Automotive IQ: Beyond screen size and resolution, what defines a next-generation automotive display from an interior systems and HMI perspective?
First, screen panels are a technical necessity to enable high-quality user experiences and functionalities. Many of them serve driving and comfort related tasks and they have strong ergonomic, safety, usability and aesthetic design requirements.
In the past decades, many vehicle interiors increasingly became mobile living spaces that also need to offer excellent entertainment and productivity features. It is obvious that the number of pixels throughout the whole interior increases.
Nevertheless, we at the BMW Group are convinced that humans do not want to spend time in vehicle interiors plastered with tiles: black when parked, blinding at night and potentially distracting during driving.
Great architectural and automotive interiors should hide technical necessities. Over the years, we developed the idea of Ambient User Interfaces and ShyTech, which means that we want to hide the technical screen panel but still have the pixels, information and interaction magically appear when you need them, where you need them and in the appropriate quality.
To answer your question, we believe that screens need to become fully virtual through means of combiner projection, surface projection and decor surface transmission.
Automotive IQ: As vehicles become increasingly software-defined, how are displays reshaping the role and architecture of the automotive interior at BMW?
We live in an era where our lives, routines and habits continuously change at high speeds. We evolve the planetary technology much faster than in previous times where the concept of scale and pointer needle worked over the vehicle lifetime.
Pixels obviously are extremely flexible and updateable. They help us keeping interior experiences, ambience and functionalities up to date and adaptable after the physical vehicle is built. At the same time, it is important to understand which design features need to be maintained for long periods. We still are humans who also have persistent and supra-individual ergonomic and psychological needs.
Automotive IQ: What key principles guide display placement and interaction strategies between driver-focused and passenger-focused zones?
Of course, all display placements need to fulfill ergonomic and legal requirements. No display is allowed to distract the driver or cover the driving scene during manual driving. Especially for the driver, information displays need to be easily accommodatable, thus sufficiently far away from the eye, either physically or virtually. Driving information also needs to be as close as possible to the street environment. This setup significantly improves the driver’s performance regarding agility, control and driving safety.
Control elements should be at hand, ideally without taking the hand off the steering wheel or at least releasing the driver’s shoulder from the seat.
In every BMW Group product, you can experience our guideline for safe and sheer driving pleasure: Eyes on the road, hands on the wheel. This is, why BMW as the first automaker, introduced the iDrive controller in a safe and ergonomic position to remote control a center display. For the same reason, as the first automaker, we introduced high-quality Head-Up Displays in 2003 that can efficiently and safely be operated by the steering wheel controls.
Between 2007-2010, humans became increasingly used to direct touchscreen interaction with handheld CE devices. This is a very intuitive concept but not ideal while manual driving due to challenging eye-hand-coordination and oftentimes missing mechanical support for the stretched arm. Since vehicles are both used while driving and parking, we combined the iDrive controller with a touchscreen in 2015 to offer the ideal modality for each situation.
With excellent ADAS features supporting driving comfort and safety, the BMW Neue Klasse platform has ditched the controller in iDrive X and received a bigger and hexagonal touchscreen. Since BMWs are very driver-focused vehicles, we combined this with the BMW Panoramic Vision, which is a virtual 40” display within the windshield and a virtual 3D Head-Up Display. You can safely interact with BMW Panoramic Vision via the steering wheel controls and additionally with speech.
Automotive IQ: How are OEMs and suppliers evolving display strategies to increase functionality while actively managing driver distraction and cognitive load?
Next to obvious legal requirements that prohibit distracting content like movies and long texts etc. while manual driving, there are several elements within this strategy. Let me mention a few:
First, do not allocate every feature exclusively into the touchscreen. Maintain relevant physical control elements for features that need to be controlled blindly, urgently, safely and efficiently by muscle-memory.
Second: Offer smart and discreet automatizations through our BMW Intelligent Personal Assistant and make features addressable through speech interaction.
Third: The closer visual information is to the driver’s line of sight on the street, the more reduced, bold and clear it needs to be.
And fourth, the driver can select different Modes that affect the vehicle in a multisensory way: from Sport Mode to Efficient Mode to Silent Mode, each with their own ambiance and appropriate cognitive load. Since we all learned that humans need a digital detox occasionally, the user can reduce the display content to the driving-relevant minimum in Silent Mode.
Automotive IQ: Looking ahead, which technology decision being made today, hardware, software, or architecture, will most significantly shape automotive displays over the next decade?
To us, the term display is not limited to the panel. We think in holistic systems to create User Experiences. We believe, displays need to become virtual to allow Ambient User Interfaces and ShyTech, even outside a panel frame.
This means, we need to design very compact hidden optical systems that are sufficiently bright in sunlight, at the same time power-efficient to contribute to electrical range and smaller environmental footprint. Display size, resolution, color gamut, contrast and black value must enable perfect entertainment and productivity use cases. We already have local dimming of matrix backlights, OLED and projection technology in our vehicles. Also 3D will remain helpful to structure information in depth and maybe allow stereoscopic entertainment content. Finally, these optical systems can create an ambiance by projecting pixels throughout the whole interior. MINI drivers can already enjoy a hidden ambient light projector on the dashboard to augment different modes and moods.
Automotive IQ: From a technology and user-experience standpoint, what do you believe will most surprise drivers about in-car displays ten years from now?
It is relatively simple to integrate many and large display panels into the interior. It will be the ultimate discipline to make them invisible.
Automotive IQ: At the Vehicle Interiors Technology Summit 2026, you will be speaking on BMW Panoramic Vision, what can attendees expect from your session?
Attendees will be offered insights into the interdisciplinary endeavor of bringing our innovation BMW Panoramic Vision from the first sparking idea into millions of vehicles, maybe creating a new industry standard. I will also share key elements of a healthy high-tech innovation culture.
You can learn more from Julian at the Automotive Vehicle Interiors Technology Summit, taking place on May 20 - 21 in Munich, Germany.