BMW to bring colour-changing cars to customers in ‘three to five years’

The engineer behind BMW's colour-changing car tech says it can do far more than help you find your car in a shopping centre car park.

Thanks to groundbreaking new technology, BMW owners could soon change the colour of their car with the swipe of a smartphone screen – and it has massive practical implications for road safety, sustainability and convenience.

Dr Stella Clarke, the Australian-born engineer behind BMW's E Ink technology, told local media the capability could be seen on customer-delivered BMW models as soon as 2027.

When asked at a Melbourne media event whether "three to five years" was a viable production timeline for E Ink, Dr Clarke responded: "I'll answer that with, 'Yes'."

"The vision would be to bring it to a broad customer base and the dream is that in a car factory, you no longer have the traditional spray-painting cabins, but rather everything gets [E Ink] and every car can do every colour," Dr Clarke tells Drive.

The technology sees the same material used in e-readers like the Kindle applied to the surfaces of your car, capable of instantaneously changing colour while providing maximum stability and requiring very little energy.

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