- Have you ever been shopping for a car
and found one that was just ultimately perfect spec,
except for the color?
(person yelling)
So, you can paint it, you can wrap it,
but that's gonna be expensive.
Or you could Plasti Dip it,
but we already know how that could turn out, Nolan.
- [Male] Oh God. (scary music)
- This is the worst thing I've ever done.
(Nolan laughing)
- So, most of us do what's easy,
and that's just live with the color that we got,
but BMW engineers, they hate having to pick one color,
so they did unthinkable.
They developed a car that could change color on the fly,
and even display images and complex shifting patterns.
What?
Could this be the future of automotive finishes?
I don't know.
We're gonna find out.
Let's go.
Paintificus-lithicus.
(whimsical music)
(Jeremiah laughing)
(energetic music)
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- At CES in 2022, Las Vegas, BMW rolled out
one of their iX electric SUVs, and it looked pretty plain,
until the whole thing started changing colors
like a kaleidoscope.
Hmm, you don't put a kaleidoscope over your eye,
you put it over your mouth and taste it. (laughs)
The BMW cycled through gray scale
that ebbed and flowed as if it was breathing,
then started throwing up triangles and all sorts of designs.
This was an entirely customizable car surface
where you could theoretically put memes, NFTs,
even your Instagram handle on it, or sexy logo like this.
So, what kind of alien wizardry is this?
Well, it's not based on heat
like those hypercolor T-shirts you wore
in elementary school,and it's not trick of the light
like color changing chromatic paint.
What BMW did is in fact take another decades old technology
and make it amazing.
Back in the 1970s, researchers at Xerox were messing around
with the idea of a low power paper-like display
that could be used for portable reading material.
Something like a newspaper
that would scroll through stories with no interruptions.
Does that sound familiar?
(bell dings)
The iPad. (laughs)
They never realized those dreams though,
because it was the '70s, and a computer
was bigger than your car.
Books and magazines were still a whole lot easier
than hauling around an 85-pound monitor
just to do a little reading on the toilet.
But two decades later, a couple smart guys at MIT
picked up were Xerox left off,
and made the electronic paper display a reality.
Unfortunately, it was still pretty much unusable,
because well, it was the '90s,
and computers were still here.
But those MIT mathletes didn't give up.
They refined it, and wound up going super small.
Small enough you could carry it in your hand,
and that was that.
They called the patent office, and everyone got rich.
E Ink was born.
But to see how this technology made the leap
from Kindle to car, first, we need to see
how this E Ink actually works.
So, those engineers back in the '90s
already had the idea of how to make E Ink.
They just didn't have the advanced machinery
we do now to pull it off.
Originally, they envisioned a ball with a sphere inside
that was half white, half black.
But back then, they couldn't build
that little, tiny microsphere,
so they shelved that idea for a while.
And later, smarter engineers with tinier fingers
built microcapsules that were the size of human hairs,
and they filled them with lots of super tiny black and white
microparticles that were suspended in a fluid
that they would allow electricity to easily pass through.
The black particles were positively charged,
and the white ones were negatively charged.
They laid all those tiny hair-sized capsules in a row
and applied a film over them, which is a screen.
By running an electrical charge
across the bottom of the microcapsules,
they could control where the particles were.
So, if they ran a positive charge,
the black microparticles would be repelled,
and they would jump to the top of the capsule,
making the surface appear black.
And if they used a negative charge,
the white ones would move to the top
and make it appear white.
Now, the benefit of using the microcapsules
instead of the original spheres
is that you can produce shades of gray
with a miXed negative and positive charge
that splits up the black and white particles.
And by using tons of little black and white capsules,
that basically makes a pixel, which can be used
to create larger graphics and designs.
In an E Ink display, no backlight is necessary.
Ambient light from the environment
is reflected from the surface of the display,
back to your eyeball.
The more ambient light, the brighter the display looks.
And it does all that with no glare,
so you can look at your e-reader on the beach
with no issues.
To be honest, I e-read a lot, but I do it in the pool.
And I wear this hot bathing suit.
(person whistling)
One of the biggest advantages of E Ink though,
is just how little power it uses.
Aside from the initial charge to charge the design,
it uses zero power.
You zap the little black and white microparticles,
and they run off to their separate sides to make a graphic.
And that's it.
They're stuck there and they're not gonna move
until you zap them again and change the design.
This is why Kindles and other e-readers
can run for weeks between charges.
Also, when the battery runs down,
there's actually still a display there.
I've done that a few times. (laughs)
This glare-free, super display is manufactured into a film,
then integrated into all kinds of electronics,
like phones, watches, e-readers, and a lot more.
Now, the first phone to make use of this tech
was a Motorola, which boasted days of runtime
due to the low power consumption of the E Ink display.
Okay, but that's nothing new.
Kindles have been around for years.
It's easy to program a display to work on a flat surface.
You tell your flat display you want a picture of a duck,
and then you got a freaking duck right there
for your eye holes to see.
Yeah, but what if it's three-dimensional?
If you want to E Ink the globe,
it gets a bit more complicated.
No matter what your uncle says, the Earth isn't flat,
so you can't just send a flat image
to the globe E Ink display and expect it to show right up.
Oh, no.
Have you ever seen those maps of the Earth
that properly represent the size and location
of the continents, and it's all up and down in weird shape?
Well that's because when you flatten out
a three-dimensional object,
it just doesn't look the same anymore due to surface areas,
topography, and all that kinda stuff.
