BMW has been teasing its ‘Dee’ project for a number of weeks now, with car journalists pondering about what shape it might take.
‘DEE’ is BMW’s take on the merging of physical and digital, standing for Digital Emotional Experience. It’s a car that talks to you, a car able to change color and pattern at the push of a button, and a car meant for the coming world of augmented reality.
While we don’t think the i Vision Dee is particularly beautiful in form, the amount of expression available to it feels new and worthy of exploration.
It’s the first car BMW claims has a digital soul, combining artificial intelligence, along with a range of tricks like e-ink that allow it to express faces, change it’s bodywork color, wheels, and more.
“Imagine technology infused with a human touch. A machine whose intelligence is emotional rather than artificial. A vehicle with a voice, facial expressions, and true personality. A car that’s more than a means of transportation, but an ultimate companion.
Introducing Dee – the first BMW with a digital soul. “
Below are images of the car changing color with its advanced e-ink, allowing for limitless hues, patterns, and styles on the exterior.
The Dee, in addition to being all-electric, is also created with a range of recyclable materials, making it less impactful on the environment.
On the interior, things seem remarkably spare and minimal, though there’s more than immediately meets the eye.
“The i Vision Dee brings good news for drivers who hate the explosion of in-car touchscreens lately: there are no screens here.
The concept’s bare-bones stark gray interior is even more minimal in design than the outside, with a pared-down steering wheel, seats, and what BMW calls the “Mixed Reality Slider”: a touch panel that controls how much information the driver sees on the advanced Heads-Up Display.
The i Vision Dee almost looks like a cross between a Tesla Model 3 and one of BMW’s classic sports sedans
There’s also bad news for drivers who hate screens: the whole windshield is now essentially a display, mixing the functions of a dashboard with an infotainment system and adding in augmented reality features. “
BMW has clearly done a lot of work on embracing our digital future, but is it appealing? We find the concept fascinating, but very little of it feels beautiful or desirable to us.
What do you think? Is BMW designing what will be inevitable 5 to 10 years from now?
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