The BMW i Vision Dee Concept car shown at CES 2023 uses e-ink technology in its panels to create crazy designs in 32 colour options. It flies in the face of the norm – worldwide, the most sold colour options are white, black and then grey. Not only does the e-ink panels on the Vision Dee easily change to much more interesting colours, it can also be used to make facial expressions with its grille and headlamps.
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The BMW i Vision Dee is an evolution of the BWM iX Flow concept we saw at last year’s CES, which could only change between black and white.
The Dee in its name stands for Digital Emotion Experience, which also double’s as the name of the car’s virtual assistant. The intention is for Dee to act like other voice assistants but also integrate tightly with a next-generation HUD capable of occupying the entire windshield, not just the small patch of glass that today’s systems project onto.
The concept car doesn’t have traditional displays all of the interior. The HUD (head’s up display) is in the windshield of the car, and controlled through what BWM calls the Mixed Reality Slider on the dashboard. It projects the UI onto a shallow band running the full width of the bottom of the windscreen, to stage five, where the entire windshield is covered by a virtual world.
Most drivers would probably sit somewhere towards the former, which will display driving-related information, contents of the communications system, and augmented-reality projections. As the driver switches through these modes, a projected interface fills more of the windshield until the view out is fully virtual.
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.”
