Drive like 2154: What it feels like to use the space joysticks of Mercedes’ wild ‘Avatar’ concept car

MANHATTAN BEACH, Calif. – Who among us has not imagined what it would be like to drive a car from the future? And we’re not talking about a Honda 2028 opening version or whatever, as interesting as that could be. No, we’re talking decades, maybe even centuries after what we have now, where even weird concepts like round tires have been reimagined. Something like a spinner from “Sword runner” or one of those light cycles from “Tron.” So the color we were stunned when Mercedes-Benz actually gave us some time behind the wheel of their Vision AVTR concept.

Mercedes Launching AVTR at CES 2020 as a tie for the upcoming movie”Avatar: The Road of Water,” will hit theaters on December 16. The car and the motion picture share the same name, although Mercedes says that AVTR stands for Advanced Vehicle Transformation. To understand what that means, we have to catch up with the fantasy world that writer/director James Cameron has created.

“The Road of Water” is the sequel to 2009”Avatar,” imagines a future in which humans have exhausted most of the Earth’s natural resources. To keep civilization going in 2154, they need to mine other planets, including the Earth-like moon Pandora. Unfortunately for the human race, a sentient race of blue-skinned humanoids inhabiting Pandora, prevents us from harvesting a compound called, literally, unobtainium. These Na’vi live in harmony with nature, hunt with bows and arrows, wear loincloths, and often wish not to be exterminated by a heavily militarized space-mining corporation.

The film was groundbreaking in its use of special effects. Cameron — of “Titanic“”alien“ and “Terminator 2: Judgment Day“ famous — said he wanted to make the movie in the 1990s but had to wait a decade for technology to catch up. We say this just to try to explain how the natural beauty of Pandora is a great visual feast. Cameron paints a world filled with bioluminescence, lush vegetation, and breathtaking landscapes.

Mercedes designers wanted to make the AVTR look as if it belonged to this world. As such, the car is so imbued with organic design that it creates a Ford Taurus 1996 looks like a Volvo240. From a side view, its lines are as fluid and seamless as a river pebble, with no edges or corners to indicate the traditional three-box shape. The extremely low roofline melts into a glass bubble cabin that sits between the wheels rather than above them. Speaking of wheels, they are urethane leather spheres instead of traditional discs.

The car’s most animal-like feature can be found at the rear, where there’s an array of 33 bio-wing flaps that open and close independently of each other. Each movement on the carbon fiber hinge resembles pieces of origami paper. Their lightness allows for extremely fast action, and they can be programmed to blink in a wave-like pattern like a bird ruffling its feathers. The honeycomb has holes that emit a blue light, but if you stop suddenly, the flaps will stay upright like an air brake while the openings glow red. It’s undeniably a neat effect, but you probably shouldn’t stare at them for too long if you have a fear of holes.

Just to be clear, the car never actually appeared in the “Avatar: The Road of Water.” In the film, the machine is the enemy, the destroyer of the indigenous way of life. Also, the Na’vi civilization was a pre-agricultural civilization, and it would be quite difficult to drive a car in a land without paved roads.

It would be easy – even expected – for Mercedes to stop there. Many of the show cars weren’t drivable, but it went ahead and built a concept that runs practically and leaves journalists eager to learn.

Approach the vehicle and it comes to life with a series of bright light animations that vibrate up and down like Pandora’s glowing flora. It’s almost as if the car is breathing, a feeling amplified by the twitching of the rear fenders. Look at the illuminated user interface graphics and you’ll see the location of EQS and SUV EQS have their noses. LED streaks run down the bottom shelf below the taillights like a comet. Even the wheels have throbbing light patterns that form “spokes”. Mercedes head of design, Gordon Wagener said that they were inspired by the wood motifs in the film.

The scissor glass door swings open on large chrome hinges to allow access to the cabin. The highlights swirl and outline the edges of nearly every interior surface, adding to the feeling that the car is still alive. Sitting gracefully requires you to lean back in the leaf-thin seats, then swing your legs into the car.

AVTR is so low that you don’t sit as much as recline. The first thing you notice is that there is no steering wheel, screen or any kind of controls in front of you. The dash is simply a stretched empty curve. All movements of the car are done through the mushroom-cap joystick in the center console. Its location means that the driver or passenger can operate it.

Push the pad forward to Drive, push it backward to Reverse. Scroll it left or right to turn in that direction. The AVTR has rear-wheel steering, so the front and rear wheels can tilt in opposite directions for a narrow turning radius. Rotate the pad left or right and the wheels will tilt in the same direction to follow a diagonal turn. And no, the wheels don’t really rotate in three dimensions like Will Smith’s Audi in “I’m a robot.” The spherical shape looks cool and only the strip at the “equator” touches the ground, that’s how the lights on the tires remain undamaged.

We were able to test these functions during a short drive around the parking lot, but it’s not as intuitive as it sounds. For my brain, it’s more natural to turn to turn and roll into a corner. It’s also a bit difficult to adjust the pads slowly while the car is in motion, as the car has almost no suspension and minor bumps would have passed through my arms and accidentally jerked the controls. It’s not the technology’s fault. This is just a concept and is not designed to run at more than a few miles per hour. Admittedly, it could have been easier if I had used my dominant hand.

The absence of a steering wheel allows the entire extension of the curve to become a kind of display. An overhead projector projects a map onto the surface, and as a focal point for the movie, Pandora is one of the possible locations. Menu changes are done through gestures. Just raise your hand to a point above the panel and you’ll see icons projected onto your palm. Then you swipe left or right to make selections. Like a touchscreen, it requires considerable concentration, so such a system would only be cautious when the car is in autonomous mode.

Because environmental awareness is the main theme of “Avatar” film, Mercedes says that the 110 kWh battery is an organic and compostable battery using graphene and no rare earth metals. The system’s total horsepower is 469, and power comes from four engines, one at each wheel.

It’s a fascinating thought exercise to imagine a car from the year 2154 — or perhaps more accurately, a car that wasn’t born on planet Earth — might be different from current machines. like ours. The Mercedes engineers assured me that I would get used to it with more practice, but perhaps that would be too big of an evolutionary step for this particular human being.