BMW revealed a prototype for the i Imaginative and prescient Dee idea automobile through the automaker’s keynote at CES on Wednesday night. The four-door sedan got here out on stage in a crisp white, however later morphed into quite a lot of colours and patterns to point out off Dee’s E-Ink expertise, which can enable automobile homeowners to configure the automobile’s exterior with 32 completely different colours.
Dee, whereas an idea automobile, is emblematic of BMW’s subsequent era platform, Neue Klasse, which the corporate stated will launch in 2025 beginning with a dynamic sedan and a sporty exercise car.
The reveal featured a cutesy video involving Arnold Schwarzenegger reminiscing concerning the relationship individuals had with their vehicles within the Nineteen Eighties whereas the voice of Dee (which by the best way stands for Digital Emotional Expertise) tried to persuade the actor/politician that the vehicles of the long run are actually the final word companions.
All through the keynote, Dee’s voice served to personalize and humanize the automobile. At one level, BMW stated that Dee has a “digital soul, a character not solely with a voice however with facial expressions, too.” This level was actually pushed residence by the next quote from the movie “The Terminator”: “The unknown future rolls towards us. I face it for the primary time with a way of hope, as a result of if a machine, a Terminator, can study the worth of human life, perhaps we will too.”
So what’s BMW making an attempt to inform us right here? Effectively, Oliver Zipse, BMW’s CEO, went as far as to name Dee “the following degree of human-machine interplay, an idea that can’t be merely dismissed as science fiction as a result of it should encourage our Neue Klasse.”
Ever for the reason that “software-defined car” started to take maintain, automakers have been angling for brand new methods to make use of that software program to create a extra customized expertise for drivers and passengers. CES all the time supplies a smorgasbord of examples. Final yr it was all about Amazon Fire streaming coming to autos and Google Home integrations, this yr it appears to be about in-car gaming. However BMW is taking it up a notch by positing not simply an emotional connection between human and automobile, but in addition a automobile that has feelings of its personal.
Dee’s E-Ink exterior means the automobile can grow to be 32 completely different colours and quite a lot of patterns. Picture Credit: BMW
A method BMW hopes to show that imaginative and prescient into actuality is by combining software program and {hardware} improvement for a seamless digital expertise, in response to Zipse. This concept manifests in Dee’s head-up display, that includes 4 ranges of interplay, which BMW calls its “blended actuality slider.”
Degree one brings all of the drive and navigation information a driver would wish. Degree two helps with communication by exhibiting textual content messages and calls. Degree three brings the options of Ranges one and two and augments the navigation information to your windshield, together with collision warnings and attainable obstacles highlighted. It additionally visualizes social media.
Degree 4 goes “means past actuality.” What does that truly imply? We’re not absolutely positive, however the speaking Dee stated that you would carry all your pals into your automobile just about.
“Your pals, your loved ones, even your pets with out one single animal hair on the seat, which I completely love, in an limitless digital world,” she (?) stated. “You may meet play, speak, love, hate. You may even go sightseeing collectively, proper inside your automobile. You wouldn’t consider what matches in your automobile sooner or later. It’s like being in your personal private drive in cinema. However the film is your life.”
After all, this is able to seemingly be in a world the place the home windows could possibly be blacked-out and the automobile drives autonomously.
The purpose, although, is that BMW, like different automakers, is making an attempt so as to add a lot spectacular, seamless tech to its autos that individuals actually do begin seeing their vehicles as their final companions — buddy, lounge, private assistant and trend assist multi functional. Freaky, isn’t it?
