BMW i Vision DEE Concept Debuts Massive AR Windshield, Dramatic Changing Paint

Speaker 1: Today we're taking a look at BMW's vision for the future of the way that you'll interact with your car. And I'd like to introduce you to my new friend Dee, say hello, Dee. Hello, Speaker 2: Angela. Speaker 1: Now Dee is more than just a concept car. She is the physical manifestation of BMW's vision for the digitalization of your relationship with your car. Speaker 1: The BMW I Vision D concept is a compact sedan with hints of BMW's classic design [00:00:30] hallmarks, things like the double kidney grill, the Hoffmeister kink, and it's very 2002 s three box design. It simplified aesthetic, leaves a lot of visual white space in its inert state, presenting a sort of blank slate for the digital elements of the design to stand out. So when the driver approaches the vehicle, for example, the concept springs to life, recognizing the owner with biometric authentication and presenting them with a 3D digital avatar of themselves. On the transparent side windows [00:01:00] up front the, the double kidney grill is revealed to be a pair of E ink displays animating to give D eyes that make it more approachable to the driver when they're talking to and interacting with the vehicle. And yeah, you're supposed to talk to D, it's got an AI assistant built into it that does things like learn your habits and predict things that you might want and basically sort of serve as a buddy on the road and from the curbside. Speaker 1: Now the double kidney grill and a bit of trim around the windows are monochromatic E ink, but [00:01:30] these entire skin is covered with full color E ink technology and that allows the driver to instantly shift between 32 colors divided into 240 individually controlled segments. So you can program in patterns and multicolored schemes on the fly. But what digital elements, there's no physical displays and there are very few buttons around the cabin anywhere. Well, the entire windscreen is the display. The iVision D concept uses a full width augmented reality windscreen that drivers have [00:02:00] a little bit of control over their level of immersion with, with a thing that BMW calls the mixed reality slider. This touch sensitive slider on the dashboard allows drivers to toggle between five levels of immersion with that head up display. Level one just displays basic information along the bottom edge of the screen. Speaker 1: Things like your speed or maybe your next turn, stuff that you normally see in an instrument cluster, which D doesn't have. Level two and level three, step up and bring the display higher up into your field of view, allowing [00:02:30] for more information to be displayed. Things like communication information or maybe even an augmented reality view of your next turn overlaid on the road ahead. The level four and level five bring more virtual elements into this augmented reality view, bringing in things like virtual environments that obscure your view of the road so that you don't have to just stare at the car ahead of you while you shuffle through traffic. Now of course, blocking the road with virtual elements is designed for a piloted driving experience, something that you might [00:03:00] not see until BMW gets self-driving cars or level three economy on the road years down the line. Speaker 1: However, levels one through three are still designed with a driver in mind. Vision D still has a steering wheel after all, and you are expected to drive it yourself most of the time. And so the design philosophy behind the way that those levels are designed adheres to BMW's, hands on the wheel, eyes on the road philosophy. Now, this technology could be hitting the road sooner than you think. BMW has stated that it is bringing an advanced head [00:03:30] up display technology to its next generation of vehicles, the so-called Noia Classic of electrified cars starting in around 2025. This technology will cover the entire width of the windscreen and be visible from every seat in the vehicle. Expect it to look like a slightly less conceptual version of what you see here. Digital dashboards, e inked, virtual reality. As you can see, there are a lot of moving parts in BMW's vision of the future of the automobile, and it's a very exciting [00:04:00] vision. Dee, can you tell 'em maybe where they can find more information? You Speaker 3: Can find more information@cars.cnet.com. Speaker 1: Perfect.