With the BMW i Vision Circular, the BMW Group is looking ahead to a compact BMW for the year 2040 that is focused squarely on sustainability and luxury. The four-seater is fully electrically powered and offers a generous amount of interior space within its around four-metre-long footprint. It has furthermore been designed according to circular economy principles across the board and therefore symbolises the BMW Group's ambitious plan to become the world's most sustainable manufacturer in the individual premium mobility space. The Vision Vehicle is one of five different concept vehicles with which the BMW Group is presenting how it envisages individual urban mobility at the IAA Mobility 2021 event. Under a single umbrella spanning electric mobility, digitalisation and sustainability, the five pioneering concepts create a versatile mobility mix on two and four wheels fuelled by sustainable thinking, which comprehensively addresses an extremely wide range of mobility needs in the face of fast-changing requirements and growing challenges.
Circular economy and secondary materials cut CO2 emissions
The BMW Group's overriding aim as it strives to achieve climate neutrality is to reduce CO2 emissions throughout a vehicle's entire life cycle. Besides electrifying the product portfolio and switching to renewable energy for manufacturing, the company is focusing particularly on circular economy principles and the use of secondary materials. These materials, such as secondary aluminium and secondary steel, can be obtained by recycling waste material and then reused. The process for supplying secondary materials is far less harmful to the environment and carbon intensive compared to the extraction and manufacture of primary material. This can bring about a major improvement in a vehicle's carbon footprint, especially on the supply chain side. At present, vehicles from the BMW Group are manufactured using nearly 30 per cent recycled and reused material on average. The 'secondary first' approach is intended to gradually increase this figure to 50 per cent.
Vehicle-to-grid opens up new possible uses
Alongside all its material and design innovations, the BMW i Vision Circular also offers the possibility of usage in a bidirectional charging scenario. Here, the vehicle would act as a mobile energy storage device and feed power to its surroundings, e.g. buildings and infrastructure. It can even be fed back into the power grid to help absorb peaks in demand.
Data-based smart mobility for maximum efficiency in urban traffic
Another key measure in the drive towards sustainable urban mobility extends beyond the actual vehicle: making intelligent use of the available real-time and long-term traffic data for maximum mobility efficiency. To date, the BMW Group has manufactured far in excess of 14 million connected vehicles that are now on the world's roads. What's more, the degree of connectivity and the precision of the sensor technology used are constantly improving. The information gathered by each vehicle isn't just used to support its own functions though. With the user's consent, it is shared with the entire connected fleet, allowing all vehicles to benefit from this swarm intelligence. Speed recommendations could be optimised to make better use of traffic light phases ("green wave"), traffic flows forecasted more accurately and periods of congestion minimised as a result of vehicles communicating with each other and their environment. CO2 emissions caused by stop-start traffic or even searching for a parking spot could be reduced significantly across a large number of users.
Further insights with the BMW i Insight Vision App
The BMW i Insight Vision App offers a novel new way of experiencing and exploring the BMW i Vision Circular interactively. The app uses a wealth of different examples to visualise the four basic principles of circular economy - RE:THINK, RE:DUCE, RE:USE and RE:CYCLE. All aspects of the Vision Vehicle can be discovered in an entertaining way with the help of augmented reality. Additional information, background details and facts have been added to enrich the user experience and offer a wide variety of insights into both the design process and the materials and technologies used. The app's design has been modelled on the My BMW App. The BMW i Insight Vision App experience is available exclusively on the show stand.
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