Oliver Zipse sets the bar very high as he begins his keynote speech at the Pearl Theater at the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas.
You can't come here without having a "real sensation" with you.
And this is what the CEO of BMW thinks he can present to the audience when “Dee” rolls onto the stage a little later.
It is a futuristic car, albeit minimalist in design, with which the Munich-based group wants to express its vision for a digital driving experience of the future.
Roland Lindner
Business correspondent in New York.
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Henning Peitsmeier
Business correspondent in Munich.
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Dee can speak and does so tonight in a woman's voice.
She says she's "more than a car," namely an "ultimate companion."
She speaks to Zipse ("Thanks, Oliver") and squints her headlight, which also acts as a kind of display.
Zipse raves that Dee is "the best thing since the wheel was invented".
A moderator says the car has a "digital soul" and that it can display facial expressions on the headlights.
At some point Arnold Schwarzenegger also comes on stage and reminds us that science fiction has often become reality.
Digital experience in the foreground
BMW is putting a lot of gimmicks and special effects at the CES in Las Vegas this evening.
But Zipse insists the Dee is more than "just another show car."
The vehicle, whose name stands for "Digital Emotional Experience", is intended to set a direction for the "New Class", BMW's future generation of electric cars.
The first cars from this group, a sedan and a compact sporty SUV (SUV), are expected to be released in 2025.
"Everything you saw tonight is a lot closer to reality than you might imagine."
Dee is "reduced" both inside and out, as BMW puts it, because the focus should be on the digital experience.
But there is an optical bang effect: the car can change its exterior color.
BMW is once again using a technology that was already presented at the CES last year.
At that time there was only a change between black, white and gray tones.
Dee can take on 32 different colors and shows up on the stage in Las Vegas in blue, yellow and purple, among other things.
The most striking thing inside the vehicle is the digital display, which can extend over the entire windscreen.
It can be set to five levels, ranging from a purely analogue view through individual digital elements to a completely virtual display.
BMW relies on a modular system
"In the future, the physical and digital worlds will merge," says BMW chief designer Adrian van Hooydonk, who gave Dee the form of a compact sedan that is somewhat reminiscent of the legendary 02 series design from the 1970s.
At a preliminary presentation in Moosach near Munich, both Zipse and van Hooydonk vehemently denied that Dee could also give a design indication of the all-electric BMW of the next few years: It is a visionary vehicle, not a design study.
But BMW customers will soon experience some of what Dee is showing at CES in terms of electrification, digitization and sustainability in the next models from the white-and-blue brand.
The "New Class" is intended to shift the focus of the drive to e-mobility at BMW.
Then the first all-electric sedans in the format of the BMW 3 Series will roll off the production line at the new plant in Debrecen, Hungary.
To do this, BMW relies on a modular system for which an 800-volt drive architecture is being developed for the first time and in which batteries with round cells are used.
The group expects the new cells to increase the charging speed by up to 30 percent and increase the car range by up to 30 percent.
That is why an additional almost 1 billion euros are being invested in a factory for high-voltage batteries in the second largest Hungarian city, which lies on the border with Romania.
The “New Class” should also be prepared for autonomous driving.
BMW has already received US approval for the assistance systems in its 7 Series self-driving sedans.
The driver of a BMW i7 can take his hands off the steering wheel at speeds of up to 140 km/h on the Autobahn and let the computer take control, including changing lanes (level 3 of autonomous driving).
The only condition: he must be able to take control of the vehicle within ten seconds.
Otherwise, he can surf the Internet, read the newspaper or watch Netflix.
According to McKinsey experts, advanced driver assistance systems can become a significant source of revenue for the automotive industry.
They expect annual growth rates of 15 to 20 percent in the market for assistance systems and autonomous driving, so that sales should grow from 50 billion dollars today to 300 to 400 billion dollars in 2035.
However, most of the sales then come from Level 4 functions, i.e. driverless driving under certain conditions.
The cost of around $5,000 per vehicle, which is still high today, is likely to decrease as the number of vehicles increases.
"The dream of a driverless car is not over," says McKinsey partner Kersten Heineke.
"Although some companies have postponed the market launch of their fully autonomous vehicles,