MERCEDES F 015 Luxury Car
cars & moto
09:50
The Mercedes-Benz F 015 Luxury in Motion
The exterior features a low-slung front end and a smooth, streamlined roof, which gives the F 015 Luxury in Motion a dynamic silhouette, while the innovative saloon-style doors provide easy access to the interior lounge.
There you´ll find four rotating seats that allow face-to-face configuration, as well as six display screens harmoniously built into the front, rear and side panels. It´s a digital arena that allows passengers to interact with the vehicle through gestures, eye tracking and high-res touch-screens. The walnut trim and soft nappa leather merge with the metal and glass to form a truly luxurious experience.
It´s a bold foray into the future of driving, where the car is more than a simple means of transportation. It´s a personal retreat, both spacious and seamless. The F 015 Luxury in Motion is a vehicle that redefines the word.
Key Highlights
- Smart Body Structure that combines carbon-fiber reinforced plastic, aluminum and high-strength steels
- Both manual and autonomous driving systems
- Front and rear LED modules that communicate with the outside world
- Variable seating system with four rotating lounge chairs
- Six display screens that form a 360° virtual arena
- Saloon-style doors that open a full 90°
- Open-pore walnut wood floor
- White nappa leather seats
- A PRE-SAFE® Body Structure that inflates on impact, absorbing the energy of a collision
- Electric drive system capabilities
Forerunner of a mobility revolution
Stuttgart. With the S 500 INTELLIGENT DRIVE and the Future Truck 2025, Mercedes-Benz has already made the vision of autonomous driving reality. The new research vehicle F 015 Luxury in Motion had its world premiere at the Consumer Electronics Show, and provides a concrete example of the visionary ideas the company is developing with regard to autonomous driving of the future. With this self-driving luxury sedan Mercedes-Benz illustrates how the car is growing beyond its role as a mere means of transport and will ultimately become a private retreating space. This new way of traveling gives passengers the freedom to use their valuable time on the road in manifold ways.
Progressing from the self-propelled ("automotive") to the self-reliant ("autonomous") vehicle, Mercedes-Benz as a pioneer goes far beyond the purely technical realization of automated driving. The company's experts also have to anticipate different outlooks and social trends. People are always at the center of such considerations. Just as the 1886 Benz Patent Motor Car and its successors revolutionized personal mobility and, as a consequence, society as a whole, the first self-driving cars will also bring about major changes.
"Anyone who focuses solely on the technology has not yet grasped how autonomous driving will change our society. The car is growing beyond its role as a mere means of transport and will ultimately become a mobile living space," explains Dr. Dieter Zetsche, Chairman of the Board of Management of Daimler AG and Head of Mercedes-Benz Cars.
Expressive forerunner of a mobility revolution
With the huge amount of space in its lounge-like interior, the Mercedes-Benz
F 015 Luxury in Motion takes the concepts of comfort and luxury to a new
level. Every facet of the vehicle reflects perfectly the Mercedes way of
interpreting the terms "modern luxury", emotion and intelligence. This
innovative four-seater is a forerunner of a mobility revolution, and this is
immediately apparent from its futuristic appearance.
It is obvious that the F 015 represents the vision of a brand new vehicle
concept just from its unusual proportions (length/width/height:
5220/2018/1524 millimeters), its seamless, monolithic exterior and its large
LED light modules at the front and rear. A range of different lighting functions
can be provided through these LED fields. At the same time, the vehicle
communicates and interacts with the outside world by means of the LED fields.
These LED fields show for example, if the F 015 is driving autonomously (blue)
or is controlled manually (white).
The low-slung front end, smooth and streamlined roof line, flat front
windshield and road-hugging rear end give the F 015 Luxury in Motion an
extended and decidedly dynamic silhouette. The F 015 Luxury in Motion's
unusually large wheelbase of 3610 millimeters in combination with its short
overhangs clearly show that the design focus was on providing the maximum
possible space for the passengers
A lounge-like interior with an atmosphere of well-being
In the interior of the F 015 Luxury in Motion the designers have created a
lounge-like space with a feel-good ambience characterized by elegance, quality
and lightness. Sensual, flowing transitions and warm, organic materials such
as open-pore walnut wood shaped into a three-dimensional veneer, and
extremely soft ice white nappa leather contrast with clearly-defined metal and
glass surfaces with a cool and technical feel.
The pivotal feature of the innovative interior concept is the variable seating system, with four rotating lounge chairs that allow a face-to-face seat
configuration. In order to make getting in and out of the car easier, the
electrically powered seats also swing outwards by 30 degrees as soon as the
doors are opened. If necessary, the driver and front-seat passenger can also
turn their eyes and attention towards the front – a prerequisite for manual
driving. To this end the steering wheel extends automatically from the
dashboard.
