I was lucky enough to experience this crazy model in the flesh in the BMW Welt museum in 2010.
The accompanying placard had the following to say:
Bachelor's thesis in cooperation with BMW Design.
The BMW Lovos (Lifestyle Of Voluntary Simplicity) is a bachelor's thesis that grapples with the architecture and the surface configuration of a vehicle.
This involves calling the conventional principles of vehicle architecture into question and re-interpreting them experimentally.
The results are innovative functional solutions and new opportunities for auto design in the future.
The BMW Lovos consists of 260 identical, individual components that are attached to a structure lying beneath them. The special feature of the BMW Lovos' outer skin concept is the fact that all 260 of the components can be moved and controlled individually. This flexibility of the parts makes it possible to alter the outer skin according to the situation. In case of strong braking, for example, the wind resistance of a vehicle will be sharply increased based on the principle of a brake flap, shortening the stopping distance. In contrast, the vehicle's aerodynamics can be adjusted to the external effects of high speed to boost its efficiency. Even much more innovative scenarios are possible: for example, individual sections could be equipped with integrated solar cells. When the vehicle is stopped, individual plates could be orientated towards the sun and thus use the incident sunlight as an energy source for alternative drive.
The BMW Lovos was the result of a collaboration between BMW Design and Anne Forschner of Pforzheim University.
