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Resting in the car without steering wheels is no longer a science fiction scenario. BMW Group has brought the future vehicle into reality, during its centenary celebration.
The Muni ch-based group designed the BMW Vision Next 100 concept car to inspire potential mobility concepts for the future through world tour exhibitions and events.
"The best way to prepare for the future is to shape it," said BMW Group CEO Harald Krueger. "We have a clear vision - to also be the leader in premium individual mobility in the next 100 years."
The future vision presented at the exhibition reaches far beyond anything that a short-term solution could offer, providing a multifaceted and inspiring preview of forthcoming trends that will impact not only automotive industry but also everyday lives as a whole.
Krueger said: "Our BMW Vision Next 100 offers a vision of a new era in mobility - sustainable, connected and automated driving. This is the beginning of an exciting new era - and China will be a vital part of it."
The BMW Vision Next 100 will turn its users into "Ultimate Drivers". In the BMW Vision Next 100, the driver will remain firmly in the focus with constant connectivity, digital intelligence and state-of-the-art technologies available for support.
Krueger said: "Right now, the BMW Group is on the verge of making automated driving happen. Studies prove that China will be a major market for highly automated driving."
He said Chinese customers have the highest level of acceptance and the most desire to improve convenience, traffic flow and safety.
Following the centenary celebration on March 7 in Munich, the BMW Vision Next 100 concept car traveled to China from May 6 for a 10-day exhibition in Beijing.
The Beijing exhibition is based on a narrative strand that leads the observer to go through different experience zones. Visitors will be led through the foyer into the inner rotunda and "brand rooms".
Bridge to tomorrow
The story begins from the foyer. Interactive plinth-mounted media ofers insights into the company's 100-year history, showing how it has helped to shape the future. A further exhibit demonstrates the technical competence and sense of duty that underpins the BMW Group's leadership and aspirations: a BMW VIIa aero engine from the 1920s.
In addition, the foyer area offers a general introduction about key megatrends in the past and the development direction of future. Visitors will able to take a look of the future developments, challenges and opportunities that may face in coming decades.
Intelligent mobility
The inner rotunda invites visitors to experience the BMW Group's vision of the future. The movie showed in the inner rotunda explains how the company views its social and environmental responsibilities toward its associates and society.
The BMW Group envisages a sustainable future with increasingly eco-friendly vehicles and vehicle production methods.
In the future, the BMW Group will continue to be the leader providing premium products and services in the realm of individual mobility. At the same time, the term "mobility" will become more multifaceted, technologic and intelligent, which is developing at breakneck speed.
Digital services will recognize people's needs and wishes, process them and continuously learn from them. As connectivity increases, the BMW Group will transform electronic data into digital intelligence, which it will use to add genuine value for customers. Mobility solutions will be customized and flexibly adjustable to meet requirements at any given moment.
Brands of the future
In the outer rotunda, visitors can experience four different brand spaces: BMW, MINI, Rolls-Royce and BMW Motorrad. Each brand's vision vehicle will demonstrate its capacity to create emotive, visionary mobility solutions that will meet people's needs over the decades in future.
In each brand space, visitors will be able to use interactive contact points and view exhibits to gain insights into the key aspects of the future for each of the BMW Group's brands.
Each brand space offers a variety of information sources, with an interactive sculpture, called the Attractor, which provides an abstract and artistic reflection of each brand's mission statement on future mobility. As soon as a vision vehicle is unveiled, it will take its place within the appropriate brand space as a highlight of that particular exhibition.
BMW Group believes, over the years ahead, individual mobility will interconnect the various areas of people's lives more and more closely, and the automotive industry will change faster over the next 10 years than it did over the last 30 years.
The group considers an active force in shaping tomorrow's mobility solutions and exploring questions of what individual mobility will look like over the coming decades, and continues to look first and foremost to the future,
After wrapping up the Beijing exhibition on Sunday, the BMW Group Future Experience will move to London in June, where the group will unveil its vision vehicles of its British brands, MINI and Rolls-Royce.
The world tour's final stop will begin in Los Angeles in October, where the fourth and final vision vehicle, from BMW Motorrad, will show, and the brand quartet will finish.
haoyan@chinadaily.com.cn
