CES 2023: BMW iVision Dee concept revealed

After years of crimping and creasing cars to increasing criticism, BMW has blown the cobwebs off its design pens and delivered the beautifully simple BMW iVision Dee concept car for the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show.

Designed as a delivery system for the consumer and connected digitised worlds of the upcoming Neue Klasse BMW EVs, the BMW iVision Dee is a beautifully clean, simplified and very small four-door sedan.

It comes complete with the latest versions of BMW’s colour-changing e-Ink system, along with a raft of newer technologies BMW has promised to show shortly.

The ‘Dee’ in the BMW iVision Dee stands for ‘Digital Emotional Experience’, and it’s short, punchy and instantly recognisable as a BMW, despite not sharing anything obvious with the current line-up.

It also debuts the first full-colour version of E-ink, the colour-changing panels that debuted on the BMW iX Flow last year, and was developed by Australian engineer Stella Clark.

The iVision Dee has 240 E-ink panels which can change across 32 different colours, allowing for patterns and multi-coloured cars at the push of a button.

While the iX Flow was developed with laser-cut pieces tailored to deliver flat pieces only, the iVision Dee’s surface has been covered in curved pieces of E-ink, developed by BMW’s engineers.

The body is a classical three-box sedan shape, but it has only the merest hint of a traditional Hofmeister Kink on the C-pillar, and the twin round headlights have gone altogether, replaced by a pair of rectangular light stripes.

The entire grille for the EV is reminiscent of the BMW iVision Circular from the Munich motor show, and can be used to send messages or even change the grille design at will.

But it’s the cleanliness of the iVision Dee that leaps out, especially after the controversies of the iX and the X7 and the new 7 Series designs.

“This is super-clean. We always said Neue Klasse would have a simplified form language and it didn’t happen just last night,” BMW Design chief Adrian van Hooydonk insisted.

“For a while we have been on a path of simplifying and cleaning up our form language.

“You have in fact seen some of it already, because we feel it makes the design modern and transmits that it’s a clean electric vehicle and will make the design long-lasting.

“The 1970s BMWs were clean but straight, and there won’t be any straight lines on these Neue Klasse cars.

“They won’t be as reduced as this one, because we toned it down to highlight the technology, but they will be toned down.”

This is despite BMW’s director of development, Dr Thomas Weber, insisting just months ago that BMW needed to court controversy with its designs to ensure it stayed ahead of the design curve, and to be talked about in broader public circles.

“Obviously we believe we can bring electric mobility into a wider audience and also we will continue that way, so this is not disruptive but continuing on a steady path,” van Hooydonk said.

“We said this [the iVision Dee] is a traditional BMW, and from time to time you have to rethink that because you don’t stick to your formula of success too much.

“This isn’t controversial. When we are deciding on certain designs, you have to almost assess the design for yourself against what’s happening in five years.

“When you say we want to start a new chapter at BMW with the Neue Klasse, the form language has to express that and you cannot expect it to follow what we traditionally did because change has to be constant.

“With all the changes going on in society, with digitisation, and everything else, the biggest danger that we have is not changing enough, quite frankly.

“If you don’t change enough and then you realise you haven’t changed enough, you switch into panic mode. That’s when you make mistakes.”