CES 2023: BMW iVision Dee tech ripe for future models

BMW’s colour-changing E-ink joins up with augmented reality and a full-windscreen head-up display on the 2023 BMW iVision Dee concept car unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas.

Built to highlight the connected and digital potential in the upcoming Neue Klasse EV architecture, the iVision Dee features a tiny digital slider on the dashboard as the only interior button or switch.

The ultra-clean interior can then be modified from full analogue to full-screen HUD to communications right up to an augmented-reality fantasy world in its fully autonomous driving mode.

Its windows dim to fade reality out of the iVision Dee’s cabin, replacing it with full AR screens from every seat, with the advanced head-up display planned for a production debut in 2025.

BMW’s director of development, Dr Frank Weber, has already said the Neue Klasse toolkit would make its production debut in either the BMW 3 or 5 Series, with both cars representing the heartland of the brand.

“It’s a virtual driving experience without the VR headset,” Weber claimed.

“The iVision Dee is our version of pushing the boundaries between physical and digital perception, that looks very far ahead and stands for the next level of human machine interaction.

“It is a source of inspiration for the Neue Klasse and we did this with an emphasis on extreme digitalisation.

“The HUD came from airplanes into the car 20 years ago, with the philosophy of ‘hands on the wheel and eyes on the road’ and today the HUD is indispensable.”

But the iVision Dee’s HUD goes a lot further than anything before it, even claiming to create the correct focal length for occupants of every seat in the car, unlike the WayRay Holograktor AR system that debuted in 2022.

“Step by step we are enriching reality with more and more real-time information, upgrading the experience to be more exciting and safer and making better use of your time,” said Weber.

“It can blend out surroundings when you are autonomous and we can imagine doing a lot more with the windscreen than we do today.”

The idea behind the widescreen HUD is that it will one day take the place of the multimedia system and the instrument cluster, but only on demand from the driver, with more and more information displayed on the screen as it is driven more and more autonomously.

“When you look at this virtual piece inside and the physical piece of the car, it is all already there,” Weber explained.

“This virtual reality is already part of our developers’ lives, every day. We are doing simulation and planning and Adrian [van Hooydonk] builds very few real models in the meantime.

“If you look carefully around you, with your phones and your personal life in a digital life, is this not the first step in a digital world?

“Now you can see it clearly that people are making choices, sometimes with more virtual pieces and sometimes with very few.

“The two things, physical and virtual pieces, perfectly merge into one experience, and that is where the future is heading.”

The push for digitisation and connectivity has led BMW to completely strip out the interior of the iVision Dee, and BMW Design boss Adrian van Hooydonk said that was probably a sign of the future.

“In everybody’s life, you spend two hours or so in the digital world on your phone every day, organising things for your life, and when you enter the car that is somehow interrupted,” he said.

“We don’t want to stop at the Bluetooth integration that we have now. We feel that it can be much more integrated, and not get in the way of the driving sensation that is still important to us.

“This is showing ideas of how it can be integrated, but it’s not overpowering.That is the message with this car.”

The iVision Dee is also dripping in the next generation of the BMW E-ink system, which debuted on an X5 SUV two years ago, and it will change into many colours more than just black and white.

The first full-colour E-ink system, it is also used strategically to break up lines or even smile at pedestrians and onlookers.

While plenty of people prefer to use smartphones in Android Auto or Apple CarPlay over the in-built navigation systems, Dr Weber warned that the move to EVs would negate that trend.

“The moment you use an electric car you won’t use Apple maps,” he insisted.

“Your phone knows nothing about your battery condition or temperature, or your charging points, or where you take your car regularly.

“If you take another route, how does that change your range, what’s happening at the charging station? There are things that are important to connect to your vehicle.

“When you leave your home and have a cold battery, smartphones cannot predict your charging times because they don’t know your temperatures.

“People have strong emotional connections to their cellphones. They do. They have it with their cars, too, because that is an attribute of their physical worlds, and the phone is an attribute of their virtual worlds, and we are merging the two.

“It is not realistic to put four wheels on that device and believe it is giving you a better experience.”

“Neue Klasse [New Class] and what it achieves is the big components, the electrical architecture toolbox, and then this is available to the entire BMW range,” Dr Weber said.

“It’s not a traditional automotive platform. I would call it a technology platform, that is a physical platform, to cover the complete BMW portfolio.

“This is a building principal where we almost go back to the old days of BMW when we just had one configuration, and Neue Klasse is providing this backbone.

“It will serve from a future 1 Series to a future 7 Series, but we will start right in the middle of BMW, in the core.

“We have chosen this format for a good reason. Many people connect us with a 3 Series-type product, and it’s high volume, 3 Series and X3 and other first derivatives that come off Neue Klasse.”

While BMW has shown Neue Klasse concepts before, they’ve represented other areas of what BMW insists are the Neue Klasse’s pillars, and Dr Weber said this is more of a connected and HUD platform than autonomous driving, but it has that aspect as well.

Asked whether the switch to EVs or autonomous driving would be the biggest potential change in the car industry, Dr Weber hedged his bets, insisting EVs would have more short-term impact.

“Autonomous driving is still a very difficult business, and it will remain a difficult business before it takes over this industry,” he said.

“You will see pockets where autonomous driving will happen, like commercial vehicles and some transportation on restricted lanes, you will see that.

“Level 3 is still for something they will not instantly be able to do, and it will evolve over time. You will see it unfold that in normal consumer products, with privately owned vehicles, there will be Level 2 and Level 2+.

“There will be better and better Level 2 functions where you are in control then Level 3 at lower speeds that rise and rise as there is more capability on the sensor side.

“There will be lower cost with autonomous driving over time, but for the generation we talk about here, you see we get all the enhancements on the driver side, but this will not happen on the next generation. It will not,” he insisted.