BMW is giving the world a look at what it believes will be the future of its vehicle lineup at CES 2023, with the debut of its BMW i Vision Dee. A mid-size sedan with purposely muted exterior and interior designs, the Vision Dee features everything from a head-up display that covers the entire windshield to an exterior that can change colors on a whim.
BMW says the name Dee stands for Digital Emotional Experience, and that its aim is to "create an even stronger bond between people and their cars." To do that, the company is throwing a whole slew of new tech at the Vision Dee including giving drivers the ability to create their own digital avatars that will be displayed on the vehicle’s side window when they approach it.
“With the BMW i Vision Dee, we are showcasing what is possible when hardware and software merge,” Oliver Zipse, chairman of BMW AG, said in a statement. “In this way, we are able to exploit the full potential of digitalization to transform the car into an intelligent companion.”
It’s a wild concept that you’re unlikely to see on the road in its current form but helps lay the groundwork for some of the technologies BMW will be putting into its cars in the future. The most realistic feature is the head-up display that stretches across the Vision Dee’s entire windshield.
Head-up displays project information like your speed, directions, and other content onto a vehicle’s windshield, usually directly in front of the driver’s field of view. A number of automakers offer the technology, but BMW is looking to turn the entire windshield into a head-up display. The idea is to provide a larger canvas for the driver to see more information without having to take their eyes off the road in front of them and without blocking their view of what’s going on around them.
BMW says the head-up display will come to production cars that ride on the company’s Neue Klasse electric platform in 2025.
But Vision Dee doesn’t just stop at adding a head-up display, the concept also includes what BMW is calling a Mixed Reality Slider. The feature offers five levels of mixed reality that drivers can choose from, with the first providing vehicle instrument data on the windshield and the fifth turning the glass into a kind of virtual reality display.
The windows on the concept car can even fade out the outside world to bring more attention to the virtual reality projection on the windshield. Don’t expect this to come to any cars in the near future, though. For now, you’ll need to deal with staring at the taillights and road in front of you.
If that’s not enough, BMW has also outfitted the Vision Dee with customizable welcome scenarios that allow you to do things like make the digital screen that make up the automaker’s famed kidney-shaped grill to create facial expressions.
Yes, you can make your car smile. Heck, you can make a personalized avatar that shows up in your car’s window when you walk up to it. That’s right, you can create an avatar that looks like its sitting in your car’s driver seat and having a blast behind the wheel.
Outside, the car is covered in 240 E Ink segments that can display up to 32 colors, allowing you to further customize the look and feel of the Vision Dee. BMW previously showed off customized E Ink panels on its iX Flow concept at CES 2022, but those could only display black and white. The latest version will allow you to completely change the look of your car with ease.
Of course, a good deal of this technology is just meant to give the world a closer look at the kind of work BMW is doing behind the scenes and not necessarily something you’ll be able to get when you stroll up to the dealership. Still, it’s interesting to see where individual automakers see the world of passenger vehicles going in the future.
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