Well, brace yourselves because BMW has built a concept car that, despite being incredibly exciting, you can't actually buy. It's called Vision Driving Experience, and in classic BMW fashion, it's here it shows off all the whiz-bang technology that will filter down into its Neue Klasse cars, including the upcoming electric 3 Series and the next-generation M3.
Central to this futuristic Bavarian concoction is something BMW calls the Heart of Joy—a brand-new electronic control unit that manages everything from power delivery to braking, charging, and steering. The boffins in Munich claim this thing can process data 10 times faster than their previous ECUs, which, if you think about it, means it's practically reading your mind before you even realise you want to go faster.
But here's the headline: the Vision Driving Experience belts out an utterly absurd 18,000Nm of torque. Yes, you read that correctly—eighteen thousand Newton metres. That's the same amount of torque required to move a small moon out of orbit.
To put that into perspective, a Ferrari 812 Superfast musters about 718Nm. This thing, at least in theory, could tow a planet. It's unlikely that the production cars will retain such lunacy, but if even a fraction of that power makes it into future electric M cars, it'll be brisk.
BMW's engineers are given far too much time, and coffee has also been seen fit to fit the car with colour-shifting wheels. These glow green when accelerating, blue when regenerating energy, and orange when braking. Presumably, this means that in city traffic, the car will constantly resemble a Christmas tree having an existential crisis.
BMW hasn't explained exactly how this trickery works, but it's linked to the e-ink technology from the i Vision Dee concept. That car could change its entire body colour at will, which is wonderful, but one wonders if BMW could instead spend some time making indicators that people actually use. Just a thought.
While this is still a heavily camouflaged test mule, it bears more than a passing resemblance to the Vision Neue Klasse concept. It's got tIt's slim, integrated headlights and kidney grilles, which, mercifully, don't appedon't be growing any larger. The rear, too, echoes the Neue Klasse concept, though the bumper features some rather large openings. One assumes they serve an aerodynamic purpose, but let's be let's: they just look cool.
Inside, things get even more futuristic. The centrepiece is a vast, rhomboidal infotainment screen, which sounds unnecessarily complicated, and a second, almost dashboard-wide display acts as the instrument cluster. Otherwise, it's fairlit'sarse, with carbon-fibre bucket seats that appear to be upholstered with little more than hope and determination.
When Can You Have One? Well, you can't. I can't, not in this form. However, the technology it previews will make its way into production Neue Klasse models, with the first of them rolling off BMW's Hungary production line later this year. If all goes to plan, the new electric 3 Series should debut in 2026, presumably with a less ridiculous torque figure and perhaps wheels that don't look like they belong in an avant-garde art installation.
In the meantime, we can only sit back and admire BMW's vision for the future—a vision that, thankfully, still includes some of the madness that makes cars like this worth talking about.
