Mercedes-Benz wants to give its interiors a digital makeover

The luxury brand has some interesting ideas on how to transform its cars and appeal to buyers still a decade away from affording them.

The modern car interior is already more than just a cosy place to sit while getting from A to B. Infotainment systems, connectivity features and other commonplace technologies combine to make it a space where entertainment and research, work and communication are all options.

Mercedes-Benz wants to go even further, adding what it calls X-factor to its next generation of high-end models. Try to imagine an interior that’s part digital art space, or one dressed as carefully as anything on a fashion show catwalk.

Mercedes has aspirations to turn its vehicles into digital art spaces.

These are two of the ideas presented at a recent event in the south of France grandly titled

“Design Essentials IV: The Art of Creating Desire”.

In a darkened gallery in the brand’s International Design Centre outside Nice, eight large screens show digital artworks by Mercedes-Benz designers. Some move with the entrancing fluidity of a multi-coloured lava lamp, others morph more speedily.

“Digital art has this huge advantage of evolvement and of change,” says David Wilfinger, one of the people working on the project. The colourful visuals are only one element of the immersive experience he envisages.

Mercedes-Benz might sell digital art to customers.

There will also be sound and light effects. Even the massage seats found in some top-of-the-range Mercedes-Benz models could contribute to the show, he says.

“We believe that this will elevate digital art from the pure visual, as you’ve seen on the screens before, to an experience for all senses.”

While Wilfinger says the experience is most impressive on the huge, full-width displays – dubbed hyperscreens – in Mercedes-Benz’s latest EVs, it would also work on smaller screens.

“It is not, per se, limited to the hyperscreens.”

Mercedes-Benz is the first and only car maker in a new consortium of luxury brands aiming to establish digital technologies such as NFTs (non-fungible tokens) and blockchain as a way to enhance both image and profitability. Other members include Louis Vuitton and Prada.

Wilfinger says Mercedes-Benz hasn’t decided how it might sell digital art to its customers. But the company values this tech as a way to engage with an age group that’s still a decade or more away from being able to afford a Mercedes-Benz.

High-end fashion fit outs are coming to top-shelf Mercedes-Benzes.

Much closer to reality is Mercedes-Benz’s high fashion-inspired interior refit idea.

Labelled Haute Voiture, a pun on haute couture, which is French for high fashion, it’ll become

available early next year.

“The aspiration was to take the core values and the DNA of haute couture, the highest level of exclusivity and art of fashion, and merge it with our most exclusive, luxurious product, the S-Class Maybach,” explains Belinda Gunther, head of colour and trim.

The big limousine on display features multi-coloured weaves, fake fur floor mats and door pocket liners and a printed leather headlining. It’s very close to what customers will be able to buy, says Gunther.

Her team has designed a variety of colour combinations, as well as a pair of catwalk-

worthy outfits created from the same materials used to fit out the car.

Like it or not, the Haute Voiture treatment certainly answers the questions Hartmut Sinkwitz says launched the project.

“We thought, how can we create something more special?” Mercedes-Benz’s interior

design director explains.

“Something that nobody ever has seen before?”

Mission accomplished.