BMW's New i Vision Dee Concept Car Can Change Colors Without Going to the Body Shop
The "emotionally intelligent" vehicle features 32 color displays and nine "facial expressions."
By Sam Silverman •
BMW is making costly car wraps a thing of the past and turning your vehicle into a giant mood ring.
On Thursday at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show, the luxury car brand unveiled its new i Vision Dee concept car, a first-of-its-kind vehicle that can change color, display graphics, and even respond to human emotions, through what the company says is "emotionally intelligent" technology and a unique material called E Ink, commonly found in e-readers.
According to a press release from BMW, the i Vision Dee, which stands for "Digital Emotional Experience," can display 32 colors inside and outside of the vehicle through 240 individual E Ink panels spanning the body of the entire vessel, including the wheels.
The car's design allows for the graphics and multimedia to be displayed seamlessly throughout the body's E Ink panels. It also features graphics of nine different facial expressions that can appear on the car's grille and depict various emotions like amazement and joy.
The car uses sensors to interact with its environment, like opening the door for someone as they approach the car, and the built-in interactive technology reacts to human emotions in order to anticipate the driver's needs with navigation and music suggestions.
"We are showcasing what is possible when hardware and software merge," said BMW Group chairman of the Board of Management, Oliver Zipse, in a keynote speech per a press release from the brand. "In this way, we are able to exploit the full potential of digitalization to transform the car into an intelligent companion."
Although the i Vision Dee is the first of its kind to offer consumers a rainbow of color options, BMW first debuted its color-changing technology with BMW iX Flow featuring E Ink at CES 2022, however, the model could only change to various shades of gray.
The design also includes a Head-Up-Display, which shows information to the driver in their line of sight, and uses a "Mix Reality Slider" that forgoes a traditional permanent dashboard and instead displays a projection interactable through surface sensors you control with a swipe of your finger.
While BMW has yet to share when these color-changing cars will be on the market, they do plan to put the windshield and dashboard features into production by 2025.
