In addition to having more luxurious cars, now BMW is betting on having more technological cars. During the CES 2022 technology fair, the German company unveiled its concept car, called the BMW iX Flow, which uses e-ink technology normally found in digital book readers to transform the exterior of the car into a variety of patterns in Gray and white.
"This is a really energy efficient color change using E Ink technology," explained BMW Research Engineer Stella Clarke. "We took this material – it's a kind of thick paper – and our challenge was to get it into a 3D object like our cars."
When stimulated by electrical signals controlled by a phone app, the material brings different pigments to the surface, causing the car to take on a different tone or design.
In the future, shifting would also be controlled with a button on the car's panel or, perhaps, even with hand gestures, Clarke said.
According to BMW, no energy is needed to maintain the color selected by the driver.
"My favorite case is using color to influence reflections in sunlight," Clarke said. "On a hot sunny day like today, you can change the color white to reflect the sunlight. On a cold day, you can change it to black to absorb the heat."
Although the vehicle on display at CES could only toggle between gray and white, the technology will be expanded to cover a spectrum of colors, according to BMW.
