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For decades, BMW has been tilting the centers of its dashboards towards the driver because when you’re behind the wheel of one of its cars, you’re clearly the only person who matters. Well, the automaker is planning on carrying the tradition on into its next, electrified decade using equipment seemingly aped from the world of consumer electronics.
Slated to come first on the company’s iNext EV set to arrive in 2021, BMW will be fitting its future cars with an ultra-wide, curved touchscreen in front of the driver. Admittedly, Mercedes-Benz already offers super wide screens that span around two-thirds of the dash what with its MBUX system, but BMW’s setup looks like it’ll be bigger and curved…because, y’know, it’s a driver-focused “Ultimate Driving Machine.”
Outside of the automotive space, super-wide curved monitors are commonly found in the battle stations of some of the most avid PC gamers looking for a field-of-view more pertinent to destroying noobs. They’re also apparently employed on the desks of Wall Street traders—because with the kind of coin those guys and girls make, why not?
According to some automotive big-wigs, massive screens, curved or otherwise, should stay in our offices and basements and out of our cars.
In any case, when the tech comes to BMW’s cabins, they’ll be held up by thin, magnesium brackets and appear to float in place. BMW also says the glass used will be non-reflective in such a way that fussy, sun-shading hoods won’t be necessary.
“The curved display is set in high-quality materials and is virtually freely suspended on the instrument panel,” said BMW design head Domagoj Dukec. “This makes it a key element in terms of the modern, luxurious and generous sense of space in the BMW iNext”
