Artificial intelligence raises all sorts of questions for society—and in the automotive world, electric cars are doing the same.
But while we know that electric vehicles will change the world for the better, the future of an AI-influenced world is less certain.
How will AI and EV intersect? BMW is one of the automakers eager to find out as it launches concept versions of new electric companions for the 3-Series and X3.
These new electric cars have been introduced over the past two years under the name “Neue Klasse”, to denote new generations of vehicles that could eventually replace BMW’s two most popular vehicles. Similar in size to existing gasoline-powered cars, the Neue Klasse sedan and SUV Promises faster charging and a wider range than BMW’s current electric vehicle lineup.
They also make a lot of promises about the future of the brand. Neue Klasse Architecture will create six new models within 18 to 24 months of the first car’s market launch. Expect the end of 2025, when production of the first versions begins in Debrecen, Hungary, which BMW promises will be the first fossil-free factory. It has already started Build a battery factory in San Luis Potosi, Mexico, to support the duo as well as future versions of the car, and production of the car in Mexico for the United States seems possible.
BMW Vision Neue Klasse X concept
What is BMW Neue Klasse? That’s the X3 and the 3-Series, the refractor
What will Neue Klasse bring? The magnitude of change for BMW’s strongholds, follows multiple vectors. The shapes are reminiscent of the spare, glass bodywork of the brand’s best cars of the 60s: for example, BMW’s signature double kidney grille is backlit for emphasis, in while the Hofmeister twist of the window pillars and the L-shape of the taillights convey their message. heritage in a clever way like the spinning propeller logo.
The obvious and vague similarities with the past end there. With a long wheelbase and short front and rear overhangs, Neue Klasse cars, especially SUVs, offer bright, spacious interiors the likes of which haven’t been seen in decades. The structure of an electric vehicle makes it easier to do that: a stronger battery-reinforced floor allows for a stiffer body with thinner pillars, larger windows and, in this case, an all-glass roof. scene.
BMW Vision Neue Klasse X concept
Space for people improves, but so does the connection between those people and the car itself, BMW designers showed during a recent tour of the company’s latest Designworks studio in Santa Cruz. Monica. Connectivity goes deeper through infotainment, through a system that combines a panoramic digital display with a more advanced voice assistant, which together address some of the need for minor controls or functions on the screen.
Drivers can customize a variety of vehicle functions through the interface. The sounds programmed into the concept car can be adjusted along the axes to get a more technical or natural sound, softer or louder. The dazzling strip of information that stretches across the dashboard and into the head-up display can be reconfigured by sliding and releasing the tiles as the driver sees fit. And to adapt to the needs and wants of current users, BMW says it will continue to offer Apple CarPlay – it won’t be able to take over all the screens like a Porsche or Aston Martin, but it won’t be overpowered either. skip, like GM’s new electric car.
BMW Vision Neue Klasse X concept
BMW will also showcase its rapidly improving powertrain at Neue Klasse. In production versions, the new cylindrical battery in the 800-volt system will deliver a 30% increase in charging speed, with up to 30% better driving range. Both will complement the car’s much better aerodynamics, which are 20% more slippery than the current X3.
It will all work in harmony with the glass cabin and classic details that BMW’s designers refer to in the ultimate revival: they call it boom, a term applied by Renaissance society to the easy elegance and composure of its contemporaries. In BMW-speak, the Neue Klasse would be the Baldassare Castiglione of the C-segment.
BMW Designworks and Neue Klasse X Concept
How BMW will use AI in its cars
The reference to uniqueness, the spark of individuality, goes deep into the company’s limited experiments with the use of AI.
How can AI be used most professionally and ethically in car manufacturing? BMW designers now use AI to create patterns and textures for interior materials. Once they establish the basic outlines—be it the outline of a panel or the set of tones and shapes that can power the engine—they then let the AI work to show those parts in new form and with new models.
Think of it like Pinterest Plus: They’re using AI as a mood board creation tool that still requires expert input, clear and highly constrained tasks, and no standout ideas. allows you to go beyond the intellectual firewall that competitors may use to synthesize their own brand attributes.
An official production concept for the Neue Klasse sedan and SUV will soon appear. Studios from Los Angeles to Munich to Shanghai all have a say in the ideas coming out later this year. Both will tweak features like mirrors, door handles and body cladding, all to better match the next production-ready version.
BMW Vision Neue Klasse X concept
Is AI good?
BMW’s design leaders see AI as a good companion to the artistic driver. They believe that AI has the power to democratize creativity. But are the results really creative?
AI synthesizes information in large quantities more efficiently than most humans—but it is also a fool who cheats and misappropriates its way to artificial intelligence. It turns knowledge into mere data and turns the value of human intelligence into reality.
Art itself is proof. Art is rooted in craftsmanship, inspiration, authorship, and individual difference – the exact opposite of democratization.
Experiments like this fill a certain need. For now, the auto industry must do what all other industries are doing (especially media outlets like this one): find ways to exploit computers to cut costs without sacrificing looks. outside of utility or quality.
How to recognize all these contributions remains unanswered. Maybe it will be clear. AI in its many forms stands out like a hammered thumb. It now imbues everything it touches with a baby-food resemblance that could never create a Hofmeister kink or a twin-kidney grille, not to mention a cowboy Carter or even one Baldassare Castiglione.
In our lifetime, will AI be able to tell the difference between a randomly generated outcome or a perfect, creative, black swan outcome? Can AI “say strange things?” None of us can predict the outcome of it all, but at BMW, the testing process has begun.
