Between my very sloped driveway, the terrible rear visibility of the X1 and the large number of careless kids in the neighborhood, I'm going to have to add some sort of PDC or camera to make sure I don't have problems in the future.
I don't have iDrive (didn't expect to need these features when I bought the car) so I'm now left with some less than ideal aftermarket options. At first I thought about doing an aftermarket PDC and adding sensors to the bumper as this would be easier since it doesn't require an lcd/tv monitor, but I'm not sure this will help for for all situations? Are stories of sensors failing to work in all situations and hitting things still a potential issue? Or are todays sensors perfectly reliable, quick to react to moving objects like kids and cars, and have good range and radius?
If not, I'm wondering if a camera is the better way to go, or maybe both?
I've found a couple of the rear hatch handle cameras that might work and don't look out of place like license plate frame cameras:
http://www.ebay.com/itm/BMW-Trunk-Ha...p2054897.l4275
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/271346265008?lpid=82
http://www.ebay.com/itm/like/251355641576?lpid=82
The problem though is getting the image to an LCD near the dash that doesn't look ugly or out of place. There are rearview mirrors with built in camerass but I haven't seen any good recommendations for BMW's yet (though my mirror doesn't have homelink, auto dimming, compass or other electronics so that might be a good option if I can find a good mirror). Or there is the option of one of those half baked iDrive like imports that would go where the cubby/iDrive normally goes which would be better than a small LCD attached somewhere on the dash. There are also visor mirrors but I use my visor a lot and worry that might be more trouble than is worth it.
If anyone knows of good resources, I'd be interested in looking at those but I couldn't find any details on which are better or worse solutions or what might work best for an X1.
Some things I did read and find interesting (but I can't find confirmation) is that the BMW Professional radio in non-iDrive X1's might have the beep/PDC sensor support but at minimum would require the OEM module and sensors which are quite highly priced and also likely to require coding, that may or may not exist for the X1.