Forget LED headlamps – according the BMW, the next logical step in car lighting development is laser lights. Laser lighting is radically different from sunlight or any different kind of artificial lighting used today, including the different types of light sources we use in vehicle headlamps.

Laser lighting is monochromatic, which means that all the light waves have the same length. It is also a “coherent” light source, which means its waves have a constant phase difference. As a result, laser lighting can produce a near-parallel beam with an intensity a thousand times greater than that of conventional LEDs, while having less than half the energy consumption of LED headlamps.

The intensity of laser light poses no possible risks to humans, animals or wildlife when used in car lighting. Amongst other things, this is because the light is not emitted directly, but is first converted into a form that is suitable for use in road traffic. The resulting light is very bright and white.

Check out the videos in this post for some demos that I managed to record while attending the BMW Innovation Days in Munich. You can see how the thin blue laser beam is converted into a bright white light.

The movies Minority Report and Iron Man opened our imaginations to a world where we can give commands and manipulate content on screens just by moving our limbs. And then came game console technology like Nintendo’s Wii and Microsoft’s Kinect, bringing advanced gesture recognition to the living room.

BMW has been experimenting with ways to bring gesture control to the automobile. The use of gesture recognition in the car is subject to various restrictions, since it has to take into account a number of requirements which are less important in the field of home entertainment or smartphones.

In the vehicle environment, gestures must be short, concise and unambiguous. Performing them must not cause more than brief distraction and must not negatively impact the driving task in any way.

For now, BMW is only using gestures to control very specific functions of the iDrive display. Basically they found that operating the entire iDrive system via gestures is impractical with the current level of technologies. It is currently in no way intended as a substitute for the iDrive controller knob. Instead, BMW is using simple gestures to control the split screen feature of the iDrive screen.

You can watch the video above to view the prototype gesture system in action. A sensor mounted on the rear view mirror captures your hand movement – move to the left or right to switch the split screen on or off, or move up and down to scroll between the different content that the split screen can display. You can also move your hand towards the screen to go back to the main menu.

BMW’s gesture research work continues to further fine tune it to rule out the risk of incorrect inputs, so that typical hand movements to the gesture area to do things such as operate the gear selector are not misinterpreted as a command geature.

Look at the image above – click it for a larger image to help you get a clearer view. Did you notice the pedestrian standing in front of the car in the top half of the image? Now look at the bottom half of the image – the pedestrian is now clearly highlighted.

According to statistics, pedestrians are as much as four times more likely to be injured or killed in a traffic accident at night compared to in the daylight. Add to the fact that there are just so many roads here in Malaysia that are not really very well lit, and the probability goes up even higher.

At the recent BMW Innovation Days in Munich, BMW demonstrated to members of the media their new Dynamic Light Spot technology, which helps highlight pedestrians (or even animals – apparently all cats are grey at night?) in dark areas so that drivers are more aware of them, thus helping reduce the likelihood of an accident.

Before this, BMW had the Night Vision feature, which in Malaysia is present on some cars such as the more expensive 7-Series models. It helps the driver identify pedestrians in the dark by highlighting them on the iDrive screen using a thermal imaging camera.

Conventional low-beam light allows drivers a theoretical range of vision of about 50 to 85 metres at night, and tests have shown the recognisability of a darkly clad pedestrian in twilight was found to be just 29 metres. BMW Night Vision can increase this positive recognition of pedestrians up to 97 metres on average.

However, using the feature can be a little distracting as the thermal image appears on the iDrive screen and sometimes you not be paying enough attention, or perhaps you’ve just forgotten to turn the feature on.

The new Dynamic Light Spot feature takes this concept one level further – it uses a thermal imaging camera to sense a pedestrian, but instead of just highlighting them on the iDrive screen, a marker light using a sweveling LED array comes on to illuminate the target clearly for the driver to spot them.

It’s not just a bright light pointed at a person or animal – there is also a thin but defined strip of light projected onto the road in the path leading up to the object in danger, which helps draw the driver’s attention even more. According to BMW, during the development phase of this new feature, one object was detected and highlighted every hour on average.

Check out the video above to view a demo of BMW Dynamic Light Spot in action. For demo purposes, a BMW 5-Series GT was used and the swiveling LED array was retrofitted in a small housing where the fog lamps used to be.

The all-new F30 3-Series Sedan will be making its world premiere on BMW’s Facebook Page this weekend, from 4.00pm Central European Summer Time. We’re 6 hours ahead so that’s about 10.00pm our time this Friday.

