Before the official unveiling of the Audi urbansphere concept car, we came to the Capital Langyuan Station to appreciate the Audi urbansphere concept car, and conducted an exclusive interview with Stephan Fahr-Becker, head of Audi China design, and Wu Yunzhou, head of Audi China interior design, to chat about the story behind the design of this car.
I believe that with the unveiling of the Audi urbansphere concept car, a large car that breaks the definition of traditional vehicles and focuses on high-end travel in future cities will definitely bring you a complete shock. As the final work of the Audi sphere series concept car, behind the stunning appearance is the result of the joint efforts of Audi China and the German Design Center, and it is also the first time that Audi has integrated the ideas and opinions of Chinese consumers into the concept car design and realized the process of innovation and co-creation, which has important implications for audi's development in China.
Audi urbansphere concept car is the crystallization of the design team of China and Germany, Audi China's interior design team is fully responsible for designing the interior part of the car, implanted a lot of ideas, the Chinese design team sent the data to Germany, and finally the German team manufactured the vehicle.
For the first time, the Audi urbansphere concept car adopted the method of co-creation with Chinese users, and the target customers, including KOLs, were invited in the early stage of design, and the opinions and suggestions of everyone were collected to create this concept car. In the early stage, through four exchange activities, the target customers and KOLs put forward their opinions and ideas, which the team collected and integrated into the model design; in the later stage, they presented their ideas to these target customers through VR. For designers, this is also a very meaningful experience, colliding with a lot of sparks of thought.
Left: Wu Yunzhou, head of interior design at Audi China, Right: Stephan Fahr-Becker, head of design at Audi China
Talk to Stephan Fahr-Becker, head of audi china design, and Wu Yunzhou, head of audi china interior design, to talk about the story behind the car's design.
Q: When I first saw the name of the Audi urbansphere concept car, I guessed that it should be a small car suitable for urban commuting. However, after seeing the real car, I found that the size of this model was particularly impressive, with a width of 2.01 meters and a height of 1.78 meters. If it is a model designed for urban living, why is it designed to be such a large body size?
Wu Yunzhou: The word "urban" itself is indeed the meaning of the city, and everyone's impression of the city is generally particularly crowded and the space is particularly small. As a luxury model, the Audi urbansphere concept car was designed to meet the needs of customers for high-end urban travel. Therefore, I still hope to make the interior space of the car spacious and open. Audi's previous audi AI:ME is actually designed for urban mobility, which is also consistent with the design starting point of the Audi urbansphere concept car.
Stephan Fahr-Becker: We have taken into account the needs of users for body size in urban life. In fact, the concern about parking difficulties caused by the size of the vehicle is mainly in the European market. At the same time, although the body size of this concept car is considerable, under the L4 automatic driving mode, the automatic parking function of the vehicle will greatly reduce the burden on the user in terms of parking. So I would like to say that we want the Audi urbansphere concept car to extend the living space of customers and bring excellent travel experience to users. Therefore, although this model focuses on the needs of users' urban travel, it does not want to sacrifice body size and interior space.
Q: How will different models differ from model to Audi design, including interior design and overall design?
Wu Yunzhou: For example, the design language used by the Audi urbansphere concept car and the Audi grandsphere concept car is similar, but the customer experience that the two focus on is not the same. The Audi Sphere series concept cars correspond to different models, so there are also great differences in focus, such as driving experience, travel needs and so on. Different models such as hatchbacks, sedans, or SUV models with high seats have different driving experiences due to different seating positions. These are all considerations for our user-centered design of different interiors.
Q: With the Audi urbansphere concept car, audi innovations in design can be clearly seen. Audi in the past model design to give people the feeling of technology-oriented, but this time the Audi urbansphere concept car design is obviously closer to life, but also more able to highlight the personalized expression of people's modern lifestyle, so this design style and design concept of the change, will not also affect the future mass production model?
Wu Yunzhou: We can see that this car perfectly combines Audi's high-end technology with exquisite design technology. In terms of interior design, we want to provide users with the feeling that they can have a quiet and comfortable enjoyment in the midst of busy urban life. The sense of technology in the interior is important, but comfort is even more important.
As an extension of the user's daily life space, the Audi urbansphere concept car is a major innovation based on the past design style. Different from the traditional vehicle design concept, we want to emphasize comfort this time, and we want to integrate people's new demands on urban lifestyle into the design of this car.
