Last month, BMW created a ‘Window Into The Near Future’ with a dramatic digital display in New York. In a building on the corner of 42nd Street and 6th Avenue, they created a screen that digitally transforms passing cars into the all-electric BMW i3 and plug-in hybrid BMW i8 Concept vehicles.
This was no pre-programmed video, instead a real-time translation of passing vehicles, in to cars of the future. The video below showcases the amazing result, which is achieved thanks to an 80,000 lumens projector, 3 cameras and some seriously fast car-tracking software.
The software also calculates how much money would be saved and how many tons of CO2 emissions that could be reduced annually if each transformed car were all-electric. In one week, 248,368 cars drove past the display and were transformed into vehicles of the future. An estimated $493.5Million and and 1.3 Million tons of CO2 would be saved annually if all those cars were all-electric.
How far away is that future? Not long, BMW i vehicles will be on the road in late 2013, something I look forward to. EV is so clearly the way forward for the automotive industry, any manufacturer that doesn’t already ship an EV, is working on one. Let’s just hope battery tech can keep pace with the innovation happening across the industry.
Forget the green tech for a minute, the BMW concept vehicles look like no other car on the market. If this is the future of vehicles, it can’t come soon enough. The normal path is to tone down concepts to appeal to buyers, I say screw that, leave them as they are, make it your point of difference BMW. Embrace the future and be proud to look like it.
