Yannis

Revolutionary dashboards of the future.

A good century after the invention of the speedometer, the dashboard is fast developing into a data highway, with several carmakers working on revolutionary new concepts.

At the Geneva Motor Show last month, Renault presented its concept vehicle Altica with a speedometer integrated into a large transparent dice on the steering. The system has been programmed so that the entire glass box lights up red when the driver is going too fast.

'Am I driving too fast? will remain the motorist's most important question,' according to Heinz-Bernhard Abel who heads instrumentation research at the car parts supplier VDO.

'In future, the speedometer will be interactive, warning for the driver with the help of a traffic sign recognition system whether he/she is driving faster than allowed,' Abel explains.

Mercedes-Benz has introduced a colour display instead of the conventional speedometer in its new S-Class. The circular instrumentation appears as an animation with the panel at times filled with navigation information.

In order to show such additional functions, Siemens VDO is working on the so-called Bi-Vision-Cockpit with information displayed as required.

This Head-Up-Display will play a crucial part in the dashboard of the future with data displayed in the windscreen in front of the driver. While it utilises only a small part of the windscreen, Volkswagen is working on a system where the entire surface is used as a projection screen.

The VW Electronics Research Laboratory (ERL) is working on a project where a laser beam transmits a warning signal, for instance of an animal on the road, indicating the direction from where the danger is coming.

The passenger can also benefit from this new technology. VDO spokesman Enno Pflug says, 'the cockpit study provides for a monitor screen where the passenger can surf on the Internet or watch movies without disturbing the driver'.

Audi is working on a concept where both the driver and passenger can observe one screen. With the help of a special foil, the screen can be split in such a way that the driver and passenger can look at completely different images.

'One person can be looking at a map while the other is watching a James Bond movie,' says Audi expert Gerhard Mauter.

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SDNR

Very cool.

It's usually at the highest level of the market that we first see radical style innovations - and of course in the motor industry it's most often where technical innovations are first launched too.

This is the kind of interior I would love to see at the top end of the Market. Rolls-Royce have their very distinctive style interior design, but this is the kind of interior that would be fantastic in the Maybach. Some might say that the average Maybach owner could find it too radical - but this is elite design at a very high level. The current Maybach interior is not design at it's highest level, it's geared more toward upper-middle class American taste. The way I see it, the worlds most elite limousine should not bow to mainstream bourgeois taste, it should be elitist and uncompromising. An interior like that would lift the Maybach into the league it so desperately wants to be recognized in.

Just_me

Ugly - never in my car

dOmInIX

That's why I'm afraid of future - you won't even drive the car, you will be just passenger!

Osnabrueck

I agree. Right now, forward design isn't coming from the ultra-luxury brands, but is eminating from middle-class brands like BMW and Audi. It would be breathtaking to see a brand with Audi-like priorities take on the Maybach/RR segment.

Unfortunately, the audience has yet to develop for such things. The world of ultra luxury sedans is still rooted in traditional expressions of wealth and prestige. I imainge it'll take quite some time for us to see truely modern interiors make their way into the super-luxury league.

Take luxury wristwatches for instance - Modern designs don't sell particularly well, unless there's an established history behind them (60s/70s vintage modern, for instance). Rolex, on the other hand, is able to sell their staid and stodgy watches at high volume, and at very high prices.

The Artist

if thats the future..then i say.. thnx but no thnx

SDNR

You are absolutely correct Osnabrueck, I think one of the reasons luxury brands often tend to fall back on "traditional expressions" is because the biggest market for high-end luxury products tends to be among newly-rich people. When people are successful, more often than not they express their success (often even subconsciously) through the things they choose to surround themselves with. We live in a global culture that has developed a complex code of cultural semantics made up of many archetypes. Most of us understand and recognize these "cultural codes" instantly, they are all around us. You only have to drive through certain upmarket neighborhoods to see that many people express their success through architecture - and most importantly through archetypal details in the architecture. Classical archetypes like large doorways, the column, or the arch, are archetypes very favoured by the upper-middle class - they have deep cultural meanings and strong metaphysical allusions - subtly (and sometimes not so subtly) communicating social status and banal values of "good taste". The same applies in luxury car design - Mercedes' interiors, particularly, appeal to stereotypical preconceptions of luxury and prestige - obviously because that is what their target-market demands.

Although they differ aesthetically, the interiors of the Bugatti Veyron, Porsche Carrera GT, and Pagani Zonda are excellent examples of design at the highest level of contemporary culture. The designers of these cars did not have to make concessions to the mediocre and often banal tastes of the average luxury car buyer.

SDNR

Some more pics of the Renault Altica's interior. Some details look a little contrived and self-consciously unconventional ..but overall I really like the feeling of this interior very much.

Osnabrueck

Wish I had more time to respond to your last post. In short - I don't have problems with classical expressions of wealth, although I find fault when it's poorly executed and/or thin window dressing for a product lacking the substance to back up its own pretensions.

Mercedes runs the gamut with its line, from underwhelming to spectacular. They've held the luxury torch for so many decades I don't find their interiors disingenuous - that dubious honor goes to Lexus.

Now there's an important distinction with the cars you mentioned above - They're sports cars. Sports cars tow an entirely different line than do cars like the S-Klasse, the Maybach 62 or anything in-between. They don't carry the driver's gonads in the form of chrome accents and slabs of wood much as they do in performance claims.

SDNR

LOL - well you are probably correct there Osna ...I would agree with you that Mercedes' interiors are not disingenuous, but they do tend to pander to rather conventional expectations - I'm not suggesting that Mercedes is not innovative or boring (with regard to interior styling) but they not very adventurous.

True - but my main point here is that these interiors (Veyron, CGT, Zonda) were conceived at a much higher level of design than the luxury cars you named. The Zonda for example is so beyond the parameters of average taste - in fact issues of "good taste" simply do not even apply at this level. The Zonda's interior might look like Thierry Mugler's bedroom but it exudes an uncompromising self-confidence that one does not find in your average BMW or Mercedes-Benz. I will add though, that the Rolls-Royce Phantom certainly comes much closer to this level of design than many have credited it with - I continually hear how "old-fashioned" the Phantom's interior is - well I beg to differ - it certainly pays homage to the aesthetics of the past, but the Phantom is quintessentially 21st century, the designers did a brilliant job, the Phantom could quite easily have been a grotesque pastiche of Rolls-Royces of the past, but instead it reinterprets the classic Rolls-Royce character for our time - it is quite an achievement.