BMW just put AR in a car, and it finally makes perfect sense

If you asked me to wear AR glasses on top of my regular glasses for a short ride in a lovely BMW EV, I would’ve said, “No thanks.” But now I’m glad I agreed because I can almost believe that augmented reality makes sense, not just for passengers but as a tool for drivers, as well.

Here in a parking lot at CES 2024 where car tech is everywhere, I hopped into an all-electric BMW iX M60 and donned a pair of Xreal Air 2 augmented reality glasses. I had to wear them over my regular eyeglasses because there was no time to put the right prescription lenses in them. Fortunately, the AR effect still looked quite good.

As soon as I put the frames on, I could see a small circular platform sitting on the dash. For this experience, BMW put me in the passenger seat while a BMW rep drove (without AR glasses) and explained the technology to me. For this demo, we drove out of the lot, away from the convention center, and onto the streets of Las Vegas.

What I saw through the glasses surprised and often delighted me. It’s the subtlety that makes it work. There’s nothing that jumps up to occlude your vision. Instead, the mostly translucent objects appear on the dashboard or the road ahead. To be clear, though, AR elements can appear anywhere you look: out the windshield, out the passenger window. I forgot sometimes that everyone else couldn’t see what the Xreal Air 2 AR glasses were showing me.

Throughout our trip, I saw green arrows directing me to my destination; they would curve left or right to alert me of an upcoming turn (comically, the driver who was not wearing the glasses managed to miss one of our turns). The idea here is that this guidance could replace your standard GPS navigation system. Granted, the system is connected to a phone that is connected to the car. Still, I didn’t have to glance down at another screen to see where I was going.