While automotive technology has not changed
that much over the last decades,
the car industry dove into design.
And say what you will about BMW,
but they have some really
talented designers over there.
Some of the models look really fabulous.
Pure poetry!
Like, what Botticelli did with the Venus.
But there are some designs one might consider … messy.
Can design cross the threshold into art?
-Where is the ethereal? -Huh?
The ethereal!
Where are the colors of nature?
Where is the light?
We're talking about an e-car, right?
Design. Who's that supposed to be?
So. Come with me.
We want to find this fabulous new car, the iNEXT.
Our coming plan?
To sneak into the top-secret BMW Abteilung für Design,
the place no one has ever before entered with a camera.
We can all just walk in,
it's not so secretive.
Designers are the magicians of the modern world.
Where would Apple be without Jony Ive?
Or Karl Lagerfeld without a ponytail?
Unthinkable!
And in the car industry designers
have a special responsibility.
These guys shape the cars
that we will have to look at for the next decade.
They have to be super intelligent,
super precise, and just awesome.
Just like Adrian van Hooydonk,
Head of Design, BMW Group.
Probably mentally we live in society
as it will be in five or ten years from now.
So, we try to imagine,
or project what the future will be like,
and that is what leads us in our work.
I can’t show my face in these golf carts anymore!
Look!
Awesome! – A BMW!
Beautiful design
Show us your elegant curves!
Your heavenly shape!
Ok now … Can we see the iNEXT?
Maybe a little bit but not much.
Maybe the wheels?
One wheel.
Okay.
Can we turn five minutes in the other direction
before I get up?
We had hoped that rotating Mr. Hooydonk
would make him so dizzy that he'd just show us
the iNEXT by accident.
We wanted to make something very human.
We have taken actually a lot of care
to design something that appeals
to the emotion first
and then shows all its cleverness later.
Could you show us how you would draw,
like, the iNEXT NEXT NEXT?
iOvernext …
No, I mean …
I think what makes sense if you show just on a white paper …
German design language,
I think, is more powerful,
it is more straight … and tension.
And in China they more …
like, softer lines and … yeah.
This I found is a little bit different.
Yes, maybe it's a good thing
that it's covered up
because when you see it this way,
you see some characteristic edges.
The angular wheel housings, this side light, …
And what you see emerge here
is what is really relevant.
Yeah, pure relevance.
Thank you so much.
A car under a blanket.
That is absolutely what we wanted to see.
How are we supposed to make a documentary
if they keep hiding everything from us?
What they don’t realize is
that film works with sound as well.
Where's the sound?
The drumming of the rain,
the squeaking windshield wipers…
… The rustling of leaves in the wind, …
What?
We're talking about e-cars here,
there's nothing better!
State of the art!
What esoteric garbage are you spewing now?
Come on, the electric car is super quiet!
Zzzzzz
Mobility is the revolution.
With progress!
Stagnation is death!
Silence … makes us feel uncomfortable.
Like the feeling you get
when you meet the love of your life
and she tells you about her stomach problems.
With electric cars it’s exactly the same.
They have managed to achieve
what we have always dreamed of,
namely remaining silent.
But now BMW hires young designers
to create sounds
to prevent these cars from being silent.
So stupid!
So, here we are.
We are in my studio.
And they do not only hire designers.
They also hire Academy Award-winner Hans Zimmer
to come up with the sound of the future.
I just went to the desert recently
and it was the most beautiful sound.
The silence was beautiful and sometimes
what you have to do is to emphasize something.
You have to actually …
especially silence …
you have to frame it in something.
The excitement of creating sounds for electric vehicles
is of course that it is a carte blanche.
There is no sound in the electric vehicle,
so it is literally painting on a blank canvas
being able to infuse it with your art,
infuse it with what you want people
to feel and to try to give them an experience
that they have not had before.
Sound is essential for electric mobility
because in this case sound is information.
It informs people, pedestrians,
that an object is moving.
So they have to watch out.
But please refer to the iNEXT
as our main thing that we are talking about.
Okay … we had agreed that we are not talking
about the iNEXT specifically.
At least in terms of sound …
Yeah … yeah ok, ok.
But can we at least hear it?
Well, here is the wheel that I promised you.
Just the one wheel.
That is the wheel …
That is all you are going to get.
Very quickly the wheel …
That is it!
Oh …
Now you see it, now you do not.
We have to admit to ourselves
that our project is pointless.
Blindly we drove into a dead end,
in the naïve belief that we would be allowed
to take a single look
at this oh-so-intelligent-and-great car.
Let’s face it: We are chasing a phantom.
I think that right now mobility
is changing rapidly,
life is changing rapidly.
Fifty years is a long time to look ahead
but I do think that people
still do want to be mobile.
And I do also believe that individual mobility
will still be something that people like.
How it will look and what energy it will use,
that will change dramatically.
We use this space also to every now
and then test something …
Is this something we should not see?
It is definitely something you should not see!
I hope it keeps moving and moves away.
Good design that becomes art
can only be created
when people work together.
You're absolutely right!
People have to work …
… work together!
Working together! Exactly!
They create the capital!
But what they need to do is …
think in hybrid terms.
Hybrid thinking, right?
With the ability of one person alone,
like Messi for instance.
Messi didn't believe that his legs …
Ronaldo!
… could really play soccer.
He could have just thought about it …
-Of course he thought about it!
-No! No, he didn't think about it.
That's exactly why he …