BMW VISION NEXT 100

Tony Stark would be jealous. BMW’S concept is the most complete, most desirable, coolest vision of what driving — or not driving — in the future could be like.

You’ve got to see this thing in motion. The entire front windshield is a head-up display like Iron Man’s helmet. It overlays navigation instructions on the road. It tracks an unseen cyclist, predicting where he will pop out in front of the car. And it does all of this without the driver having to dive into sub-menus or press buttons.

When it switches to autonomous mode, the minimal interior reconfigures slightly to make conversation more natural. The steering wheel retracts into the dash, opening up more space. If a pedestrian walks in front of the car, an external strobe lets them know it’s safe to cross in front.

But this is not some comic book fantasy. By 2025 or 2030, BMW thinks it will be able to offer “brain off” autonomous cars in which the driver can finally relax and focus on something else. (Current semi-autonomous cars — like a Tesla with Autopilot — are like being chauffeured by your 14-year-old son. They are “brain on,” requiring the driver to watch the road and be ready to take over at any time, without warning.)

Driverless technology, electric and hydrogen motors, heads-up displays, stereo cameras, LIDAR, and cloudlinked GPS mapping are already in cars or in development. It’s not a big stretch to imagine this tech on the road in Peter Schwarzenbauer’s 10-year timeframe.