This is pretty big news as the 3-Series is a big deal for BMW, and contributes a great amount to their market share, especially here in Malaysia. So if you have no plans this Friday night, join us in watching the live streaming of the unveil!

Read our previous coverage on the F30 3-Series which feature spyshots:
F30 BMW 3-Series: first clear aerial view of the car
F30 BMW 3-er with less disguise reveals some details

We’re still working on our F10 BMW M5 test drive review, but in the meanwhile let me share with you some side by side photos comparing a regular 5-Series and flagship M-tuned version that we just had the chance to sample in Sevilla and on the Ascari racetrack.

I like how the F10 looks like – it looks much better in real life compared to photos, but the M5 takes it to a whole new level. Visually, the F10 M5 looks much sleeker than the normal 5-er. Looking at the normal 5-er from the side profile, it looks kinda bulky and tall and the front doors tend to look longer than the rear doors giving it a slight unbalanced look.

The new front fender design of the M5 puts a big side grille with an integrated turn signal right smack in the area that has the most bare body surface on the regular 5-er, so this helps to visually slim the perception of height for the front end. The new side skirt design also helps with slimming the whole side profile, and the result is a really really fast 5-Series that looks lower, slimmer and somehow even longer than the normal 5-Series!

Other than the new front and rear bumpers, the BMW M5 also gets its own front grille design – chrome outlines with full gloss black slats. The normal 5-Series uses a grille with chrome outlines and slats with chrome at the front and black on the sides, while the 550i gets a grille with chrome outlines and slats with chrome at the front and matte silver on the sides. There’s also an optional BMW Performance full gloss black grille for the F10.

Stay tuned for our test drive review.

At our session of the the F10 BMW M5 press launch last night, BMW rolled out an M5 in a special matte black paint job. The F10 M5 will be available in this colour as an expensive BMW Individual option.

BMW has been dabbling with all sorts of matte paints these days. Their range of matte paint jobs are available as BMW Individual colours, and they’re prefixed with the word “Frozen”, so we’ve got Frozen Gray, Frozen Silver and of course Frozen Black, which is this colour.

It’s not the first time we’ve seen Frozen Black on a BMW, as the E92 M3 Coupe was available earlier this year as a limited edition 20 unit Frozen Black Edition in the US.

While journalists around the world are trying out the high performance F10 BMW M5 in Spain, BMW has just premiered the latest addition to the F10 range – the BMW ActiveHybrid 5. The BMW ActiveHybrid 5 mates the 535i’s potent 306 horsepower six cylinder TwinPower Turbo engine to a 55 horsepower electric drive system.

Combined power output is 340 horsepower, and average fuel consumption is between 6.4 to 7 litres per 100km, or 44.1mpg. In terms of performance, the ActiveHybrid 5 hits 100km/h in 5.9 seconds. As a comparison, a stock 535i does the same in 6 seconds.

This isn’t exactly a pure fuel economy machine – if you’re looking for that, you might as well go for the 520d EfficientDynamics which can do 62.8mpg average compared to the ActiveHybrid 5′s 44.1mpg. But that efficiency-focused oil burner 5-er only hits 100km/h in 8.2 seconds. This is more of a slightly greener way to enjoy BMW’s 6 cylinder turbo.

This hybrid 5 is able to run on electric power alone at speeds of up to 60km/h, and while coasting at speeds of up to 160km/h in ECO PRO mode, the combustion engine can be shut off and fully decoupled. The ActiveHybrid 5′s battery stores enough juice to give the ActiveHybrid 5 an all-electric driving range of up to 4km at an average speed of 35km/h.

The 96 cell lithium ion battery is stored in the trunk, which reduces the luggage area space by about 145 litres, so you’ve got 375 litres to play with. Other than powering the electric motor, this also powers up an electric air conditioning compressor to ensure the interior is cool even when the combustion engine is shut off. An electric air cond compressor is necessary because usually it is powered by a crank belt, which naturally would not be powered while the crank is not spinning during times the combustion engine is shut off.

Visually, the ActiveHybrid 5 is differentiated by the “ActiveHybrid 5″ lettering on the C pillar, kidney grilles with galvanised slats, matte chrome exhaust tailpipes, and optionally 18 inch Streamline light alloy wheels that are designed for aerodynamic efficiency. It is also the only model that can be ordered in Bluewater metallic.

On the inside, there are door sill strips and an aluminium plate on the cupholder cover with the “ActiveHybrid 5″ lettering, and in the engine bay there’s a bespoke engine cover bearing the inscription “ActiveHybrid 5″, and finally a “ActiveHybrid Power Unit” lettering in the luggage area for the battery casing.