BMW's most recent iteration of its in-car operating system may be called iDrive 9, but it’s not just an evolution of iDrive 8.5. The two systems will coexist in parallel in different models, and the code that underpins them is actually completely different.
Both versions of iDrive look remarkably similar, but version 8.5 is developed by BMW based on the Linux operating system, while version 9 is based on Android Open Source Project (AOSP) software (which is also Linux-based but quite different).
