Just look at BMW’s ad for its Neue Klasse next-generation vehicle architecture and its vision for total digital control. This is the BMW i Vision Dee Concept, a mid-size sedan unveiled tonight at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. “Dee” is an acronym for Digital Emotional Experience—the subject of a social media takeover starring Arnold Schwarzenegger, David Hasselhoff, and KITT—but let’s start with the vehicle itself.
As for the design – and we don’t mean that to be mean – if you pop the BMW logo from the first Midnight Club game in 2000 into the car before it’s licensed, you’ve got a good basis for explaining it to someone What is i Vision Dee like. BMW actually had that to say about the sheet metal itself, calling it a “new streamlined design language.” Design chief Adrian van Hooydonk has reminded fans of the brand that the automaker will simplify the visual language of its current lineup — and so fast that BMW’s entire range will be overhauled over the next three years. It’s hard to tell if this is good news.
BMW, though, has been committed to the big numbers game. 22 years ago, iDrive started the mass digitization of BMW’s passenger experience. On i Vision Dee, the BMW logo is also digitized. It’s a low poly sedan. Twin circular headlights appear as twin diagonal stripes within the digital kidney grille. You may recognize the stretched grille profile shape of the 2023 BMW M Hybrid V8 LMDh race car competing in the IMSA WeatherTech SportsCar Championship. The grille here is dual screens instead of air intakes, and BMW says the concept can “generate different facial expressions.” [and] Visually convey emotions such as joy, surprise, or approval. “The taillights also serve the same purpose. There is a Hofmeister kink between them.
Now, Dee, the star of the show is “Neuromancer with”she. KITT is truly the best voice for the digital emotional experience, a concept that “demonstrates what is possible when hardware and software converge”. Vision di”[exploits] The full potential of digitization turns the car into a smart companion. “
The front and side windows are screens. The head-up display runs the length of the windshield. The amount of information displayed can be selected in five stages on the Mixed Reality Slider: simulation; driving-related information; content for communication systems; augmented reality projections; The press release didn’t explain that last point. But the PR did reveal that dimmable windows can create an immersive digital environment, a concept that projects the owner’s avatar onto the driver’s side window “to personalize the welcome scene.”
The interior is another helping of sleek, conceptual fare; a lot of which we still have questions about. The steering wheel “can be operated by moving the thumb” and “creates touchpoints that appear when approached or touched.” We’re also not sure how far Dee can go in “integrating the customer’s everyday digital world into every level of the vehicle.” , but, “Natural language is the simplest and most intuitive form of interaction, which can achieve perfect understanding between humans and vehicles”
We know more about the new E Ink technology. At last year’s CES, BMW brought the iX Flow concept car wrapped in an electronic paper film. Using the same technology as Amazon’s Kindle, the movie creates changing grayscale patterns all over the body — like the one from “warder” is a car.This year’s update is color Using the evolution of e-paper, e-ink is applied to i Vision Dee. Up to 32 colors can be displayed on 240 e-ink segments, each segment controlled individually. BMW’s in-house engineers created the animation so we can see the rainbow even if we don’t taste it, so look forward to the video.
From 2025, the Neue Klasse architecture will begin to “bring the distance between man and machine closer”. Dee and full-width HUD will follow, part of the BMW Group’s future is “electric, circular and digital”. It sounds like E Ink will play a role somewhere, but it wasn’t mentioned. We’ll be keeping an eye out every now and then to see what we’re in for when Dee and the new line of “lite” vehicles arrive.