Mercedes-Benz concept car inspired by the 2009 film, and soon to be franchise, Avatar. Honestly, there's a lot, I don't really know where to start with this car. It is a concept car first and foremost which means that this thing is not gonna be on the road anytime soon and it's really meant to be a showcase for a lot of different technologies that Mercedes-Benz has spent some of the last couple of years working on. Whether that's autonomous vehicle technology, electric vehicle technology or human-machine interface interaction, user experience inside the cockpit kind of technology.
But first I think we should just talk about the look of the thing. There are 33 bionic flaps or scales going all the way up the rear end of the car that move up and down and Mercedes-Benz say they could potentially be used as a way of communicating with maybe other vehicles on the road, pedestrians who are crossing around the car. One of the other really wild things about this car is that it has these sort of spherical wheels that can move in multiple different directions. They enable the car to move not only sideways, but diagonal. We had a little bit of a taste of that when the car rolled out here on stage tonight.
The wheels on the car where supposedly inspired by the seeds from the big tree in the movie, Avatar, and that's not the only thing. There are a lot of other touches on this car that are supposedly drawing inspiration from the film and, in fact, it wasn't just inspiration, Mercedes-Benz went and worked with some of the people behind Avatar. Like pretty much every other automaker on the planet right now, Mercedes-Benz and its parent company, Daimler, have laid out pretty big, ambitious goals for reducing their carbon footprint over the next 20 or so years and so that's really where I think the inspiration actually came from for this car.
The company wanted to present a concept that was going to reflect how they are thinking about these green, sustainable technologies and so they decided to make this car, which is an electric concept car, it has, you know, sort of, vegan leather on the inside, it has recycled plastics used on the interior materials and I think as they started to work up some of those ideas and cohere them into a concept car there must've been some partnership struct with the people behind Avatar and their themes that run through that movie and the upcoming movies about, sort of, protecting the natural resources around you. Apparently melded well enough for them to design an entire Avatar car.
The Ava-car, if you will. And I will. The inside of the car is another really, kind of, wild looking piece of tech which is this control unit which comes up out of the center console. Sort of, accordions up to meet your hand and according to Mercedes-Benz, it will vibrate a long with your heartbeat and breathing. And I got to try the tech earlier today, it's still very concept version, it's not actually really working, like, it wasn't really actually mimicking my breathing but the thing did come out of the center console.
It was, sort of, vibrating a little bit, the seats were vibrating too and then that's supposed to be something that you could use to, kind of, control the car. It's really the only way you can interact with this car because there are no buttons, there's no steering wheel. There's just one giant display that stretches up from the center console and into the windshield. If anything, this is, kind of, like the ultimate Consumer Electronic Show concept car and that's what it hits.
Pretty much all of the beats that we typically see automakers pick at. We have futuristic tech that doesn't really actually work today that may work someday in the future. We have outrageous design with lights coming out of the wheels and scales on the back of the car and we have really ambitious goals and ambitious claims about what this car's going to mean for the company that are really hard to check right now in the present. And to top that all off, we have a partnership with an entertainment company and a massive piece of IP that people are really familiar with. Puts all of those things together in the one package that is admittedly pretty radical and I certainly wouldn't mind a drive.
The company wanted to present a concept that was going to reflect how they are thinking about these green, sustainable technologies and so they decided to make this car, which is an electric concept car, it has, you know, sort of, vegan leather on the inside, it has recycled plastics used on the interior materials and I think as they started to work up some of those ideas and cohere them into a concept car there must've been some partnership struct with the people behind Avatar and their themes that run through that movie and the upcoming movies about, sort of, protecting the natural resources around you. Apparently melded well enough for them to design an entire Avatar car.
0 Comments