Adrian van Hooydonk says eco-friendly vehicles are here to stay. In the i3, he says, “Every material we use can be recycled or has already been recycled.”

With their simple body lines and extensive use of recycled materials, BMW’s i electric cars establish a new design language for premium but eco-friendly vehicles, says Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW top design executive.

He calls the i cars the “next premium” — a new generation of luxury vehicles.

Van Hooydonk, 49, said the i cars allow BMW to try new styling ideas.

“We believe as a company that sustainability will become an integral part of premium in the near future,” said the Dutch-born van Hooydonk, who joined BMW in 1992 and has been head of group design since 2009.

“Part of this design language, in the interior and exterior, is that the cars look exceptionally clean,” he said in an interview.

The rear-wheel-drive electric i3 five-door, which has a carbon fiber passenger cell, goes on sale in the second quarter of 2014.

The tall car is BMW’s first one-box design. The exterior has very few lines, and clean surfaces.

“It is a rather simple design,” said van Hooydonk. “In the interior you will find all the functions that you need, but the overall impression is clean. The dashboard looks very light and there is just the bare minimum of buttons and controls.”

Along with wood and leather, BMW is using materials not usually associated with premium vehicles for the i3 and i8 — such as a dashboard made out of a fast-growing grass.

“In the i3, every material we use can be recycled or has already been recycled,” he said. “The complete set of materials is an interesting mix.”

The i3 has rear-hinged rear doors and no center pillar. A black band runs from the hood over the roof to the rear of the car. The front and rear windows appear to merge. The i3 has the BMW kidney grille but no openings, since there is no need for cool air to flow through.

The i8 hybrid supercar, which also goes on sale in mid-2014, has a bigger center console, befitting a sports car.

“The i8 is a faster car than the i3, and the design needs to express that,” he said. “In the interior you will have more of a cockpit; it envelops you. In the i3, we wanted to create maximum space.

“The i8 is our vision of a sports car of the future — proportionally, it is a sports car — low and wide.”

But the i8 doesn’t have the traditional big and bold brakes, wide tires or exhaust of a BMW sports car. Those design features have been relegated to BMW’s M high performance brand.

Van Hooydonk’s vision of BMW brand design in the future carries many of the same elements. He says Bimmers to come also will have cleaner surfaces, better proportions and fewer lines. And they will also have more of a family resemblance than they did 10 years ago.

Since van Hooydonk took the helm, BMW has backed away from making its individual models stand out from other cars in the range — such as the 2001 7-series, with its unconventional rear deck lid.

Adrian van Hooydonk, BMW Group’s top design executive, was born in the Netherlands in 1964. While climbing the ladder at BMW he spent 5 years in the company’s studio in California.
1988 – Graduated from Delft Polytechnic University in Delft, Netherlands, with a masters in industrial design
1988-89 – Freelance industrial designer
1989-90 – Product designer, General Electric Plastics Europe
1990-92 – Attended Art Center College of Design, Vevey, Switzerland
1992-2000 – Exterior designer, BMW
2000-01 – Head of automotive design, BMW Group DesignworksUSA, Newbury Park, Calif.
2001-04 – President, BMW Group DesignworksUSA
2004-09 – Director of design, BMW Cars
2009 – Senior vice president, BMW group design

Van Hooydonk, who previously was head of design for the BMW brand, penned the current 7 series, with its more rounded rear, that came out in 2007.

The target for future cars is a strong family resemblance.

Proportion is increasingly important. In designing a car, BMW spends about a year in the sketch-making phase to assure the length to width to height and the overhangs are in proportion, said van Hooydonk.

“The BMW brand has the strongest proportions in the business. This is an important ingredient,” he said.

For instance, he said the new 4-series coupe looks better than its predecessor, the 3-series coupe, because BMW lengthened the wheelbase, made it wider and lowered the roof. Interior room remained the same. The 4 series also has a stronger shoulder and “catches a lot more light than the previous car did,” he said.

In general, he said, no side view of a BMW will have more than two distinctive character lines. That is done to create more tension on the surface of a car’s body.

“There will never be a flat spot,” he said. “All around the car, there will always be curvatures, and light will be reflected — whether as a shadow or light.”

Even the wheels catch light, which makes a car look more “dynamic and muscular,” he said.

Lights will get smaller as BMW moves to standard LED in the front. The rear already is LED. The lights will get even smaller as BMW switches to laser lights.

Van Hooydonk said laser lights will appear during this lifecycle of the i8, but didn’t give specifics.

BMW also is working on a new family of smaller front-wheel-drive cars, and future styling was suggested by the Concept Active Tourer wagon. The fwd cars, like the i3, will have a one-box design, but they won’t look like inexpensive compacts, said van Hooydonk.

He said: “There will be a sharpness of line and an expression of movement.”