So photos of the BMW iNext have been leaked. And I'm down for the future, so I'm a little bit excited. Electric cars are cool. Self-driving technology (as long as there's still a steering wheel) is cool. We're all good.

But I'll tell you what I'm not down with: making all your self-driving electric cars look so obviously futuristic that nobody would ever believe you're going to build a self-driving electric car here, in the present where all the people live. Seriously, why's it got to look like some weirdo Stormtrooper? We all know you're never gonna build that for real.

If we need to use alternative fuels (and we obviously do, buddy), we need to start using them now, not in 2375 or wherever all these sci-fi design ideas are supposed to be coming from. And if not now, then within 3 years, or 5 years, or 10 years, or some other small number of years that definitely isn't far enough into the future that we'll all be living on Mars already.

I know the EV crowd loves whipping themselves up into a frenzy over Tesla and I don't want to go doing that because I'm a normal person, but come on, at least they're building (well, not really *zing*) cars that look like they have a place in the modern world.

If BMW really cared about its i division, it would have put out an iNext concept that looked like a real car. Something unimaginative people like me could look at and think "yeah, a world of electric cars really is possible". Instead, I get the feeling even BMWi doesn't think EVs are ready for the real world yet.