The leather-covered cushions of the lounge chairs are set in curved mounts of
highly-polished aluminium. Each seating mount has a contrasting light band of
blue LED lights and can also be manually swiveled.
One key aspect of the research vehicle is the continuous exchange of
information between vehicle, passengers and the outside world. This is
facilitated by six display screens harmoniously integrated into the instrument
panel and the rear and side panels, which turn the interior of the F 015 Luxury
in Motion into a digital arena. Passengers can interact intuitively with the
connected vehicle through gestures, eye-tracking or by touching the highresolution
screens. Sensors recognize the passengers' hands and offer them
user interfaces within convenient reach that present appropriate operating
options for each particular situation. Particle streams on the displays visualize
the vehicle's movement.
Revolutionary vehicle structure
The high-strength body of the F 015 Luxury in Motion ensures optimum safety
and supreme comfort for its passengers. At the same time, the bodyshell's
structure provides the ideal basis for the door concept that makes getting in
and out especially easy, and for the communication-oriented seating featuring
four lounge chairs in a face-to-face arrangement.
New materials and structures were used to develop the highly efficient "Smart
Body Structure (SBS)" of the F 015. By cleverly combining carbon-fiberreinforced
plastic (CFRP), aluminum and high-strength steels in a way that
matches the varying requirements exactly, the lightweight engineering experts were able to make the bodyshell 40 percent lighter compared with today's production vehicles.
Another key element of the body design concept is the innovative saloon-doorstyle
door system featuring rear-hinged rear doors. The front and rear doors
can be opened and closed independently of one another. With an opening angle
of 90 degrees for all doors, the spacious interior can be easily and comfortably
accessed on both sides. B-pillars were not needed.
A very sturdy interconnected system with mechanical locking elements ensures exemplary
safety standards. These elements securely interlock the front and rear doors
when they are closed at the same time as fixing them firmly to the roof frame
and side skirts. The resulting composite load path allows an extremely high
amount of energy to be absorbed in the event of frontal or side impact, with
minimal intrusion into the passenger compartment.
The doors themselves have a crucial role to play in the vehicle's passive safety
concept. The crash-responsive beltlines underneath the side windows are vital
here.
The PRE-SAFE® Structure, previously unveiled on the ESF 2009
Experimental Safety Vehicle and now further enhanced, offers maximum
safety while taking up minimum space: in a side-on collision, these bodywork
elements "inflate" in an instant, just like an airbag, allowing them to absorb as
much impact energy as possible.
In addition, the bodyshell of the F 015 Luxury in Motion was designed to allow
the impact-protected integration of an electric drive system with fuel cell. This
is based on the pioneering F-CELL PLUG-IN HYBRID system seen in the F 125!
research vehicle from 2011, and combines on-board generation of electricity
with an exceptionally powerful and compact high-voltage battery. The pressure
tank made from CFRP is designed to store the hydrogen.
The road to autonomous driving
Even now, vehicles from Mercedes-Benz are capable of detecting many
different hazardous situations out on the road and reacting as the situation
demands – by means of autonomous braking, for instance. And from the
C-Class through to the S-Class, there are already Mercedes-Benz models
driving semi-autonomously on public roads today, equipped with features such
as DISTRONIC PLUS with Steering Assist and the Stop&Go Pilot semiautonomous
traffic jam vehicle following function. Active Parking Assist with
PARKTRONIC allows automated parking with active steering and brake control
in both parallel and end-on spaces.
In August 2013, Mercedes-Benz demonstrated to great effect that autonomous driving is possible now, even in complex urban and rural traffic situations. The
close-to-production Mercedes-Benz S 500 INTELLIGENT DRIVE completed the
approximately 100-kilometer journey from Mannheim to Pforzheim fully
autonomously, following the route Bertha Benz took in 1888 on the first ever
long-distance drive by car.
Mercedes-Benz is setting the pace of development in the area of trucks, too – as
the innovator and launcher of intelligent assistance systems. With its Future
Truck 2025, the brand presented the world's first truck to feature autonomous
driving at the IAA Commercial Vehicles in September 2014. In July 2014, this
one-off vehicle, based on the Mercedes-Benz Actros 1845, drove at speeds of up
to 80 km/h in realistic traffic situations on a section of the A14 autobahn near
Magdeburg.
As a global company, Mercedes-Benz has its sights set on autonomous driving
worldwide. In order to factor in the differences in traffic and infrastructure in
other markets, the experts also carry out testing in the USA, for example. In
mid-September 2014, Mercedes-Benz became one of the first automotive
manufacturers to be issued with an official license by the US state of California
for testing self-driving vehicles on public roads there. In addition the company
makes use of the USA's largest test facility, the Concord Naval Weapons
Station (CNWS).
