The future of digitalized customization of Cars is here with this BMW’s new glamourous color-changing car that can change its color wholly in seconds and possess few other impressive modern stuffs too like voice-assistants and more.
Cars are always a crazy lovable being for humans, especially men. In this 21st century, after the advent of Tesla wherein you can play video games with the car, sleep in the driver-seat while driving – showing the point of merge of hardware with software, here comes the next version of it. Customization of car’s outer-color, a huge digitalized HUD windshield and a built-in voice-assistant – this is how future of Cars is gonna be and believe me, driving will be more convenient and delightful for those who don’t even like commuting.
First revealed at the CES technology show in Las Vegas, which is the most influential tech event in the world for more than 50 years, BMW i Vision Dee elevates existing driving experience with augmented technology and virtual assistant inside the car and with E-ink tech outside the car.
Get to know all the stunning technology incorporated in the car…
Color-Changing Technology
BMW i Vision Dee has pulled off eye-catching looks with its color-changing capability. The car equips E-ink on its skin, a type of display tech that’s also used in Amazon Kindle. This display-tech is peculiar in its power consumability where it needs power only for changing its state, or color in this case. Entire outer-surface of the car uses 240 color e-ink panels, each with 32 color options. Yes, a Car with 32 Color options – even one color per day will leave you out with an or two extra color(s) in a month.
The e-ink panels are laser-cut and applied to the bodywork and even wheels with ePaper film made by US firm E Ink. Color options can either be a solid car all over the car or artistic patterns of colors at different areas of the car’s surface – it’s left with the user.
Actually, this is not the first time BMW has teased a color-changing car as this BMW i7 Flow car had already been able to change its color, however, only to shades of black and white. Have a look at the car here!
Mixed Reality Windshield with HUD
Heads up Display (HUD) is the new age car’s feature that deploys AR tech onto the windshield of a car. It shows the details needed while driving like speed, warning signals and vitally navigation for your travel on the windshield transparently so you don’t have to look aside from the roads. Every data is projected on the front-glass.
BMW’s HUD digs deeper into the prospects of the tech, announcing five stages of HUDs, all being admirable. The first stage has the bottom of the windscreen fully occupied with shallow projection like the taskbar lying at the foot of Windows computer. The extreme fifth stage has the fullest of the augmented-reality engaging not just a portion, but the entire windshield. Your car’s front glass turns fully into a virtual-kind of world obscuring the real-exterior yet with tech’s influence. How crazy it is!
The in-between stages have modes for displaying driving-related information, contents of the communication systems and AR projections (like navigation, location, or showing the predicted path of a cyclist in driver’s blind spot).
Drivers could choose the mode of HUD similar to picking the layouts or home or lock screen designs in smartphones. Cars gonna have screen designs too!
BMW thinks there is “huge potential” for such screen projection technology in the cars, as the cars hadn’t upgraded enough for over past two decades. The firm is seriously looking up to build this in cars and the new HUD technology will be used in cars due from 2025 onwards.
While, other auto makers like Mercedes, Rolls Royce, Audi and Ford and more have done the HUD tech already in their vehicles by adding navigation prompts to a live videofeed from a forward-facing camera in Mercedes, speed limit warnings, upcoming junction alerts and icy weather notification in Ford and so on, this is the first time BMW has leaped steps forward with this five-mode HUDs.
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Virtual Voice Assistant by BMW
Having a companion inside the car – a virtual assistant gets booming in automobile market, as companies wanted to infuse one in their cars. Manufacturers have made compatible Siri or Google via a smartphone and very few have built their own voice assistant – Tesla, Mercedes and BMW. And there’s also a Chinese electric car company called Nio that has ‘Nomi’, a virtual assistant whose digital face is shown on a dedicated dashboard display that turns to the driver when spoken to.
“With the BMW i Vision Dee, we are showcasing what is possible when hardware and software merge. In this way, we are able to exploit the full potential of digitalization to transform the car into an intelligent companion,” says BMW Group Chairman Oliver Zipse.
Now, BMW has voiced out ‘Dee’, its own virtual assistant and this is the reason behind of the car name’s “i Vision Dee”. Dee stands for Digital Emotional Experience, says BMW adding “We want to say that your entire vehicle will become a companion.” BMW could give a face to Dee in the Chinese market, where demand for such technology is huge.
The Car can convey Emotions
A further update on the car shows that BMW i Vision Dee uses e-ink displays in its headlamps too to convey emotions, to other roadsters and pedestrians and when the owner or driver approaches the car. Dee reacts out joy, astonishment moods, claims BMW.
This so-called welcome scenario can also include the car projecting an avatar of the driver onto the side window when it detects their presence, BMW says. It’s certainly a novel way of spotting your car among others in a busy parking lot, and together with the headlamp facial expressions, you’ll of course be reminded of Lightning McQueen from Cars.
BMW i Vision Dee has a minimalist interior where it has no physical controls except on its steering wheels, as the car is aimed to be controlled over voices to its virtual assistant Dee. BMW foresees “hands on the wheel, eyes on the road” kind of cars, and by that, the car is not autonomous in driving. You ‘drive’ drive the car!
Except the potentialities of the car and that it’s not going to run on roads before 2025, BMW has no other intrinsic details regarding the car, as of 2023’s January. Anyways, the car may create a pool of audiences for its features.
Watch the BMW i Vision Dee:
Tell your awe-striking element in the car in the comments!
(For more such interesting technology and innovative detailing, keep reading The Inner Detail).