BMW rocks up at CES 2019 with a self-driving bike and loads more

[MUSIC] I'm here at BMW's booth at CES 2019 outside in the parking lot. And as you can see, obviously we need to be outside, because cars and motorcycles. So here at BMW, they are doing some demos with the X7. So as you can see, cars are doing some fancy tricks behind me. Getting to that and I'm gonna go for a ride in that in just A second, but before that, the riderless motorcycle. Now this is pretty insane, when you watch this with your own eyes, just take a look and see. It is riding itself. So obviously, this is gonna be a real product, this is something that BMW is gonna be using to kind of optimize or get a lot of data about how the motorcycle rides, and then feed that back to help develop better safety systems. So the motorcycle could do pretty much Much anything that it would if you were riding it like normal. So, it can stop and start on it's own, you'll be able to change gears, use the clutch and everything, and it'll take corners really easily. So, it's kind of crazy just to watch it do it's own thing. So, this gonna be in, hopefully, some safety systems in motorcycles in the near future but for now it's not gonna be a real product. Just enjoy it driving itself and just having your mind blown by What this looks like. So how is this actually able to ride- You ready? Tommy, I am ready. What are you going to show us today? Well, we're going to experience the all new BMW X7. Obviously in some situations, scenarios, obstacles here that you probably wouldn't normally take any BMW in. But this one, it can do it. This one can do it. It's not. Necessarily built to do it, but it can do it, and that just makes it so awesome. So you can see obviously the initial look of a vehicle is all new re-designed and from anything else they've ever had. So in my opinion it's got a great look to the interior, and it's pretty easy to use. You can sort of pull up our X view, our [INAUDIBLE] here showing some different angles and stuff you're gonna experience so- [INAUDIBLE] Come in handy when we're up on those ramps. Exactly, and we've got our ride height to the highest setting. We can adjust that now, it's the first time in a long time we've had fully adjustable ride heighth there. Mm-hm. So let's see this thing. Alright, let's do this. So first up we've got our offset ramps here we're gonna use, and the X-drive system itself is gonna be excercised quite a bit in this case. Because in a minute, we will eventually have only two tires touching the ground as we teeter across. Yeah. [LAUGH] So when we get to this point, you'll feel one of the tires will come off, the [UNKNOWN] drive system will very smoothly engage the opposite tire that still has grip, to keep us moving right along. And we're just gonna go real slow here and see waht kinda balance we can get. Whoa, we are on an angle there. Yep, we're flexing out the suspension as it- [LAUGH] this is Suspension is kicking in. [LAUGH] So the other thing that's cool about this, right about here you feel it bouncing around on two wheels. Yeah. Right on two wheels right there. There's a lot of torshion on the body right now. So, with our unibody structure on these cars it creates a lot of rigididy, so even here we can open those back doors, or the right side doors there. And they close smoothly, the hinges line up, there's no flex in the unibody Anybody or anything like that, which is pretty cool because sometimes an SUV or something like that you might end up with a lot of twisting the body and sometimes the doors don't even align, right and you get the suspension torqued up like this. So obviously this thing's nice and stiff. So we'll slowly come down the other side here. The other end right rear tire is way off the ground there. I feel like I need to be holding on. I mean, I feel very safe. But at the same. The same time this is not a usual driving situation. Correct, yup. So up next, we're gonna experience some lateral angle and we're gonna ramp here. We're gonna get On two wheels? Way up onto. Well hopefully we don't go two wheels on this one. [LAUGH] Cuz that would mean we are flipping over. Yeah. [LAUGH] But we're not gonna do that Say, we're gonna get a way up here close to maybe 20 or little more degrees. Wow. Of lateral angle. I I feel like I'm on grid. Yeah, and so you can see here, 21 degrees, 22 degrees. So what's awesome about this in a vehicle of this size, BMW always strives to have a great balance in the center of balance being as low as it can be in this thing, allows us to do this with really no risk of rollover, or anything like that. I would say we're well within reason. We could even go a little higher probably, but I don't want to be the driver that finds where the limit Limit us because that means we did flip, right? Exactly. Well, I mean, so theoretically, we could stay at this angle all day. We could hang out here for a long time until the blood rushes to one side of your body. Exactly, and then I'm starting to feel sick. So we won't do that. We'll keep on moving. We won't do that. So we're gonna cruise off this one here, and obviously, it's like you said. Most people never do that to their BMW. But you can. You can. That's the thing. It's a great way to experience it. So now the other thing I like to always point out is BMW does a really good job of creating the ultimate driving experience in all their cars. They all have a very similar feel. This is a big vehicle making this tight corner. With some of the stuff they put into their bigger vehicles to make it feel like you're driving an M2 or something would be like the rear steering assist in this thing is helping us make it around that tight corner. So actually as we were cornering. Below speed, the rear axle's turning the opposite direction to keep us going around there. So up next, we've got the rollers here. This is scary. So again, intelligent x drive's gonna have to work overtime as we get onto the rollers. They're free spinning so we're gonna have to keep it going and eventually the opposite corners are gonna grip up and power be transferred across the axel as needed to keep us moving along so All right, let's do it. I feel like this is a rollercoaster for cars. [LAUGH] Whoa yea I felt that. No. That was No transition, yeah it's very smooth. Hello Gary. Nice spot here. So now we're looking at the sky [LAUGH] And one of the features I'm going to point out to you here is our start off assistance. So all BMWs have this. If you're stopped on a hill, now obviously Only it wouldn't be this extreme. You can actually, you're given three seconds to take your foot off the brake and go to the throttle to start moving forward without rolling back. Right. So that's a feature in all the cars. Wow. So I'm gonna take my foot off the brake here, go to the gas. It didn't allow us to go backward. Yeah, no rollback. And We'll smoothly go forward. See, this is what you need in San Francisco streets. Because- Exactly. It's as steep as that. Enlist our spotter. Slightly. Straight. This is like. We can't see what's down there so hopefully the ramps are still there. I hope so otherwise we'll go straight down. [LAUGH] So I'm gonna turn on hill descent control, this button right down here. So in our X7 here we've got hill descent control. It work in a range of 2 miles per hour all the way to 20 miles per hour. So now that I've got it active it's gonna go to its base speed of 2 Miles per hour. And when I let off the brake here in a second I'm not gonna touch the pedals. I'm gonna let it do the work to guide us down this hill on these narrow ramps. So it's gonna do it all on its own. It should do it on its own. [SOUND] Okay. You ready? I'm ready. It's kinda like that trust game. It is a trust game. So here we go. Except we're falling forward. Yeah, off the brake completely, not touching the pedals. [LAUGH] This is, we're almost vertical. It feels like that, wow. So I can adjust my speed there through the cruise control File. Wow. Obviously, we'll keep it at the low speed, but that's a handy feature if you live anywhere like you mentioned San Francisco. A lot of hills, wow. A lot of hills. If you're driving in a range that's below 40 miles per hour, you can adjust that, and it'll kick in very smoothly to guide you to the set speed. Anything above 40, it'll automatically knock hill to sync control back off so that way it obviously doesn't break you from a higher rate of speed. Be. So extreme, Tommy. That was amazing. There you go. Thank you for taking us around. Yeah. Nice to meet you. Absolutely. You, too. So that ride was absolutely crazy. Honestly, at times it was 26 degrees on that incline. And it actually felt both really comfortable and really terrifying, which is a real testament to that technology. So that's all from the BMW booth. Make sure to stay tuned to CNET for lots more coverage of.