As Mercedes-Benz pushes relentlessly upmarket, the German automaker divulged its future path within the type of the Mercedes-Benz Vision One-Eleven idea automotive, a contemporary, reinterpretation of the 1969 Mercedes-Benz C 111 idea automotive.
Revealed to the media on Tuesday on the firm’s International Design Center in Carlsbad, California, the Vision One-Eleven is simply a part of the model’s revised method to extra aggressively deal with the highest finish of the luxurious market.
It’s a technique finest summarized by the strikingly daring Vision One-Eleven, a two-door, two-seat battery-electric car.
The new Vision One-Eleven is impressed by the C 111 idea automotive from 1969, nevertheless it’s removed from a retro-style copy. Both are low slung, have large door sills and gullwing doorways just like the very first Mercedes-Benz SL. There’s even fitted baggage, seat-belted in tempo however sporting a quilted diamond sample. Yet whereas the brand new automotive reinterprets among the outdated C-111’s styling cues, elsewhere, the Vision One-Eleven’s fashionable design particulars differentiate the automotive from its predecessor.
Both are vivid orange.
But the brand new automotive’s orange and white inside is a daring, vivid departure from the unique automotive’s darkish cabin. Its form, kind language and total atmosphere are a loud departure from the quiet, rigorously drawn automobiles which were the model’s mainstay for many years. But more and more, Mercedes-Benz autos are something however that, significantly on the higher finish of the road, the place its AMG and Maybach autos have a much more assertive, aggressive look.
It’s emblematic of the model’s California design studio, the place Gordon Wagener, Chief Design Officer for Mercedes-Benz Group AG, spends increasingly more of his time.
A wild new imaginative and prescient
Certainly, the Vision One-Eleven’s look is proof. It initially appears easy, however then reveals layer upon layer of rigorously crafted design the longer you have a look at it.
The new automotive’s instrument incorporates a tough pixel texture, mirrored on the outside entrance and rear, which lends the knowledge displayed a daring new look. The steering wheel homes a majority of the controls that you could see. What you gained’t see are the types of belongings you’d anticipate, like an instrument cluster. Instead, the model’s designers and engineers envision utilizing an augmented actuality consumer interface instead of normal controls.
The augmented actuality wouldn’t be opaque, like conventional digital actuality. Instead, the motive force can see by means of the graphics that augmented actuality places in place. So, as an example, the car’s pace can be displayed as an enormous quantity on the windshield, not in contrast to at present’s head-up shows. But Mercedes’ AR goes farther, superimposing an enormous see-through arrow on the road nook the place the navigation system suggests you flip, for instance. At the identical time, a small map hovers above the middle console, displaying your total route. Buttons are equally AR, and positioned the place they’re wanted, not bodily hooked up to an instrument panel, and actuated utilizing haptic suggestions.
Certainly, this imaginative and prescient is pretty far out, and results in many questions as to the viability of its implementation. But the likelihood will definitely result in a reimagining of automotive interiors they usually’re performance.
Another key part
Just a little nearer to house are the automotive’s axial-flux electrical motors, more and more utilized in Mercedes-Benz EVs, and the fruition of its buy of the U.Ok.-based electrical motor start-up Yasa Motors two years in the past. Now a fully-owned subsidiary of Mercedes-Benz, the corporate continues to produce its electrical motors to different automakers, reminiscent of Ferrari. The firm hopes that Yasa motors will grow to be as ubiquitous as Intel chips are in private computer systems.
The uniqueness of Yasa’s electrical motors lay in its design, an axial-flux motor, invented in 1821 by Michael Faraday, and utilized in objects like disc drives and different particular purposes, however not used broadly because of its sophisticated manufacturing and problem to chill. Yasa has been capable of overcome these obstacles, whereas profiting from the Axial-flux motor’s key benefits, particularly, its greater torque density and smaller dimension and weight when in comparison with conventional electrical motors.
It’s simply a part of the model’s total try and be a vertically-integrated EV producer, constructing its personal batteries, motors, software program together with every part that’s a key a part of EV manufacturing, in line with the corporate’s Chief Technology Officer Markus Schäfer.
A revised luxurious car technique
It’s a swap from the previous, when the corporate tackled the luxurious car market by flooding the entry-level section with autos just like the A-Class, CLA-Class, GLA-Class and GLB-Class. But Schäfer notes that Mercedes-Benz has thinned the herd on the backside of its lineup, the place earnings are thinnest, opting to broaden choices on the high finish of the market, the place margins are far fatter.
To that finish, the corporate is promising to broaden its customization choices, whereas providing extra one-offs and collaborations, in addition to restricted collector’s and particular version autos. It’s all an effort by the corporate to grow to be what it phrases, the “Pinnacle of Exclusivity,” aka a luxurious automotive rival to such ultra-high-end automakers reminiscent of BMW Group’s Rolls-Royce and Volkswagen Group’s Bentley.
While most of Mercedes-Benz’s plans appear unsurprising, it’s the enlargement of customization specifically that ought to assist Mercedes’ luxurious star rise greater within the sky. The program, dubbed Manufaktur, gives consumers new customization choices from one-off design collaborations to restricted collector’s and particular editions, to in depth personalization that will go as far as to personalize the client’s infotainment display, maybe with one thing as private as a household crest on the touchscreen’s wallpaper. The firm foresees providing the Manufaktur program on its high-end autos.
Collaborations and model extensions
Then, there are the brand new collaborations, hardly a primary within the auto business, particularly among the many model’s rivals, be it Porsche sun shades, a Bentley chair or timepiece, or perhaps a Bugatti-branded residence. And whereas Mercedes-Benz has lengthy provided way of life equipment, the automaker is significantly ramping up its partnerships.
It joined with clothes retailer Moncler to amalgamate a Mercedes-Benz G-Class with a Moncler puffer jacket. More curiously Mercedes-Benz is collaborating with artist Harm van den Dorpel to launch the automaker’s first assortment of NFTs. The new assortment, “Limited Edition 1 of 111” might be saved in your automotive’s hyperscreen as a high-tech extension of the Mercedes-Benz model.
To Wagener and Schäfer, know-how is luxurious, one which Wagener sees Mercedes-Benz design as seeking to furnish because it seems to position itself alongside different automakers whose model extensions has positioned them, together with their autos, on the peak of luxurious car producers.
It all provides as much as an aggressive new push as Mercedes-Benz reasserts itself as the head of luxurious automotive manufacturers.
Source: www.thedetroitbureau.com