20th January 2022
BMW reveals colour-changing car
German carmaker BMW has demonstrated electrophoretic technology enabling a car’s surface to rapidly change colour. The futuristic concept has potential for a number of interior and exterior applications.
The all-electric SUV seen here, dubbed the iX Flow, uses digitisation to adapt its exterior to different situations and individual wishes. The surface incorporates an e-ink that can vary its shade at the driver’s prompting. It contains many millions of microcapsules, each just the thickness of a human hair. These microcapsules contain negatively charged white pigments and positively charged black pigments. Depending on the chosen setting, stimulation by an electrical field will cause either the white or the black pigments to collect at the surface of the microcapsule, giving the car’s body the desired shade.
This is similar to the displays in eReaders such as Amazon’s Kindle – but in this case, adapted to the characteristic contours and design lines of the vehicle using many precisely fitted ePaper segments. Laser cutting technologies guarantee high precision in generating each segment, while algorithms are implemented to ensure the segments fit together correctly. After the segments are applied and the power supply for stimulating the electrical field is connected, the entire body is warmed and sealed to guarantee optimum and uniform colour reproduction during every colour change.
“Digital experiences won’t just be limited to displays in the future. There will be more and more melding of the real and virtual. With the BMW iX Flow, we are bringing the car body to life,” said Frank Weber, Member of the Board of Management at BMW.
“The BMW iX Flow is an advanced research and design project and a great example of the forward thinking that BMW is known for,” said Adrian van Hooydonk, Head of BMW Group Design.
The innovative e-ink could provide new ways of changing a vehicle’s appearance in line with a driver’s aesthetic preferences, environmental conditions or functional requirements.
A white surface reflects a lot more sunlight than a black one. By implication, heating of the vehicle and passenger compartment as a result of strong sunlight and high outside temperatures could be reduced by changing the exterior to a light colour. In cooler weather, a dark outer skin would help the vehicle to absorb noticeably more warmth from the sun.
In both cases, selective colour changes could help to cut the amount of cooling and heating required from a vehicle’s air conditioning – reducing the amount of energy the vehicle electrical system needs and with it also the fuel or electricity consumption. In an all-electric car, changing the colour in line with the weather could therefore help to increase its range. In the interior, the technology could, for example, prevent the dashboard from heating up too much.
E-ink technology itself is extremely energy efficient. Unlike displays or projectors, the electrophoretic technology needs absolutely no energy to keep the chosen colour state constant. Current only flows during the brief colour changing phase.
Although presently limited to black and white only, the system could presumably be adapted to include a wide range of colours in the future. It might also be possible to use this technology for signage, logos, and other messaging – for example, to display an electric vehicle’s battery status, or whether a car-sharing car is available or has been cleaned. If a driver has lost their car in a parking lot, the ink could be flashed to make it visible in their peripheral vision.
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