BMW Motorrad MetaRide is a new virtual reality platform which is located in the Metaverse, and allows people to experience the manufacturer’s new motorcycles.
MetaRide debuted recently with the announcement of the BMW CE 02 electric scooter, which BMW says, in a press release, “is neither an e-motorcycle nor an e-scooter,” instead, “it is an eParkourer.”
The basic idea of MetaRide is to give people the chance to experience a motorcycle without actually experiencing it. In MetaRide, users can view a motorcycle (for now just the CE 02, but there are plans to expand the service) in 3D, and even take it for what BMW refers to as “a virtual test ride.”
BMW Motorrad MetaRide can be accessed via the Spatial Metaverse platform, and there “you can also play basketball, collect tokens or earn a stylish jacket for your own avatar,” BMW says.
Has BMW missed the Metaverse boat?
At the beginning of this year, the Metaverse began to falter. When it was launched in 2021, the Metaverse was billed as the future of human society.
It was a way to experience things without needing to be there physically. It was a way to be your ideal version of yourself without being hindered by the limitations of physical reality.
But, that was two years ago, and, by now, the Metaverse is essentially dead. It is no longer the primary focus of Meta - the umbrella organisation that owns Facebook, Whatsapp and Instagram - and the hardware required for users to access it is built by a company - Reality Labs - which made an operating loss of USD$13.7 billion (£10.6 billion at time of writing, 11 July 2023) in 2022.
Jemima Kelly wrote for the Financial Times earlier this year that part of the problem with the Metaverse is that no one knows, or can agree on, what it is or should be. It has no direction and therefore makes no progress. It also arrived at a time, post-Covid, that saw people wanting to experience the real world, because they had not been able to do that freely for the period in which the pandemic saw restrictions enforced on people’s freedoms.
The Metaverse suggests that people, instead of experiencing reality, ignore it so that they can experience something different.
In the case of BMW’s MetaRide, the idea seems to be that you can get excitement out of a motorcycle without actually riding it. Perhaps BMW considers that young people will experience the Metaverse and therefore will be drawn to their CE 02 scooter, itself aimed at younger riders.
However, the Metaverse cannot capture the reason people enjoy motorcycles, which is the feeling of riding a motorcycle. You cannot feel the speed, or the wind, or the vibration from the engine, in virtual or augmented reality. You can only see it and hear it, and, since the CE 02 is an electric, there’s not even that much to hear.
