Autoportal India

The concept car called the BMW iX Flow would be the world’s first ‘colour-changing’ car that will use electronic ink technology, normally found in e-readers, to transform the car’s exterior into a variant of patterns of grey and white.

Las Vegas: German luxury car-maker BMW has unveiled some exciting features of its future model that will not just provide an extraordinary riding experience to its customers but could also change colour. The concept car called the BMW iX Flow would be the world’s first ‘colour-changing’ car that will use electronic ink technology, normally found in e-readers, to transform the car’s exterior into a variant of patterns of grey and white

The luxe carmaker unveiled the concept car at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas. The car that BMW displayed at the tech event could only shift between grey and white, however, the company said the technology will be expanded to cover a spectrum of colours.

“This is really energy-efficient colour change using the technology E Ink…So we took this material – it’s kind of a thick paper – and our challenge was to get this on a 3D object like our cars,” news agency Reuters reported quoting BMW research engineer Stella Clarke.

How will the car change colour?

Customers will be able to change the colour of their luxe car’s exterior via a phone app. When stimulated by electrical signals controlled by a phone app, the material of the car’s body brings different pigments to the surface, causing the car to take on a different shade or design, such as racing stripes.

According to Clarke, in the future, the changes would also be controlled by a button on the car’s dashboard or perhaps even by hand gestures. No energy is needed to maintain the colour the driver selects, according to BMW.

“My favourite use case is the use of colour to influence sunlight reflections,” said Clarke. “On a hot, sunny day like today, you could switch the colour white to reflect sunlight. On a cold day, you could switch it black to absorb the heat.”