bad that it has to be a firmware update.

 

The speed on the speedometer has always been a little off and always to the high side.

The reason for this is that all countries have a law regarding the accuracy of the speedometer. In this country the speedometer can read by law as much as 10% to high but CAN NOT Read low.

So if you are truly doing 55 MPH your speedometer can read as much as 10% high or up to 5.5 miles per hour faster. But it can not read anything less than 55 MPH. Other countries like Germany have a looser specs at 7.5 KPH at any speed or 10% which ever is more.

Another thing with this is that on a set of 17" Dunlop SP-Sport 01 tires from brand new to fully used will cause a difference of 1.73% difference in the reading of the speedometer.

So by using this we can figure that when the tires are new and the Speedometer is 10% off, if the car is doing 55 miles per hour by the speedometer the real speed is 49.5 MPH then when the tires are fully worn to the wear marks the real speed is 50.446 MPH.

So to counteract the wear and not being able to have the speedometer read low, all manufactures build in a slightly high reading to the speedometer. This is why on a scan gauge you can actually read the correct speed, you are reading it before the correction is made.

Now most foreign car manufactures run a higher difference than the big three hear in the US. Most US made cars run about 4-5% high with Japanese cars running in the 5% range and European cars running in the 8-10% range.

NOw in Germany, al least while i was there the accuracy of the speedometer was checked in during the yealry inspcetion. Not sure if they still do that. Here in the US I do not know of any state that checks the accuracy. But if they wanted to they would have to check it by the Federal Law.