What’s All-Electric and Glows In The Dark?

As you hurtle down the freeway late at night, what do you see but a spectral car glowing in the dark. Is it the ghost of automobiles past? No indeed, it’s the billboard of the car of the future. The BMW i3 to be exact, and its first high-end, fully electric production car.

 What It Looks Like

 The billboards went up throughout Great Britain in 2013 and were lit bright with halo lighting, used to outline specific features of the car. In combination with the backlit skin produced by a cutting-edge method of printing, the effect is both spooky and memorable. 

The lighting outlined the car’s body, headlights and accentuated grill in front. If you were driving by the billboard late at night, it looked like the ghost car was coming right at you.

 The backlighting added to the spectral effect, with rays of light emanating from the car outline. The car itself was positioned below the bottom of the billboard frame, so it appeared to be driving right through it, headed for the road.

 Illuminating the BMW i3

 The car’s design is aimed at drivers who want to be both cutting edge and eco-friendly. There is a big crossover for those two points.

 The car company spent over a million British pounds to introduce it to UK drivers. They even had an app that allowed interested buyers to take it for a virtual test drive.

 The car is being sold as a dream of green engineering, including a carbon fiber body, which—as the ads say—has no carbon footprint. Many parts are made with renewable materials without sacrifice in speed and power. It goes 0 to 60 in 7 seconds.

The use of glow-in-the-dark billboards is not new, especially with the better reliability of solar power for keeping it lit.

 Influenced by Apps and Games

 These new billboards look like super-sized components of a typical video game played on mobile apps. More and more people are used to bright, striking colors seen close up with computers, games and TV, which are now ubiquitous in daily life.

 It makes sense that billboard creators are making use of the clipart-like artwork to grab consumer’s attention. Combining that with environmentally friendly design, whether in cars or in solar powered lighting, adds another layer of appeal to modern consumers.