The plan is to eventually have Spike appear in future production cars. Carscoops reports that these future models will include the 2023 Mini Countryman, the 2024 Mini Cooper, and the Aceman Crossover SUV in 2025. It’s less clear exactly what Spike will be able to do in these vehicles, but in Shanghai the character will apparently provide “various forms of support” to attendees from the Aceman’s central circular OLED display and dashboard. Expect more concrete details to be released over the course of this year.
“We are now taking Spike into the future as a digital character,” said Mini’s design head Oliver Heilmer. “And he is not just a design experiment – he is becoming a characterful companion for the user experience.” Carscoops notes that Spike sounds a lot like an existing BMW feature that uses a simple voice to guide drivers around its car’s infotainment features, only now the voice could have a cartoon dog attached to it.
In the absence of concrete details from Mini about the kinds of things its digital assistant will be able to do, here are a couple of Spike features we’d like:
