BMW’s Panoramic iDrive moves eyes back to the road with 3D heads-up display across windshield

The new system will be included on all new BMWs from the end of this year

Sitting into a BMW will look a lot different from the end of this year. All new cars from the luxury German brand will ditch traditional dash gauges altogether in favour of a new futuristic 3D heads-up display that goes right across the base of the entire windshield.

There’ll also be a central, lower-placed console screen (with at least some physical button controls, as per regulatory requirements) and a new steering wheel with haptic buttons. The iDrive twirling control dial, meanwhile, is being retired.

Unveiled at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, the ‘Panoramic Vision’ bit of its new ‘Panoramic iDrive’ system is, BMW says, designed so that you’re looking a lot more in the direction of the road than at controls, knobs, screens and dials lower down the front of the car.

The system will be helped along by newer, enhanced software that includes a Chat GPT-like AI assistant which, unlike many such attempts by car companies, actually works.

It’s part of BMW’s plan for its Neue Klasse platform which aims to reset the company’s driving ecosystem for the next few years, especially on the user-interface and technology front.

It will also allow the cockpit area to be customisable with multiple profiles, which may be used in different cars.

The decision to reorganise the dashboard and effectively remove a gauge cluster, following the minimalist design choices that brands such as Tesla have made before, wasn’t an easy one to make, BMW’s chief technology officer, Frank Weber, told the Irish Independent. Calling itself the ‘ultimate driving machine’ may not seem to some like a natural fit with an increasingly computerised, digitised cockpit.

“I can give you some insights to the discussion we had internally,” he said.

“As you can imagine, this was not an easy decision. We had many people who were very critical, and we had to convince them. But after they sat in and tried it, they weren’t concerned any more. But every new thing is a risk.”

Reporting on:independent.ie