BMW reveals new roadster concept 14 | 02 | 2011
BMW WILL GIVE us an insight into new technology which will rapidly appear on the 2013 production VisionED sportscar and MegaCity EV when it unveils this roadster concept at the Geneva Motor Show next month.
The two-seater — codenamed Vision ConnectedDrive — features new headlamps and body surfacing and a shark-nose grille; but the most important aspect of the car are the next-gen driver information displays, including a radical new three-dimensional dashboard interface.
Externally, the concept boasts round headlamps and traditional L-shaped tail lamps, which are said to provide clear hints of design boss Adrian von Hooydonk’s direction to progress the look of future BMW production models.
“There are certain features which have been chosen because they reflect the look you’ll see on new models already in the pipeline,” a BMW insider explained. “And you won’t have to wait too long before they become reality.”
There's an element of futuristic Hollywood in the new Vision ConnectedDrive which delivers a host of never-before-revealed technology. And the reality is this is technology which BMW is currently working on to provide a more streamlined transfer of information to the driver.
As the volume of information and data which is sent back to the driver from the ever-increasing number of sensors in the car continues to grow, so a solution needs to be found to make that information instantly presentable to the driver in a form which he or she can easily absorb.
So BMW intend to replace the conventional instrument cluster and the next-generation HUD will display info, such as road speed and sat-nav directions, in three-dimensions.
There's elements of the Tom Cruise film 'Minority Report' here, because the new technology allows different information layers to be superimposed on top of one another, in turn allowing the driver to display the required data in the foreground, while ghosting less significant info into the background.
BMW believes by providing this ‘optical depth of field’, it can provide the driver with multiple additional information sources without having to redesign a car’s fascia to take an additional display screen.
That's as maybe, but it's going to take a lot of drivers a significant amount of time to readjust to the new technology. Can you imagine your eyes — and brain — adjusting to a view which shows the road speed ghosted into the background to allow the next sat-nav routing direction to take the main position on the HUD, and this in turn fading into a background layer to accommodate an urgent traffic jam warning, then returning to display the road speed?
I know this technology is already commonplace in fighter aircraft ... and now it looks like it's coming to a car near you!
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Jim McGill