[Aika Car Aika Perspective Original]
On April 19, Audi unveiled the urbansphere concept car, which is "designed to meet the needs of customers in China's megacities", which was created by the Chinese design team and the German design center, which is also the first time that the Audi brand has used the "innovation and co-creation" design process to create a model. At the same time, this car is also the last model in the Audi sphere "trilogy", which is expected to be put into production in 2023, this concept car not only meets the needs of Chinese consumers, but also shows how the Audi brand defines the future of smart space travel.
◆ A car that can switch usage scenarios at will
The body size of this concept car has reached 5510*2010*1780mm, and the wheelbase has reached 3400mm, which is not only the largest size of the Audi sphere series concept car, but also the largest of all Audi concept cars so far. In my opinion, this car is a walking one-bedroom apartment, because the car's interior creates the equivalent of 11 square meters of usable space.
Moreover, Audi urbansphere does not provide a layout of 6 or 7 seats as people imagine, but this spacious space is completely provided for 4 people to use, which translates to a space of more than 2.5 square meters per capita, which can be said to be quite willful.
The design of the whole car is also based on the interior space as the core, and the designers are the first to consider the needs of Chinese users for space, and list space as an important consideration for ride comfort. Therefore, Audi did not do too much complicated design for the urbansphere car, the storage space and functional components are minimized, as far as possible to ensure that there is no interference with the seating space, thus presenting a spacious and concise interior layout.
All the fancy stuff was removed, leaving only four separate seats to ensure that the seating space of the people in the car was not disturbed to the greatest extent.
In the trailer, ballet artist Tan Yuanyuan perfectly interprets how this car is actually used: focusing on the back row. It gives you comfortable and spacious rear seating space when you're travelling, and the rear seats have a variety of adjustment options, you can even use a relaxed mode when you need to rest, the backrest can be tilted up to 60 degrees, and the leg rests are also extended outwards. At this point, the car is a moving lounge.
The rear row is also equipped with a large OLED screen, this screen adopts a transparent design, and this screen can also be used left and right to meet the audio and video entertainment needs of the rear passengers. It can also be folded upwards when not needed, blending in with the glass roof. This not only effectively isolates the front and rear rows, but also ensures the privacy of the rear passengers. But if you think the rear of this car can only watch video, it's too small to watch it.
VR glasses are also available on the armrests of the left and right doors, which can be used in conjunction with infotainment systems, including Holoride. At this point, the space in the car switches from a moving lounge to a mobile recreation room.
The high-end elite clearly need to deal with the matter at hand at all times, and the front seats can be flipped one after the other, allowing the front passengers to communicate face-to-face with the rear passengers. At this point, urbansphere even became a mobile office.
Audi also said that the design goal of urbansphere is to make it a "third living space" for users on their travel journeys, especially during the daily travel rush hour, and the random switching between different modes can provide a new way of life and work for elites.
◆ Thoroughly meet the needs of Chinese consumers for cars
As mentioned earlier, this car is "designed to meet the needs of customers in China's megacities", as the earliest luxury brand to enter the Chinese market, Audi has long been aware of the needs of Chinese consumers.
And the needs of Chinese consumers are actually very simple, to be big! Be different! In recent years, Chinese consumers' demand for vehicles has added a sense of technology in addition to grandeur and luxury. Audi did build this urbansphere concept car along this line of thinking.
This car is the product of Sino-German cooperation, and even invited potential customers and KOLs to come together to provide suggestions for the design of this concept car.
Want to be big, very simple, the length of 5.51m, wheelbase 3.4m, the largest space ever Audi concept car, absolutely can meet the needs of all Chinese consumers for large space.
As a luxury brand, it is not difficult to build a car that is luxurious enough, but it is difficult to be innovative enough while being luxurious. The Audi urbansphere is clearly doing a good job at this point. First of all, there needs to be a sense of ceremony from the beginning of getting on the bus. In order to facilitate the rear passengers to get on and off the bus, the urbansphere adopts a two-way door design, eliminating the B-pillar, and the seat can be flipped outwards, while projecting a red carpet-like welcome light, and the sense of ceremony is instantly full.
The interior is dominated by beige and brown tones, keeping the original color of the material as much as possible. Wood is used extensively, as well as renewable resources such as goose ear veneers, and no chemicals are used in the manufacturing process.
The car uses a lot of look at it, and the time in the car party fee is only to buy a good ansphere and
Or bamboo pulp fabrics, recyclable polyamide materials on the seats, which are more environmentally friendly in the car and make this car different enough. At the same time, the use of renewable resources also shows the importance that Audi attaches to sustainability.
