Multicolored squares, then a variation from yellow to green to white to red to blue. No, it’s not the latest TV or smartphone screen unveiled this week at CES in Las Vegas, but a car. A BMW more specifically, the i Vision Dee-Dee concept for “Digital Emotional Experience”.
32 body colors
The German manufacturer has presented this prototype in Nevada this Wednesday capable of changing color, and beyond showing a lot of information on its entire surface. The bodywork of the new prototype can thus display a whole palette of colours, uniformly, in bands or in a checkerboard pattern.
There are 32 shades available, 30 more than the concept presented last year, already at CES, which varied its hue from a light color to a darker one, only in a palette of grays.
This variation of tones is possible thanks to a film, the “e-Paper”. The vehicle body is divided into segments, managed by an electronic control unit developed by E Ink. BMW has worked on the adaptation to the bodywork and the animation program.
This device makes the body completely customizable. “Passengers can choose from 32 colors to shape ‘Dee’ however they like,” BMW said in a statement.
A head-up display across the width of the windshield
If the color variations are impressive, so is what happens inside the i Vision Dee’s cabin. The information is then projected over the entire width of the windshield, for a new generation head-up display, with a more or less large size of the projected information.
BMW also mentioned the possibility of projecting images in augmented reality, or even transforming the entire windshield into a screen, technologies that supposedly allow mixing “the real and the virtual world”.
Occupants can choose how much digital content they want to appear on the head-up display, but also what information is displayed, beyond driving information. Passengers can also “play” with the light to isolate themselves from the outside.
First elements of 2025
The idea with this concept is to create through a suite of software a “companion” that offers a personalized experience, said the head of the group, Oliver Zipse. The possibility of projecting information such as speed and direction over the entire width of the windshield, for example, will be available from 2025, specifies AFP.
The vehicle remains for the moment in prototype status. But it is possible that certain technologies will gradually reach the new models of the group.
Source: BFM TV
