Mercedes teases radical new interior with massive screens

The conservative heart of the Mercedes-Benz car lineup is about to startle its followers with a radical new interior. Think: Really. Big. Screen.

The 2017 E-Class sedan itself will debut at the Detroit auto show next month but, in an unusual PR ploy, Mercedes-Benz staged a full hands-on press reveal of the new car’s interior. If not an industry first, this inside peek was certainly a rarity. It also speaks directly to a coming era, when more of our driving will be autonomous – a field in which Mercedes-Benz is already pushing the envelope.

Images courtesy of Mercedes-Benz

While 100-per-cent autonomous journeys may still be a ways off, the technology is already allowing longer periods of autonomous driving without driver intervention, particularly in stop-and-go traffic.

“Our long-term strategy is for the car to become a third ‘place’ after the home and the office,” interior design chief Jan Kaul said. “Luxury of the future will be private space and owning your own time, and having the freedom to use it as you want.”

What does this look like? In a darkened studio and with camouflage stripes still masking the shape of the new E-Class sheet-metal, Mercedes officials invited us into the car’s brightly lit interior where we were confronted by a massive screen that seems to span almost the entire dashboard.

You think one 12.3-inch (diagonal) screen is big? The E-Class has two, side by side, both under a single glass pane so it looks like one superscreen. The left side, behind the steering wheel, functions as a virtual instrument cluster; the right side acts as the display for the COMAND Online infotainment system. Each screen has a resolution of 1920 by 720 pixels, with a quad-core processor and 17 gigabytes of memory devoted to graphics.

Along with the screen comes the industry’s first application of steering-wheel mounted touchpads. These add another layer of control redundancy, allowing the driver to operate COMAND with finger swipes while keeping hands on the wheel. That’s in addition to the centre console-mounted touchpad first seen on the 2015 C-Class, or the more established input options of voice control or the original twist-and-push COMAND controller.

But the control-input options do not include touch screen. Mercedes believes that, in bigger cars, the “buttons” on a centrally mounted touch screen are too far from the driver to be ergonomically sound. “We researched touch screen, but we want the driver’s hands on the wheel,” user-interface designer Patrick Zimmer said.

He added that space on a screen gives a feel of luxury. But for optimum ergonomics, the buttons on a touch screen need to be large, which then leaves screen space for fewer functions.

On the new E-Class, the virtual instrumentation allows the driver to choose between three gauge-cluster designs – Classic, Sport or Progressive. On the right side, the display is occupied by the Navigation when it’s in use; otherwise, the display can be split one-third/two-third to show different information or functions simultaneously. At night, the backlit screen appears to float in space.

Mercedes says it strove to blend intuitive user-friendliness with “functionally expressive yet attractive design.” The former employs a new, clearer menu structure while the latter takes the form of high-res visualizations and animations. Quick-action buttons provide direct access to functions such as the HVAC or activation/deactivation of some driver-assist systems. “Our biggest fear,” Zimmer said, “is that a customer would say, ‘It drove me crazy.’” Unlike in most other cars, the E-Class places the “nanny” switches prominently on the high left side of the dashboard.

The widescreen display also emphasizes the horizontal bias of the overall cockpit sculpting, with its flowing curves that sweep around into the doors. A recurring theme was the quest to combine high technology with natural materials and old-fashioned craftsmanship. Two different styles of seat are offered, each with a distinct stitching pattern. In total, 64 different interior-trim colour combinations are offered, though “without letting the customer pick inappropriate combinations,” interior design leader Jan Kaul says.

For all its technology, the interior “has to be beautiful,” Kaul said. “Even the best concept is nothing if it’s not beautiful.”

And not just visible beauty. There’s an available Burmeister 3-D surround-sound audio with 23 speakers – four of which are placed in the ceiling. This mimics the effect of sound reflecting off the ceiling of a concert hall, Mercedes says.

The writer was a guest of the auto maker. Content was not subject to approval.