Last week luxury vehicle manufacturer BMW revealed their first-ever colour changing vehicle at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES in Las Vegas. Media and social media pages quickly picked up on the news making the BMW iX Flow one of the most viral cars so far this year.
The vehicle is named iX Flow and allows the driver to change the colour of the vehicle from black to white at a touch of a button. This is made possible by E Ink technology commonly used in e-readers. When stimulated by electrical signals from the accompanying phone app, the material selectively brings out different colour pigments to the surface causing the change in colour.
The surface coating of the BMW iX Flow features millions of tiny E ink microcapsules, as thick as human hair containing negatively charged white pigments and positively charged black pigments. When the driver changes the colour setting, electrical fields selectively simulate either the white or the black pigments to collect at the surface of the capsule, giving the car the desired colour.
According to BMW, one of the uses for this technology is cutting down the energy consumption of the vehicle, by letting the driver turn the car reflective white in the sun or black (and therefore more heat-absorbing) in the cold.
“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.” stated Frank Weber, Member of the Board of Management of BMW.
Frank Weber, Member of the Board of Management of BMW.
Since its unveiling, the BMW iX Flow has taken the internet by storm with some of the biggest Instagram pages such as Faster Living, Supercar Blondie and Russian car vlogging superstar Alan Anileev posting the vehicle on their pages with some users even calling the videos “fake” due to the never-before-seen technology.
