BMW’s i Vision Dee concept has got everyone revved up about how the next 3-Series coming in 2025 will look. But it’s not only the Dee’s body design that is causing a stir. It also features color-changing body panels and BMW has just dropped a bunch of videos showing the feature, plus a couple of others, in action.
If the idea of a color-changing BMW sounds familiar, you’re probably thinking of the iX Flow concept from last year’s CES, but that could only change the look of its body panels between white, black and grey. For this year’s show the tech has been upgraded to full color, and the result is stunning.
Vinyl wraps go digital
Dee’s trick body panels let drivers choose from 32 different colors, which on its own would be fun. But the neat bit is that each of the body’s 240 E Ink e-paper segments can be controlled individually. The Dee is more than a digital version of Volkswagen’s 1990s Harlequin Polo, it’s capable of putting on a four-wheeled light show. The color-shifting tech even extends to the grille and wheels.
Related: BMW i Vision Dee Hints At Radical Redesign For Next Electric 3-Series
The E Ink tech comes from a U.S.-based company of the same name and consists of a film coating on the surface of the car’s panels whose microcapsule pigments change when hit with electricity. The film is claimed to consume very little power, which is an important consideration in the electric age, though The Verge reports that further work is required to toughen up the panels before they’re ready to be offered on a production car. The current panels can be damaged when subjected to everyday road encounters like bugs and car washes, but we should see something similar on the street in a few years.
Digital kidney grille and window avatar
Dee stands for digital emotional experience, but this latest i Vision concept doesn’t only tease your emotions with its ability to change from mean and moody to the life and soul of the party by changing color. It can also communicate using the phygital (awful name; contraction of physical and digital) icons in its grille and windows.
The headlights can change shape and size, taking on the look of eyes to provide a welcome greeting and the side window glass is also capable of displaying messages and even presenting a full-size avatar of the driver as he walks up to the door.
Bye-bye dashboard, hello HUD
It’s not only the Dee’s exterior design that gives us a clue to how future BMWs will look. The interior also hints at the next generation of iDrive infotainment systems, which appears to ditch a conventional dash-mounted screen for a huge voice-controlled head-up display whose content can be expanded or minimized by sliding a finger across the textile surface of the dashboard.
It looks cool, but two things, BMW: the finger slider is a terrible idea (a rotary dial or physical slider is always going to be better), and just imagine how filthy that dash cloth is going to look six months down the line.