Car and Driver: BMW Vision Next 100 Concept: The Ultimate Riding Machine

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When we look back at BMW decades from now, we may know exactly when it surrendered driving pleasure to a phalanx of robots wearing blue-and-white roundels. It wasn’t the fake engine sounds or the languid steering that crept in circa 2013. That was the start. It is right now, at the company’s century mark, when BMW laid out its vision for a future that put drivers in the back seat.

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We would prefer our successors write a different story, and that the BMW Vision Next 100 concept did not mark a turning point for the company whose products once very much lived up to its “Ultimate Driving Machine” advertising tagline. BMW is highly insistent that it is not losing its soul, even as it unveils an autonomous car that mimics autonomous cars from so many other automakers. The official company line: “A genuine BMW is always driver focused. The BMW Group also believes that BMW drivers will be able to let their cars do the work—but only when the driver wants.”

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Unveiled at Munich’s Olympic Hall, the Vision Next 100 is part of BMW’s yearlong birthday bash to celebrate its founding on this very day in 1916. (Mini and Rolls-Royce Vision concepts will bow in June, and a Vision motorcycle concept arrives in September.) The low-slung, copper-hued electric car was designed specifically as a sports sedan, and it measures 193 inches long and 54 inches high, or roughly the same length but a little lower than the current 5-series.

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The concept has four butterfly doors—presumably because Tom Cruise wanted them for the next Mission: Impossible—that open automatically via proximity sensors. The body cuts through the air with an impressively low drag coefficient of 0.18. All four wheels are draped not by skirts but by a “flexible skin” that can move with the steered wheels. Self-driving sensors sit behind the giant kidney grille, which is the only indication that this concept is a BMW.

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Inside, upon pressing the BMW logo in the center of the dash, the steering bar (it’s not a wheel) motors out from its flush position. The more significant shape-shifting comes in the form of some 800 molded triangles that BMW calls “Alive Geometry.” Picture a football stadium during a Super Bowl half-time show where the crowd creates distinct images by raising and lowering thousands of placards in organized rhythm. Now imagine that crowd, miniaturized, placed on top of this BMW’s dashboard and along the door panels.

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BMW says it will use Alive Geometry to present 3-D messages instead of warning lights or LED screens. Is the car about to overtake a slow truck? A few dozen triangles might flap around in your right periphery. Curvy road ahead? The dash might take on the appearance of the road itself, instructing you on the proper line and optimum speed. Anything these triangles can’t convey will be projected across the entire windshield, which acts as a giant head-up display that will overlay road information and alerts. There’s not a finger-smudged touchscreen in sight.

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Whereas conventional BMW models usually have four or so driving modes, in the Vision Next 100, BMW boils them down to two. In Boost mode, the driver takes control, or so he thinks. The dash triangles act as co-pilot, flapping around to suggest how you should or shouldn’t drive. Switch into Ease mode, and the triangles relax, the steering bar slides away, and the seatbacks (upholstered not in leather, but something recyclable) swivel until they become part of the door panels, like a stretch Hummer on the way to prom. In this mode, passengers can binge on social media, stream movies, or whatever digital nonsense occupies too much of our time in the future. The car will point out passing scenery and physical landmarks by overlaying them on the glass, should anyone in autonomous cars care about the world around them.

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But that’s not all. There’s also a “large, cut gemstone” that lives in the center of the dash and “symbolizes the [car’s] intelligence [and] connectivity.” Called Companion, it’s HAL 9000 with a German accent, constantly monitoring the people inside, learning their habits, and developing its own ideas about what you want before you want it. It merges with the windshield display and can perform “routine tasks” and offer “suitable advice.” Companion can also watch for pedestrians and signal to them, via a green light, that the car is aware of their presence.

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“We want to turn each driver into a better driver, the ultimate driver, if you will,” said chief designer Adrian van Hooydonk, whose favorite BMW of all time is the 3.0 CSL “Batmobile,” an immaculate gray copy of which is parked inside the company’s original engine factory in Munich. In the BMW of the future, though, it appears that even the ultimate driver isn’t really going to do much driving. The cars will instead be designed for riding, the ultimate riding machines.

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