I guess that's why I'm not a map guy.
I'm not a cartographer.
I'm not Lewis and Clark.
I'm not Sacagawea, obviously.
I'm not Napoleon.
And the same goes for a 2022 BMW iX.
If you were to skin the body of an iX and lay it out flat,
it wouldn't look like an iX anymore.
It would look like a giant, misshapen rectangle.
So, you can't just send your duck picture to a 3D object.
You have to create an algorithm
that will interpret the image of the duck
so that all its duck bits show up in the correct spots.
Otherwise, your duck's gonna look like a big, old piece
of Cubist art, and I'm not a fan of Picasso,
unless it's Pablo. (laughs)
when you're creating an E Ink display
in the shape of a BMW iX, you're not actually
just laying the E Ink film over the top of the car
and calling it a day.
You're actually creating algorithms
in the shape of a BMW E Ink to manage the displays,
and that is the hard part.
E Ink is superior to any old paint job in every single way,
even if it's better than metallic plum, crazy purple.
We already talked about how E Ink doesn't use any power,
but it can actually save power.
So, on blistering hot days you can switch the car
to be entirely white to reflect as much light as possible,
and reduce the strain on the cooling system.
And when it's freezing out, you flip it to the dark side
and absorb as much heat as possible
to heat up the interior more quickly.
But what if it's April 25th, Jeremiah Day (laughs),
and it's not too hot, but it's not too cold?
You need a light jacket.
Well, forget about the climate for a minute
and start thinking about more useful things.
What if instead of a dinky, little turn signal,
the whole freaking left side of your car blinked
when you wanted to merge?
What if the car would quickly cycle through black and white
when your battery was low as an indicator?
Also, letting all your other friends know
your battery's low. (laughs)
What if you got off your plane after a week
of partying at Ibiza, and you forgot to take a picture
of where you parked your car?
Well, you hit the park mode and your paint job
just freaking like disco ball
trying to catch your hungover eye,
and that is the whole point.
It is totally customizable.
You can put any design you can imagine
on the surface of your car.
Are you feeling like a zebra?
Well (beep) slap them stripes on.
What about a cheetah?
Give me the polka dots, Mr. Bot.
Did some guy cut you off?
Literally give him a finger.
Put the finger on your car right on the side.
You're only limited by your imagination.
And even then, you'll probably be able to download
custom designs from other people online.
But just like everything, there are some compromises.
It's not all fun and games.
Now, I just want to say if you've made it this far,
I apologize, but E Ink for a car doesn't really exist yet.
- [Male] What!
- Yeah, yeah, they made that one, but it's just a concept.
The reality is, is that there's no way
they could release this right now to you and me.
Okay, first, there are some limits.
If you have an e-reader and have accidentally
pulled up some images, they're soft and a bit grainy,
and kind of stuck like a image in the '90s.
Second, there is color, but it isn't that great.
E Ink color is basically an RGB matriX.
So, if you want a splash of green across your hood,
it will have to mix in a bunch
of yellow and blue microcapsules together
with different charges, and that will never be as precise
as an OLED display.
Also, it's pretty cool that they skinned a Bimmer
with E Ink, but they'll never ever park that sucker outside.
E Ink is super fragile.
Scratch a fender, or even an angry ex
will cost you thousands and thousands of dollars
to get your customizable paint job working again,
because simple damage can create
an all-over glitching look to any E Ink display.
There's also the weather to account for.
Even with a very solid, protective clear coat,
any single weather event could render
your E Ink whip totally unreadable.
Two thumbs down, or brown.
♪ Mm-mm ♪
Many concept cars never leave the brains of the engineers
who cobbled them together, but some make it to auto shows
where people drool all over them.
If E Ink catches on at all, it's gonna be a very long time
before we see it out there in the road
due to its sheer volume of hurdles to hurdle.
But that's what concepts are all about.
We may not see a full E Ink covered car,
but we may see E Ink trim pieces that can indicate turns,
or tell other drivers freaking read between the lines.
Either way though, the future is gonna be customizable.
We're into skins, and NFTs, and your car's
gonna be one of those, man.
I got my own NFT.
No, I don't. (laughs)
- Last night I had a dream.
I was on this ranch, and there were horses everywhere.
Not just regular horses.
Big, beautiful, sturdy buff horses.
That place is called Buff Horse Ranch.
Now, unfortunately, that was just a dream,
but these shirts we made are 100% real,
and 100% cotton.
Available now at donutmedia.com.
(peaceful music)
(upbeat music)
- Thank you guys so much for watching this episode of B2B.
Follow us here on Donut @donutmedia.
Follow me @jeremiahburton.
There's a dog right here.
Hey, bubby.
Can I lift you up?
He says, "No, man."
Also, leave a comment below to let me know
if I'm keepin' my stache, or shave it.
- [Max] Well, you already decided.
- I shaved it.
No, I know that Max. (laughs)
I know, I'm just saying I can regrow it, though.
- [Max] Can you?
- Oh, yeah, man.
It just takes me about siX months. (laughs)
- [Max] Like E Ink.
- Yeah, it's like E Ink.
Thank you. I love you.
Bye, for now.
(upbeat music)
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Okay.
But first, we need to see how this E Ink actually works.
Electronic ink.
(male laughing)
It's like a digital squid.
(group laughing)
- [Max] Electronic ink.
- (laughs) It's electronic ink.
Electronic ink.