BMW's 1999 Z22 Concept Put Screens First, 13 Years Before Tesla Model S
BMW's Z22 research vehicle, built in 1999, featured a screen-first cabin, camera-based mirrors, and steer-by-wire technology, predating the Tesla Model S by 13 years and shaping the iDrive system that reached production in 2001.
BMW built a research car in 1999 that placed a screen at the center of the cabin and replaced side and rear mirrors with cameras, arriving 13 years before the Tesla Model S reached its first customers in June 2012. The vehicle, called the Z22, was never intended for sale, but it carried 70 innovations and 61 registered patents, according to BMW.
The Z22 was developed by BMW Technik GmbH, a small think tank established in 1985 a few minutes from the company's Munich headquarters. The unit was deliberately kept apart from regular development departments so its engineers could pursue ideas that production programs had no room for. Its first project became the Z1 roadster.
The interior of the Z22 went further than any BMW before it. There was no conventional instrument cluster at all. Information lived on a large central display, and a head-up display put essentials in the driver's line of sight. Physical buttons were cut to a minimum, and the screen was operated through a control unit on the front armrest.
That approach followed the Z9 Gran Turismo concept shown at the Frankfurt motor show in September 1999. The Z9 had only a starter button and a light switch on its dashboard. Nearly everything else ran through an 8.8-inch central monitor and a single rotary push-button between the seats that could reach several hundred functions. BMW called it the Intuitive Interaction Concept, and it grew into iDrive. The Z9 still kept analog dials for speed and revs, while the Z22 eliminated them entirely.
BMW explained its thinking by looking to aviation. A Boeing 747 cockpit from 1970 had 965 switches, knobs, and dials plus more than 100 displays, while the 777 had cut the controls by two-thirds and made do with six displays. BMW's bet was that cars would follow the same path.
The Z22 also carried hardware that still sounds futuristic. Steering and braking were by wire, with no mechanical link between the driver's inputs and the systems doing the work. A fingerprint scanner replaced the key. The headlights turned with the steering. Cameras took over for both the side mirrors and the interior mirror.
The packaging brief was ambitious as well. The Z22 had the wheelbase of the E38 7 Series in a body roughly as long as an E46 3 Series, giving it flagship-level cabin space with almost nothing hanging past the axles. The passenger cell and body panels were carbon fiber reinforced plastic, and the finished car weighed less than an E39 528i Touring. Power came from a 100 kW four-cylinder gasoline engine driving the rear wheels through a CVT, and BMW quoted 6.0 liters per 100 km, about 39 mpg.
The conclusion reached production quickly. The E65 7 Series debuted at the Frankfurt show in September 2001 with the first iDrive, a dashboard screen paired with one rotary knob on the center console that handled climate, audio, navigation, and more. It was also rough. The original controller had no shortcut buttons around it, tasks that took one press in an E38 now took several steps, and the criticism was harsh.
BMW added a menu button and customizable buttons, then spent the next two decades refining the concept. The company's earlier push toward screens began with the E38 7 Series in 1994, the first European car with factory satellite navigation, which meant a display in the dash. It was also the first BMW with a built-in TV. Every new function wanted its own button, and the dashboard was running out of space.
It is common to credit Tesla with the screen-first cabin. The Model S reached its first customers in June 2012 with a 17-inch touchscreen that ran media, navigation, and vehicle settings. It was a bigger leap than anything else in the luxury class at the time, and Tesla deserves credit for committing to the idea harder than anyone and building the software to back it up. The idea itself was not new, though. BMW had shown a cabin with minimal buttons, a central display, and no traditional gauges 13 years earlier, and it had a screen-based control system in series production more than a decade before the Model S.
Two Z22 ideas needed far more time to reach the road. The first is the steering wheel. The concept used a rectangular multifunction wheel, and the polygonal wheel BMW later developed took years to appear. The second is the camera-based mirror system, which remains rare in production vehicles today.
