(bouncy tech music)
- Hi everybody, this is Sean from The Verge
and I am standing here in front of what's probably going
to be the most ridiculous thing we see here all week
at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show,
which is a 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,
but it's definitely the most ridiculous thing
we're gonna see this week.
Thanks so much for watching.
If you wanna see more weird tech, amazing tech,
bad tech that we've seen here
at the Consumer Electronics Show,
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Thanks for watching.