#HTE

The New BMW Concept Thinks Motorcyclists Shouldn’t Need Helmets

BMW recently rolled out the Motorrad Vision Next 100, an aggressively futuristic concept motorcycle that aims to “digitize”, “simplify” and “totally free” us from the traditional riding experience. The design’s biggest claim to fame isn’t its high efficiency electric power, self-balancing gyros, or even the wacky Tron uniframe. Its creators propose that in a few decades, motorcycles will be so effortlessly intelligent that all need for thick protective gear will be gone.

The bike self-balances even while parked, making operation in even extreme conditions feasible for a wider range of riders. Simply don the smart glasses to display road conditions and traffic data, and hop on. While the wearer looks straight forward the glasses will clear, except to display necessary alerts. But look in a particular direction, and the glasses can gather and deliver more specific information. The smart glasses and bike are intended to be used in conjunction with a full bodysuit, which also monitors environmental information to aid the quality of the ride. Assuming we can still breathe the air in 100 years, it’s an attractively minimal setup.

With all that immersive tech as the backdrop, the designers still emphasized the lack of distractions as integral to the project. Holger Hampf, head of design/customer experience at Motorrad, noted “It was important to us that the analogue riding experience would remain undisturbed. The display and operating concept acts so discreetly that it creates a natural and familiar movement.” Certainly a reasonable goal for a vehicle with no protective exoskeleton.

Edgar Heinrich, Head of Design, describes the far future motorcycle as a “Great escape” from daily life, and a better way to connect with the ride than the body-plus-machine collaboration we use today. I’d guess the future that Motorrad envisions is a smoother and more efficient landscape than the one I foresee. To say nothing of the user-error accidents that endlessly creative humans manage to create in even idiot proof systems. I bet you could roll this thing dangerously, particularly if you thought you couldn’t and wanted to test it. Hotdogs are going to hotdog. I also anticipate that in 100 years we’ll have come up with a better looking pair of goggles than those things glasses-havers had to wear in chemistry class. For all the slick linework there are some decidedly retro nods throughout this project.

By plotting this futuristic tech at least 30 years ahead of where we are today, BMW gets to lean into the product design fun and let us bother with imagining how the world will have become that much safer and more predictable in the meantime. 

BMW CEO Harald Krüger, via

In the age old tradition of concept cars having it both ways, this concept’s cool design may predict real world tech within a few decades, but its grand safety claims could only possibly bear out if it and all the other vehicles around it played by the same behavioral rules (pointedly not the appeal of motorcycles), and if the environmental sensing were so advanced that it could anticipate subtle dangers faced by even veteran riders. 

So let’s enjoy the eye candy, with an eye on our rear view mirrors and our helmets firmly on.