As 2022 draws to a close, there’s one automaker that isn’t quietly wading into the new year. BMW launched a weird teaser campaign back in early December with something called Dee, and now it’s getting even weirder with the classic rider knight cameo from Hoff himself. Everything will come together for CES 2023 in Las Vegas, starting next week.
Head over to BMW’s Instagram page and you’ll see David Hasselhoff chatting with KITT about this “Dee character.” For those out of touch with ’80s auto pop culture, rider knight is a television series featuring Hasselhoff as a crime fighter driving a self-aware, talking Pontiac Trans Am called Knight Industries Two Thousand – KITT for short.
How this connects to BMW is still a mystery, but we have some interesting puzzle pieces to piece together. We know BMW will be debuting a concept car at CES; that was confirmed in November and we know it’s an EV sporting the automaker’s Neue Klasse architecture. The first teaser for Dee was released on December 13, appearing as something of a hack on BMW’s social media channels. Teases with Arnold Schwarzenegger spoke with Dee followed just days later. And now, we have this rider knight scenery. Between all these teasers, BMW keeps sharing weird posts that seem to be from Dee… whatever she is.
You may remember Arnold Schwarzenegger appearing in last year’s BMW Super Bowl commercial as Zeus, driving his electric BMW iX. Its presence now seems to reinforce that BMW is showing off its newest electric technology at CES. It makes sense, then, that Dee is some sort of new user interface for the concept car, especially since we now have a BMW teaser featuring the most famous talking car of all time. But is Dee just an interface, or some sort of advanced driver assistance system? We have a cut, but sadly, not the full picture.
We won’t have to wait long for the full reveal. CES 2023 kicks off January 5 in Las Vegas. An announcement from BMW should drop before the doors open, but if you need a refresher rider knightcheck Rambling About Cars Podcast with Knight Rider Historian, available below.
