Everyone always has something to say about BMW.
The Bavarian automaker has long had a knack for setting standards with cars like the 3 Series and X5, but when the vehicles move with the times, BMW’s superfans don’t shut up.
“The old cars were better.”
“This new grille is just too much.”
“I will never pay for subscription features in a car.”
Now, at CES 2023, a new BMW concept is asking: what if the car had something to say too? And if a car could talk, how would it interact with its user?
This is the BMW i Vision Dee, which stands for “Digital Emotional Experience”. It’s one of the most radical – yet in some ways plausible – concept cars from BMW in years. It’s a minimalist electric performance sedan that relies heavily on digital features like augmented reality and voice-controlled virtual assistants. Think the Metaverse or Amazon Alexa, but in sports sedan form. The concept also offers the possibility to create a driver avatar profile that can even be projected onto the side window.
If a car could talk, how would it interact with its user?
In addition, the i Vision Dee’s color-changing grille is like a “face” with its own expression over the virtual voice. This is a BMW that speaks back and might even have hot takes of its own. “My dad was an E30,” the car told me at a recent tech show, and early social media promos for the concept were reminiscent of the ’80s talking car action show Knight Rider.
“The headlights and the closed BMW kidney also form a common phygital (merging of physical and digital) symbol on a unified surface, which allows the vehicle to produce different facial expressions,” the automaker said in a press release. “As a result, the BMW i Vision Dee can appeal to people and at the same time visually express moods such as joy, astonishment or approval.”
Like the 2021 i Vision Circular, the i Vision Dee is just a concept car meant to preview potentially forthcoming designs and technologies that could eventually make their way onto dealer lots. At the same time, the design itself feels like something that could portend a future electric 3 Series or some sort of i4.
Visually, the i Vision Dee looks almost like a cross between a Tesla Model 3 and one of BMW’s classic sports sedans, like a 2002 or an E30. The kidney covers almost the entire front of the concept vehicle and a light bar at the rear does the same across the trunk. The white, almost contourless body is in stark contrast to the fussy design of many current BMWs, but still retains characteristic features such as the “Hofmeister kink” of the rear windows.
While BMW won’t directly confirm that this design is for production, it’s pretty safe to assume it will influence future cars. BMW’s concepts can become reality – see the i8 supercar and i3 city car from the last decade. BMW even calls this “another milestone on the way” to the Neue Klasse, BMW’s upcoming EV-specific vehicle platform. This setup is named after the “New Class” of sports sedans and coupés that shaped BMW’s image in the 1960s and 1970s.
While current BMWs are typically built to offer a mix of internal combustion engine, hybrid or EV powertrains – the electric i4 and the internal combustion engine 4 Series Gran Coupe, for example, are essentially the same vehicle – the next round of models will be designed by the designed for electric propulsion for better range and better battery packaging.
According to BMW, the i Vision Dee also represents a major advancement in E Ink color shifting technology that debuted at last year’s CES and as a result can transform its exterior into 32 different colors – rather than just one color. The body of the concept vehicle is divided into 240 e-ink segments, each of which can be controlled individually, according to BMW. It’s the first time e-ink has been used on the entire exterior of a car, and BMW has said the technology could be close to commercialization at a consumer level.
Refreshingly, the i Vision Dee is a three-box sedan, not another blob-like crossover SUV concept. That in and of itself is a bold move by BMW and one that is at odds with current trends; Sedan sales have been declining for years as the global market has shifted towards crossovers and trucks.
For BMW, it’s proof that the sports sedan is still important to the company’s image and bottom line, BMW design chief Domagoj Dukec said at a press preview in Germany last year.
“We want to show our customers that we adapt as the world changes, but we will certainly always feel familiar,” said Dukec. “Everyone who works in my team, from different cultures and generations, loves the brand and knows its history. They don’t want that to go away.”
Dukec added: “It’s also BMW. If you talk about the core product… it’s the 3 and 5 series.”
The i Vision Dee brings good news for drivers who hate the explosion of touchscreens in cars lately: there are no screens here.
The concept car’s sleek, grey-grey interior is even more minimalistic than the exterior, with a reduced steering wheel, seats and what BMW calls the “Mixed Reality Slider”: a touch panel that controls how much information the driver sees on the advanced heads -Up display.
The i Vision Dee almost looks like a cross between a Tesla Model 3 and one of BMW’s classic sports sedans
There’s also bad news for drivers who hate screens: the entire windshield is now essentially a display, mixing the functions of a dashboard with an infotainment system and adding augmented reality capabilities.
Using the windshield to host displays is nothing new; Many modern cars project vehicle speeds, navigation, and other data there (and have done so in various forms since the 1980s). But this concept takes that idea to a whole new level.
Images projected onto the screen include vehicle diagnoses, social media posts and AR displays. The other windows are also dimmable if the driver and passenger want to switch to full VR mode. Would this create a huge distraction? Maybe, but BMW says it’s safer than taking your eyes off the road entirely to look at a dash-mounted screen.
“The projection over the entire width of the windshield enables information to be displayed on the largest possible area – which only becomes visible as a display when activated,” says a statement from BMW. “[The car] visualizes how an advanced head-up display could also be used for the display and operating concept in the future.”
A version of this system, presumably in a slimmed down form, will be introduced in the New Class vehicles from 2025.
“An intelligent companion”, not just a car
But while many of the features being previewed on the i Vision Dee certainly won’t be ready for primetime in 2023, they feel like a credible approach to the direction of the increasingly digitally-centric automotive industry.
The entire windshield is now essentially a display
“With the BMW i Vision Dee, we are showing what is possible when hardware and software merge. In this way, we can exploit the full potential of digitization to turn the car into an intelligent companion,” said BMW CEO Oliver Zipse in a statement.
That’s cold consolation for the diehards who want BMW to go back to how it used to be – however they perceive it. It won’t be enough for critics of the i Vision Dee’s technologies either. After all, Amazon Alexa didn’t do much more than burn billions of dollars in 2022, and Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s decision to move to the Metaverse was met with outright disdain. The question remains whether drivers want some of the i Vision Dee’s features at all, particularly the sweeping displays across the windscreen or the talking virtual assistant.
Also, when it comes to getting drivers to accept subscription features in cars, BMW says yes. The future won’t consist of high-revving straight-six engines and manual transmissions, so BMW needs to find a way to convince die-hard believers that “performance” can be defined by things like software speed, load time and electric range. The cars it produces over the next few years probably won’t be as wildly ambitious as the i Vision Dee, but it shows that BMW is already thinking in this direction.
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