this is the BMW tent here at CES 2016
and behind me we've got the BMW i Vision
future interaction okay it's a little awkwardly
named but it's a concept car based on the spider that's a little bit more than
the typical concept car that you might see at an auto show the first thing most
people notice about it is the fact that there's no doors but that's actually not
the point at all it'll have doors in the future and you have to get inside to
fully realize this is not you know your grandpa's car with push button
Transmission in fact it has almost no
buttons inside it at all nor is it the couch on Wheels concept that you might
expect from other automakers who are attempting to make well you know the
autonomous car of the Future Vision future interaction is about a user
experience so obviously there's a lot of technology in this car but it doesn't
necessarily need to be visible um with that I think very often
uh people mistake that uh technology has
to be there or has to be celebrated in a certain way but they forget that it also
introduces complexity to the user so in a nutshell what BMW is trying to do here
is fuse the right pieces of Technology
with their existing strength the actual experience of operating the machine with
that said one of the most forward looking things about it to me was
actually the seat design the second I sat in it with someone else
the most natural thing for me to do based on the the shape and orientation
of the seats was rest my ARM on the center armrest and have a casual
conversation I mean how amazing is that which isn't to say that inside the car
there isn't some really really cool technology the first thing that stood
out to me was of course the Dual displays there's a two- layer display so
that's a transparent display on top of a more traditional LCD display directly in
front of the driver as well as a large
super wide panoramic display that extends all the way from the driver's
side over to the passenger side that can actually be controlled with motion
sensors on the driver's side or two Banks of motion sensors on the passenger
side as well as buttons that are integrated into the steering wheel as
well as the side of the car over on the passenger side but there's more to them
than meets the eye and the information displayed on them is not static the
displays uh they stand for information when we think about information we have
to think about relevant information relevant information to the driver and
to the passengers uh in the car and uh
that means that for example different uh driving scenarios kind of ask us to
deliver different information to the driver so in autonomous driving mode you
might have the display in front of you with pertinent information about nearby
cars for example on the foreground display with the rout actually displayed
in the background since you're not operating the vehicle anyway so it's of
kind of secondary importance and then the panoramic display well hey that
might be making full utilization of its entire width with you know suggested
callers for someone that you like chatting with when you're driving and it
can connect to your phone which is pretty cool so it can bring up the best
suggestions so you're not navigating through a bunch of deep menus and it
might have hey like media information for both you and your passenger are you
compromising The Ultimate Driving Experience by putting in this autonomous
technology we would never compromise The Ultimate Driving Experience in the car
this is one of the driving states that we will stay true to and and also
deliver it in the future in manual driving mode well hey you don't want
distractions right so that panoramic display might shrink all the way down to
just a very small display and then the one that's in front of you well now all
of a sudden hey your Root's in the foreground because you kind of got to follow it right and then in the
background you might have secondary information like a topographical map so
you can really get the most out of your experience now right now in the concept
the HUD is actually not active so the display that comes up right on the
windshield but I mean in the future who knows what we're going to see with stuff
like that you know driving assist like training modes right so you can take a
corner a little bit faster a little bit better and the car can actually coach you through it kind of like you would do
in a video game today but the story here is actually deeper than the car and BMW
is also showing off some really cool internet of thing stuff around their
open Mobility cloud with the idea that the car becomes more than just a car and
more of a more of a digital Hub so the demo they've got is actually
surprisingly cool with this smart connected mirror concept that they've
created running through a theoretical demonstration that shows what life might
be like with a connected home and a connected car so in the mirror you can
actually see your agenda for the day and
all you got to do is you grab your key fob it takes that that as your
confirmation and you walk the door the car once you grabb the fob actually
pulls itself out of the garage which opens itself positions itself in the
correct orientation on the road in front of you sets the climate control so it's
comfortable when you get in and boom off you go you arrive at work you get out of
the car and this is where it gets really cool yet again you gesture at the car
okay you found a parking spot cool pull into that parking spot car does it
completely by itself really neat see
feature then when you're done you walk off to work and whether you work you
know a one minute walk from your car or whether you're a lot further from your car it's got this bump detection feature
that combined with their overhead view allows you to see a live view of what's
going on near your car and actually sends you a push notification on your
phone if someone bumps it so you can be like okay hey I need to make sure that
everything's okay and my car isn't in you know full-on disaster mode right now
then at the end of the day you use a smart device so in the demo they were using a smartwatch you go okay hey I'm
ready to Signal you you signal the car to come out of the spot you get in it
drives you home or you drive it home hey whatever the choice is totally yours you
park it in front of the house don't bother pulling into the garage go inside
put your key fob in the mirror and boom car Parks itself and the mirror is like
hey so you don't have any appointments until whenever so I'd suggest you use
solar power to charge the car that's the most economical way and you can be like
no actually hold on I have an unscheduled thing that I need to go do right away charge it as fast as you can
it costs a little bit more but hey it's important to me very freaking cool stuff
I think what is very important to understand is that cars are becoming more intelligent in the future they can
take over certain tasks maybe tasks that we don't particularly enjoy about
driving so when we sit in traffic uh the car can actually do certain things we're
not necessarily enjoying and we have time for other things so basically this
concept car shows to you that there's different scenarios that make the full
drive experience a better one that was awesome thank you so much thank you for
coming and uh a huge thank you to BMW for allowing us to come and have an
early look at what they've got going on here at CES 2016 and I mean by the look
of things and the sound of things well into the future as well