BMW Group and Local Motors announce Winners of “Urban Driving Experience Challenge”

Munich. The BMW Group and Local Motors announce the winners of their first collaborative design and development project – the Urban Driving Experience Challenge. The challenge asked the Local Motors community of nearly 30,000 designers, engineers, fabricators and enthusiasts to define the future premium vehicle features and functions that will define the urban driving experience in the year 2025. The three-week competition was held on the Forge at LocalMotors.com from September 25 thru October 16, 2012. By the end of the challenge period, nearly 3,500 individual design boards had been submitted in support of just over 400 innovative feature concepts.

After an extensive review and validation process, 286 entries were qualified as having met all specified criteria. A council of 14 BMW Group executives reviewed these entries, and BMW Management selected the top ten concepts. “Our experience with the Local Motors community far exceeded our expectations,” says Dr. Christoph Grote, Managing Director of BMW Group Research and Technology. “It was very important for us that the entries showed a clear customer need behind the functionality, and that they applied specifically to an urban environment. We were impressed, not just with the number of entries, but by the real innovation and quality of each presentation. Working with such an inspired group of designers and engineers has been exciting and has given us a broader perspective for future mobility solutions.”

The entries represent a wide range of concepts including interior design, connectivity, the future of car sharing and the application of new technologies, among others. The final ranking of the top ten BMW-selected concepts was determined based on how the Local Motors community rated each concept on each of three criteria: How do you rate the expected customer benefit? How do you rate the completeness of the submission? How do you rate the impact on urban mobility in 2025?

First place was awarded to Anthony Franze (aka Franze) from Adelaide, Australia for his winning design, the premium vehicle sharing club BMW Reward Me. Anthony Franze will receive a $7,500 cash prize and a trip to Munich, Germany to meet with Managing Director of BMW Group Research and Technology Dr. Christoph Grote. Second and third place prizes of $2,500 and $1,500, respectively, were awarded to Kevin Lo (aka ReLoad) of Washington, USA for his concept BMW Vision BreatheFree, and to Guillaume Coolen (aka Orbitlane), from Tokyo, Japan, for his BMW Eye-3.+

The complete list of Finalists, including countries of origin, can is as follows:

1st place:                               BMW Reward Me, by Anthony Franze – Australia

2nd place:                              BMW Vision BreatheFree, by Kevin Lo – United States

3rd place:                               BMW Eye-3, by Guillaume Coolen – Japan

4th place:                               BMW FlipFold, Xavier Gordillo – Spain

5th place:                               BMW Intelligence Link – Autonomous Car Functioning,

by Devon Palmer – United States

6th place:                               Em_Power, by Joe Siegler – USA

7th place:                               My DRIVE Style, by Santiago Pena – Columbia

8th place:                               BMW Lamina, by Sebastian Kunz – Germany

9th place:                               BMW BodyGuard, by VRP – United States

10th place:                             BMW Adaptive Flow, Andy_Lee_Tomorrow – Australia

“This was a very different kind of challenge for our global community,” said Jay Rogers, co-founder and CEO of Local Motors. “Focused not on physical vehicle design but on the human driving experience, we asked them to define feature and function concepts that would really push the envelope of specialty automotive design and they did not disappoint. Congratulations and thank you to everyone who participated.”

Challenge Schedule: Phase two

Phase two of the BMW Urban Driving Experience Challenge will begin the week of November 12, 2012 and conclude by November 30, 2012. Complete details about Phase 2 of the Urban Driving Experience Challenge – including a written Design Brief that explains context, scope, and explicit details about the guidelines, requirements and deliverables for all entries will be available at www.localmotors.com/bmw.

Source: BMW