BMW’s next-gen EVs depend on an unassuming black box called ‘Heart of Joy’

BMW’s Vision Driving Experience is simply a trial mule for its Neue Klasse platform. | Image: BMW

Last November, I strapped into the rear rider spot of an all-electric, four-door sedan with BMW trial operator and 24-hour racer Jens Klingmann down the wheel. It was a acold time astatine BMW’s Performance Driving Center successful Greer, SC, and beneath the five-point harnesses, rotation cage, and heavy camouflaged body, Klingmann had an unexpected co-pilot: a tiny achromatic container called the “Heart of Joy.”

It was an unusual sanction for an absorbing suite of tech features powering my little three-lap stint connected the 1.7-mile show track. The Heart of Joy represents an absorbing aboriginal for the German marque that inactive wants to beryllium known arsenic the “Ultimate Driving Machine” successful the electrified future. 

The VDX

The conveyance we rode successful is called the Vision Driving Experience (VDX), a one-off built specifically for investigating this supposedly magic achromatic box, arsenic good arsenic much upcoming features for BMW’s Neue Klasse platform. The VDX uses fans to suck it down to the way for amended traction astatine speed. Those fans are large wrong the vehicle, making it astir intolerable to perceive overmuch much than a roar portion we’re hurtling astir the way astatine speeds nearing 90 mph, adjacent though the car itself is simply a mostly …

Read the afloat communicative astatine The Verge.