According To Mercedes’ Chief Designer, “Screens Are Not Premium.”

Is this a disguised self-criticism or a simple statement stemming from a very personal feeling? Mercedes design chief Gordon Wagner exchanged a few words with our American colleagues at ABC News, and he took the opportunity to return to what has taken up so much space in the passenger compartments of modern cars: screens. Touchscreen or not, these digital displays—which insurers consider too numerous—have become the continuation of the smartphone, which many find hard to let go of. But a screen is also, above all, a very simple way for manufacturers to group a maximum of functions in one place. It is also often a saving compared to physical controls that are more expensive to produce and integrate into furniture!

Screens? Not a luxury

“Screens are not a symbol of luxury,” Gordon Wagner explains to the American journalist. “You have a better—and bigger—television at home, don’t you? And every car has a big screen. So we have to create luxury beyond the screen.” The German also confesses that, if the large Hyperscreen screen is successful from a hardware point of view, it is a little less the case on the software side.

Beyond the subject, it is always interesting to note, in this type of interview, that designers tend to be less jargon-prone than other brand managers and PR people. And Gordon Wagner returns, with humor, to another aspect of his job: “AI will radically change the way we design. I think that in ten years, most design work will perhaps be done by AI, and that will make designers obsolete. My successor will be a machine and will cost much less than my salary.” To be continued.

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