The back story!
It has been several years that BMW has been looking into ways to make a car’s exterior stand out, beyond individual colors. To that end, in 2019, the X6 was presented with the Vantablack VBx2 paint treatment that can almost entirely absorb light. Following that in 2022, the iX Flow came along, featuring color-changing E Ink.
Technology in the early years only had the ability to change between black and white and everything in between, resulting in lots of gray. In 2023, an evolution of E ink was presented through the i Vision Dee, with the concept featuring a color-changing body with a whopping 32 selectable colors.
As early as this year, BMW also revisited the technology for the i5 Flow NOSTOKANA, molded after the E34 5 Series Art Car penned by Esther Mahlangu in 1991.
Moving forward – before the end of the decade to be exact – E Ink could make it to production. This means, quite simply, that color-changing cars are coming! This won’t be a cheap endeavor, though, and is expected to be costly only at first and limited to certain regions.
How it works!
It’s important to note that color-changing technology isn’t paint, but instead a combination of a wrap and an advanced version of an e-reader screen, similar to a Kindle or Nook. A super-thin wrap is designed to adhere precisely to the dimensions of the fully electric SUV tasked with showcasing the cutting-edge technology. It is cut with lasers to fit each body panel perfectly.
Within the wrap is millions of microcapsules that have a diameter equivalent to the thickness of a single human hair. Each of the capsules contain negatively charged white pigment and positively charged black pigment. Electricity is applied to switch the charge and the pigments then change places to effectively and wondrously change the car’s color.
E Ink, which becomes in use by the simple push of a button, uses about the same amount of energy as a light bulb or a single LED strip in the door, meaning that it will not drain the car’s battery, luckily. For reference, the i5 Flow NOSTAKANA had 1,349 sections of individually controllable film obtained after a laser-cutting film process. On the i Vision Dee, there were 240 E Ink segments. The iX Flow before that had just 60. This serves to illustrate the rapid progress reached in just a short amount of time, with the three concepts relying on a technology derived from the Kindle.
R&D Engineer Stella Clarke explained how it works: “It’s powered with electricity, and each little segment needs two contact points and you apply a small voltage between them to change the colors, but when you take the power away, the color stays there. When the car is off, it stays the same color. It doesn’t need energy to be on! No light can do that. And to change the color of an entire vehicle doesn’t require much energy at all. You only pull about 20 watts.”
And while the color changing is plain cool from a novelty factor, there are actual benefits to this technology. For example, E Ink can help owners turn their cars white on a summer day so that the cabin doesn't get too hot, or, if you have issues locating your car in a crowded parking lot (who hasn’t experienced that!??), changing its colors will make it stand out. Lastly and perhaps most importantly, emergency vehicles could get color-changing bodies instead of relying on roof-mounted light bars to make their presence known.
In addition, E Ink technology itself is extremely energy efficient due to the fact that the technology draws power only when the actual color change process is occurring, and it does not need to draw power to maintain a color change.
While the progress is exciting to say the least, there will be usage limitations since regulators won’t fancy the color changing vehicles in traffic. Clarke pointed out that new laws will likely limit the use of E Ink only when the vehicle is static, so as not to cause distractions, which ultimately increase the risk of accidents.
Pushing the limits of aesthetics is nothing new for BMW, and this color-changing technology is just one more way it makes its presence – and its innovative practices – known. From the Vantablack X6, the world’s first and only vehicle with light–absorbing Vantablack coating to more and more applications of E ink, BMW’s are now more unique than ever.
Will BMW ever sell cars that can change colors? That is yet to be known, although BMW says that currently this phenomenon is an “in-house project” – meaning they are testing and refining the technology – with cost also playing a factor.
Regardless of the timing, it is exciting to even fathom such a thing! Leading technology: BMW definitely has you colored! Keep an “eye” on the future plan!
