When we look back at BMW decades from now, we may know exactly when it surrendered driving pleasure to a phalanx of robots wearing blue-and-white roundels. It wasn’t the fake engine sounds or the languid steering that crept in circa 2013. That was the start. It is right now, at the company’s century mark, when BMW laid out its vision for a future that put drivers in the back seat.
We would prefer our successors write a different story, and that the BMW Vision Next 100 concept did not mark a turning point for the company whose products once very much lived up to its “Ultimate Driving Machine” advertising tagline. BMW is highly insistent that it is not losing its soul, even as it unveils an autonomous car that mimics autonomous cars from so many other automakers. The official company line: ?A genuine BMW is always driver focused. The BMW Group also believes that BMW drivers will be able to let their cars do the work?but only when the driver wants.? Unveiled at Munich?s Olympic Hall, the Vision Next 100 is part of BMW?s yearlong birthday bash to celebrate its founding on this very day in 1916. (Mini and Rolls-Royce Vision concepts will bow in June, and a Vision motorcycle concept arrives in September.) The low-slung, copper-hued electric car was designed specifically as a sports sedan, and it measures 193 inches long and 54 inches high, or roughly the same length but a little lower than the current 5-series.

The concept has four butterfly doors?presum...