Audi urbansphere caters to different scenes of the car
And Audi is best at creating a sense of technology, so Audi wants to build a car full of technology, it is simply handy. First of all, the whole vehicle is covered with huge curved glass from the front to the rear, and the front and rear are built-in digital light panels with custom lighting modes, which can provide lighting prompts when the vehicle enters the automatic driving state. In terms of appearance, the lamp is used to interpret the sense of technology.
Later, inside the car, the vehicle offers an L4 level of automatic driving system, and the steering wheel and pedals will be hidden when entering autopilot mode. Imagine sitting in the car and turning on the automatic driving mode, the steering wheel and pedals retracted in front of you to hide, the effect of this sense of ceremony and technology should be unimaginable at this stage.
The rear door is equipped with MMI induction control, a very distinctive control element, when the passenger is far away from the control area, you can choose various functions through the knobs or buttons on this control element, and the operation is simple and intuitive. And all this is to ensure that the rear passengers can have an absolutely comfortable ride experience, without leaving the seat, complete the in-car entertainment system settings.
Therefore, the sense of technology is not something that can be created by putting a few more screens, it needs an atmosphere. When you sit in a car that can drive itself, in front of you is a transparent OLED display, the seat side is equipped with a small table board that can be lifted, and the seat can be adjusted according to its own comfortable angle, and all the items around you can participate in your car environment, and the atmosphere created at this time is really surrounded by a sense of technology.
◆ Completely change the thinking of car manufacturing
The Audi Sphere series concept car consists of three concept cars, the Audi Skysphere, the Audi Grandsphere and the Audi Urbansphere, the first two concept cars have been released earlier, positioned as GT sports cars and four-seat luxury cars, they also indicate the future design direction of the Audi brand in sports cars and cars. The latest urbansphere concept car not only indicates the future development direction of Audi, but also shows that the Audi brand is increasing its research and development efforts in China while meeting the needs of Chinese customers. At the same time, all three cars have L4 level driver assistance systems in terms of intelligent driving.
And these three cars have a common feature, the positioning is very vague, skysphere can change the wheelbase, adjust their positioning at any time, although the grandsphere is a four-seater car, but the official also did not give a specific model positioning. On this issue, urbansphere is even more obvious, this is the first time in Audi's history that models have been launched for the use of cars, completely obscuring the concept of positioning.
While Mercedes-Benz's electric vehicles were still in EQA to EQS, BMW's electric models were also launched one by one in the corresponding levels of i3 to i7. Audi has begun to think newly in the field of electric vehicles, no longer stuck to the level, but began to consider how to build cars around the core demands of users.
In the traditional sense of car building, consumers still need to adapt to the car, manufacturers create models of various levels, and consumers choose models that meet their usage scenarios to buy. Audi now needs a car to adapt to consumers, consumers put forward a number of needs, Audi began to solve these needs one by one, and the solutions were integrated together, thus forming the urbansphere concept car. And this is also a huge change in Audi's car-making thinking.
Audi, which has a century-old foundation, wants to make changes in the thinking of car building, it is not an easy task. However, in the face of the Chinese market, Audi is willing to make a new change and innovation, it can be said that the Audi urbansphere concept car is tailor-made for Chinese users. At the same time, this car is also the first time that Audi has incorporated the ideas and opinions of Chinese consumers into the concept car design.
Editor's summary: Audi has previously announced that audi will only release pure electric models in the global market from 2026; in 2033, it will gradually stop producing internal combustion engine models, with the goal of achieving zero emissions by 2050 at the latest.
The Chinese market, which occupies one-third of sales, coupled with the rapid development of the Chinese market in the field of electric vehicles, is also catering to the transformation of Audi electric, and Audi naturally does not want to miss the largest single new energy market. It is not difficult to understand why Audi is willing to listen to the voice of Chinese consumers and give the initiative of design to Chinese consumers.
The Audi urbansphere concept car is actually the first Audi model specially launched to meet the needs of Chinese customers. This car is also finally mass-produced in 2023, which not only shows the future design direction of the Audi brand, but also tells everyone that from this car, Audi is changing the concept of car manufacturing for a hundred years. For this car, I am very much looking forward to what kind of surprises it will bring to the world after its mass production.
Highlights review:
Audi's first MPV? Urbansphere concept car released
The family of new Ding Audi will release the urbansphere concept car
Hollywood's rising star parses the Audi Grandsphere
From this car, Audi's thinking of making cars began to change