BMW debuts i Vision Dee concept, a car that can change colors and smile at you

BMW is giving the world a look at what it believes will be the future of its vehicle lineup at CES 2023, with the debut of its BMW i Vision Dee. A mid-size sedan with purposely muted exterior and interior designs, the Vision Dee features everything from a head-up display that covers the entire windshield to an exterior that can change colors on a whim.

BMW says the name Dee stands for Digital Emotional Experience, and that its aim is to "create an even stronger bond between people and their cars." To do that, the company is throwing a whole slew of new tech at the Vision Dee including giving drivers the ability to create their own digital avatars that will be displayed on the vehicle’s side window when they approach it.

“With the BMW i Vision Dee, we are showcasing what is possible when hardware and software merge,” Oliver Zipse, chairman of BMW AG, said in a statement. “In this way, we are able to exploit the full potential of digitalization to transform the car into an intelligent companion.”

It’s a wild concept that you’re unlikely to see on the road in its current form but helps lay the groundwork for some of the technologies BMW will be putting into its cars in the future. The most realistic feature is the head-up display that stretches across the Vision Dee’s entire windshield.

Head-up displays project information like your speed, directions, and other content onto a vehicle’s windshield, usually directly in front of the driver’s field of view. A number of automakers offer the technology, but BMW is looking to turn the entire windshield into a head-up display. The idea is to provide a larger canvas for the driver to see more information without having to take their eyes off the road in front of them and without blocking their view of what’s going on around them.

BMW says the head-up display will come to production cars that ride on the company’s Neue Klasse electric platform in 2025.

But Vision Dee doesn’t just stop at adding a head-up display, the concept also includes what BMW is calling a Mixed Reality Slider. The feature offers five levels of mixed reality that drivers can choose from, with the first providing vehicle instrument data on the windshield and the fifth turning the glass into a kind of virtual reality display.