Cars are filled with screens these days. Automakers are struggling to figure out where to put them.
They compete with one another for the largest screen, the most information, and the cleverest ways to configure it all. But they also know they shouldn’t distract you from the task of driving.
The challenge has led to high-up screens, low-down screens, screens behind steering wheels, separate screens for passengers, and nearly every other screen configuration you can imagine. Many have also added head-up displays that project information like speed and turn-by-turn directions into the driver’s line of sight — screens, and things to keep you from looking at the screens.
Not one of these approaches has seemed exactly right.
BMW may have just figured it out.
Display on the Entire Lower Edge of the Windshield
The company revealed its future solution at this week’s CES consumer electronics show in Las Vegas. The latest version of BMW’s long-running iDrive user interface moves the dashboard down, making room to turn the low edge of the windshield into the screen.
Called BMW Panoramic Vision, it’s essentially a head-up display as wide as the windshield.
BMW premiered the system on a model of its Neue Klass future electric vehicle (EV), but says the system “will be introduced across all new BMW models from the end of 2025.”
Lincoln Has Something Similar Today
It’s similar in concept to one Lincoln uses on its Nautilus and all-new Navigator. Lincoln’s approach places a wide screen near the lower edge of the dashboard, high enough that a squared-off steering wheel never blocks your view of it. It’s too far away to touch, so you control it with a smaller touchscreen in the center where most car touchscreens are located.
We’ve loved Lincoln’s system because it makes looking at the screen almost part of looking at the road. Your eyes rarely have to adjust because the screen’s focal distance is close to that of the windshield.
BMW does Lincoln one better – the focal distance of the screen is the focal distance of the windshield because the screen is the lower edge of the windshield. If you’re watching the road, the screen is in the lower edge of your vision. You never have to look away from the road to see it.
Customizable Display Segments
“The most important driving information is projected directly into the driver’s line of sight on the left-hand side of the BMW Panoramic Vision (in left-hand-drive cars), above the steering wheel,” BMW says. Drivers can personalize what appears in the center and right-hand sections. As with the Lincoln system, they’ll use a centrally mounted touchscreen to do that.
And they’ll rarely have to. With a pillar-to-pillar screen surface, there’s enough room to project nearly anything you’d want to see. Most drivers will rarely have to adjust once the car is rolling.
An optional higher head-up display puts speed and turn-by-turn directions just above it all.
The result, BMW says, keeps the driver’s hands on the wheel and eyes on the road.
Drivers can also make adjustments with voice commands – you wake up the personal assistant by saying, “Hey, BMW.”
The upcoming Neue Klasse models will combine it with an immersive sound experience, the company says, including “43 sound signals and special driving sounds for Personal Mode and Sport Mode. The multi-dimensional spectrum adapts the sounds precisely to the driving situation at hand and, in so doing, creates an emotional interaction between the driver and their BMW.”