Q: After seeing the Audi urbansphere concept car, I think if I want to summarize its characteristics in a few keywords, it is large space, dynamic, luxury, and still distinct Audi characteristics. Such a large interior space is also not available in Audi's previous models. In this design and development process, designers should encounter many challenges, can you give specific examples?
Stephan Fahr-Becker: Large spaces, dynamics, comfort, etc. are all our design priorities. Compared with the past, our focus on the design of the Audi urbansphere concept car has actually changed dramatically. There is no denying that sportiness is very important for all models. But now, we're more focused on the full-sensory enjoyment that comes with the new car. How to combine a large space and a sense of movement is also one of the difficulties of design for us.
Wu Yunzhou: When it comes to the difficulties in the whole design process, some of them are common problems in design in the past, and some are new challenges that have emerged under the current epidemic situation, such as communication challenges. As we all know, the birth of the Audi urbansphere concept car is inseparable from the close cooperation between the design teams of Audi Beijing and Ingolstadt, but the epidemic has indeed brought inconvenience to the proposal and feedback between us and the German team to a certain extent.
But this time, I'm excited to see our team cleverly turn challenges into opportunities, making the most of jet lag and making sure that our productivity doesn't drop but increases. For example, the German team's break time happens to be our working time, so we can use it to solve some of the design needs proposed by the German side. vice versa. If we all worked together in one place, the working hours that could be fully utilized would still be only 8 hours, but when we designed this concept car, we were actually working together as a team from both places, which meant that we could devote ourselves to it all day, which was very efficient.
Q: Want to know what screen configurations will be inside the Audi urbansphere concept car?
Stephan Fahr-Becker: First of all, in the Audi urbansphere concept car, the solid wood panel under the front windshield will project the relevant vehicle information in high resolution, which is also the design of the Audi grandsphere concept car. Under different driving modes, the projection is either distributed across the entire interior space of the car, or displayed separately in front of the driver or co-pilot, which is amazing. In addition, another possible option is for a large transparent OLED screen to be lowered vertically from the roof between the two rows of seats. We focus on creating a luxurious and spacious feel in the interior of the car, so even if there is such a large screen in the car, passengers will not feel any crowding discomfort.
Q: Or is it about the size of this body: have you set a goal from the beginning of the design to create such a large size model? Or in the process of communicating with Chinese customers, constantly adjusting the design, and finally becoming the current size?
Stephan Fahr-Becker: The Audi urbansphere concept car was not originally planned to be designed to be as large as it is now, but after communicating with the customer, it was adjusted based on customer feedback, and finally decided to design the body length to 5.51 meters. In addition, the "4+2" seat layout we are designing now is actually the result of full communication with customers and reference to customer suggestions.
Q: In the design process, it is very good to communicate with customers, this is a process of listening to customers, but the experience requirements put forward by consumers are sometimes not professional, so are there collisions, contradictions, and disputes in the process of communicating with potential customers?
Stephan Fahr-Becker: As you said, our consumers may not be experts on vehicles, so there are overlaps and collisions of opinions in our communication with users. But that's exactly what we're creating with our users – we're looking forward to finding interesting ideas through different voices, different perspectives.
Wu Yunzhou: Although consumers have their own imaginations, through the designer's professional design language, they will feel that our creativity is more in line with their needs.
Q: Do consumers have the right to vote or veto in the communication process? Or is it just a consultant? Will Audi continue to introduce this model in the development and design process of the mass production car in the future?
Wu Yunzhou: These customers mainly provide advice, such as certain designs that are bad or unwanted. We incorporate these suggestions into the design. In this process, we want to maintain smooth communication with our customers, like playing table tennis, back and forth, rather than tit-for-tat, and encourage them to say their thoughts and true feelings as much as possible.
In terms of mass production vehicles, the marketing team will collect customer feedback, such as if which car requires customer participation, we have a special external research department responsible for customer communication to collect information, and then pass it to the research and development department for adjustment.
Q: The trend of electrification has created opportunities for all brands, including Audi. What role does the Audi urbansphere concept car play in Audi's electrification transformation? What impact did its design have on other production cars?
Stephan Fahr-Becker: The Audi urbansphere concept car exemplifies the positive impact of electrification at every turn. We will continue to listen to our media friends and consumers because your opinions are crucial. In the future, we hope to tailor ourselves to the Chinese market and create models suitable for the Chinese market.