BMW thinks there may be “huge potential” for such display projection know-how, far past the compact head-up shows drivers have grow to be used to over the previous 20 years.

It can be straightforward to imagine stage 5 of the Dee system is meant for a completely autonomous automobile, the place passengers can change off from the surface world and watch a film or different streamed content material. However, as a sign of the restraint of BMW’s strategy with this idea, the i Vision Dee options no autonomous driving know-how in any respect.

Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW Group design director, says: “Augmented reality is something that’s not just interesting, but actually helpful for driver orientation. You can focus on the road ahead of you, and the information you need will be seemingly projected onto the road. What we’re showing in this Vision car is a new technology that allows you to use the entire width of the windscreen.”

Shared Vision

Keen to determine that this isn’t vaporware, Van Hooydonk says BMW is critically trying into constructing the kind of HUD show proven within the i Vision Dee idea. “We see a lot of benefits because, again, your eyes are focusing on the road,” he says, including how the know-how might exchange typical dashboard shows and see instrument clusters utterly faraway from behind the steering wheel.

BMW says a manufacturing model of its new HUD know-how will probably be utilized in automobiles due from 2025 onward. It refers to those as-yet unannounced electrical autos as its Neue Klasse.

Although spectacular in its idea kind, BMW’s tackle the way forward for automobile HUDs isn’t distinctive. Swiss know-how agency WayRay can be engaged on a complicated augmented-reality interface for windshields. The firm claims no different current HUD can match its 3D imagery, which exhibits automobile velocity and vary, mapping, and trajectory alongside the highway forward. 

Other auto OEMs are additionally working on this area, with Mercedes including navigation prompts to a stay videofeed from a forward-facing digital camera, whereas each Audi and Ford are investigating methods to undertaking driver data onto the highway utilizing LED headlamps. Revealed in August 2022, Ford’s system is geared towards nighttime driving, the place prompts warning of velocity limits, upcoming junctions, and icy climate are beamed onto the highway.

A “Friendly” Digital Companion

Advanced in-car assistants are additionally a sizzling subject. While some producers would somewhat drivers use Siri or Google Assistant through a linked smartphone, others are additionally going their very own manner. Nio, a Chinese electrical automobile firm with plans for US and European enlargement, has Nomi, a digital assistant whose digital face is housed inside a devoted dashboard show that turns to the motive force when spoken to.

BMW’s Dee assistant doesn’t have a face, at the least not within the US and Europe, however BMW says facial expressions might seem within the Chinese market, the place demand for such know-how is bigger.

“We want to make a bigger statement that is beyond speech recognition,” van Hooydonk says. “We want to say that your entire vehicle will become a companion.” To that finish, the idea proven off in Las Vegas this week additionally makes use of e-ink shows in its headlamps to convey feelings, doubtlessly to pedestrians and different motorists, or when approached by its proprietor. BMW claims sure moods like pleasure, astonishment, and approval will be expressed visually.

This so-called welcome state of affairs can even embrace the automobile projecting an avatar of the motive force onto the facet window when it detects their presence, BMW says. It’s definitely a novel manner of recognizing your automobile amongst others in a busy parking zone, and along with the headlamp facial expressions, you’ll after all be reminded of Lightning McQueen from Cars.

Reductive Design

The Dee idea itself is, to our eyes at the least, splendidly retro. It’s a three-box design that would have sat awkwardly up in opposition to the supposedly bleeding-edge know-how showcased out and in, but it really works, and is a design we hope BMW can flip into actuality as a part of its Neue Klasse automobiles. From an organization criticized for its ungainly iX and difficult i7, the compact idea is a breath of recent air.

Van Hooydonk says it’s a form that got here from boiling down years of BMW design language into “the quintessential BMW elements.” “For this car we took it to another level and reduced the amount of elements drastically, because we wanted the digital aspects to take center stage,” van Hooydonk says.