Speaking of passenger screens, the holographic display is clearly being considered as a future alternative or replacement for this technology. Although screens in cars are increasingly ubiquitous, a recent JD Power study indicated that car owners classify passenger screens as “not necessary” and have generally negative opinions about them. Mercedes has clearly observed similar opinions but for slightly different reasons.
“We have customers who like the Hyperscreen,” said development engineer Maximilian Hilger of the pillar-to-pillar screen found in an increasing number of Mercedes models. “But there are others who want to maintain luxury materials.”
In other words, the massive screen design doesn’t seem as luxurious as the pillar-to-pillar bands of wood or other materials found in previous-generation models. And that’s not an opinion isolated to Mercedes’ customers.
New Mercedes chief design officer Bastian Baudy recently told German magazine Auto Motor Sport that “Materiality and haptics must remain tangible—with switches, buttons, and intuitive controls. Real materials are at the heart of Mercedes: metal, wood.”
Mercedes CEO Ola Källenius went further, grouping interior quality and materials among the brand’s “forever values,” along with safety and maintaining what a Mercedes is like to drive.
That presents conflicting priorities, however.
“Yes, you need to have all the [technology] that a customer could ever dream of and wants,” Källenius told Ars. “But you need to package it in an aesthetically pleasing way. That’s also part of it.”
That brings us back to the holographic display. Keep in mind that the photos in this article show early prototypes I saw at Mercedes’ research facilities in Sindelfingen, Germany. The prototype projector sits inside a rather crude, trapezoidal hole dug into the dash of a right-hand-drive, pre-2027 S-Class. It’s also loud, with a cooling fan whirring like a laptop visiting too many junk-filled websites.
