Leave it to a woman to invent a car that changes colors. That would be Stella Clarke who developed the BMW iFlow.
Loving both cars and colors, I was excited to see the news headline about the color changing car. Reading on, I discovered it can only do black, white and gray, a disappointment, as I was envisioning an entire palette of colors. Others shared my sentiment. A leading car design website headline suggested, “Someone Tell BMW It Made An IX That Changes Shades, Not Colors.”
Despite BMW’s misleading use of the word “colors”, the iFlow is a sensational concept car. Here’s how it came to be.
Its developer, Stella Clark, hails from Australia. As a child, she quickly abandoned dolls in favor of taking apart and reassembling all sorts of mechanical and electronic devices. This eventually led to a research Doctorate degree on “Telecontrol of Robots With Haptic (touch) Devices.” Upon graduation, BMW in Germany snapped her up.
And then one day during the Covid lockdown, Clark decided to pull apart her Kindle. She wondered if its e-ink could be applied to automobiles. E-ink consists of tiny microcapsules, about the width of a human hair, that can be stimulated to change pigment with an electrical signal. The next step consisted of cutting tiny triangular e-ink panels and making a flexible body wrap for a car, a painstaking procedure.
Her brainchild, the BMW iFlow, stole the latest car show in Las Vegas. It flashed, pulsed, rippled and faded between black and white and shades of gray. BMW touts its environmental credentials: white for sun reflection on hot days, black to absorb the sun rays in winter.
Stella Clark states the car’s true selling point to future consumers. “The color change gives the driver the freedom to express different facets of their personality or even their enjoyment of change outwardly.”
We will all have to wait a while to flaunt our personalities to the world. The iFlow refuses to do its act in extreme conditions of heat and cold. More work ahead before it hits the showrooms.
Mary–sort of like black & white movies before technicolor.
And now I’m remembering how the film commercials had a certain hue . . .
just before technicolor was born . . .
xxxevie
ps: i tend to agree with pete . . .
As an owner of two autos – one white, one black – I find neither of these ‘shades of grey’ very compelling. Hardly deserving of the ‘colour’ handle, n’est pas?! But the car-buying Public has spoken, with typically pedestrian taste. Conformity may be the enemy of Colour-courage. Of course, there are many more important considerations-to-consider when laying out big-$$ for your personal transpo.
Great reply, Pete. Yes, many people are afraid of color. I fought several battles to paint my art room walls in fabulous colors that children would love. I was only able to do it because I promised to paint over the brilliant colors if the adults couldn’t handle it. Fortunately, they liked the results.