Mercedes reveals radical new A-Class interior

A radical, freestanding digital instrument cluster headlines the interior package of next year’s fourth-generation Mercedes-Benz A-Class hatch, which has been revealed at a ‘TecDay’ in Stuttgart.

In a fourth-generation car carefully crafted to address the shortcomings of its predecessor, the next A-Class will see enormous leaps in cabin comfort, interior space and luggage capacity, plus a raft of new technologies.

It will introduce a new connection service that acts as an effective concierge, plus an augmented-reality digital dialogue service, while shrinking dashboard intrusion into the cabin.

The most notable boost in space comes from reengineering the flawed MFA small-vehicle architecture, which was compromised by the need to fit in with Chrysler small cars.

Though the DaimlerChrysler divorce meant the American versions were never built, Mercedes’ small cars were stuck with some of the cheaper American pieces.

The new A-Class, which has been notched up three million sales, will be the first new car off the architecture, which will house eight new models compared to the five cars off the current platform.

More spacious
The most obvious of those problems was the fuel-filler location, which remains on the new A-Class, and the narrow opening for the rear hatch. That changes radically in the new generation, with all-new architecture giving a 200mm boost in loading area width, while the luggage space itself rises 29 litres to 370 litres.

While the standard rear seat remains a 60:40-split folding unit, there is a 40:20:40 option that can tilt the rear seat forward to add to the luggage space, without having to drop the seats.

The luggage area’s length is up another 115mm, too, and the cargo area is 225mm wider than before, swallowing two sets of golf clubs, a wheelchair or even a bicycle for the first time.

The rest of the interior has mostly added size, too, with elbow room up 35mm in the front and 36mm in the rear, shoulder space up 9mm and 22mm respectively, while headroom rises 7mm in the front and 8mm in the rear.

Mercedes also cleaned up the body-in-white engineering to allow 10 per cent more visibility outside the car from the driver’s seat, particularly improving in the over-the-shoulder rearward glance, which is a major bugbear of the current MFA cars, the A-Class, the GLA and the CLA.

Its owners will be able to unlock the car, along with opening its sunroof and windows on hot days, from a smartphone app, while there’s an “in-car office” available that lets drivers pre-load phone numbers, meetings and even conference-call PINs before each drive so they don’t need to look at their phones en route.

Ask Mercedes
It is capable of networking via the and cloud-based services from Google and Amazon’s Alexa (though not yet Apple’s Siri), allowing drivers to just ask for any information about the car, the drive or their own work or personal diaries.

But it’s the Ask Mercedes function that Mercedes-Benz expects will be the A-Class’s most popular digital feature.

“Research shows most people are aware of about 20 per cent of the features available to them from the products they buy,” said Sajjad Khan, Daimler’s vice president for Digital Vehicle & Mobility. “This makes it easier to understand what the products can do.

Ask Mercedes is claimed to help by combining artificial intelligence with an augmented-reality chatbot, so anybody inside the car can ask questions by typing them on a smartphone or using voice recognition.

The E-Class and S-Class take this further, letting people scan the car’s buttons or controls on a smartphone’s camera and then explaining what they do and how to use them. It can also be used away from the car via Facebook Messenger, Google Home or Amazon Echo.

It can answer questions about driving styles or fuel-saving techniques or even the Daimler ownership structure and it’s augmented by upgrades to the little-understood Mercedes me interactive system.

“Customers can simply say: ‘Alexa, ask Mercedes me for the range’ and they will be told how many kilometres they can drive before the next refuel’,” Kahn said.
“Further functions cover the vehicle position or the option of starting or turning off the auxiliary heating.

“Drivers of the new E- and S Class in Great Britain can also give the following command for navigation or POI destinations: ‘Alexa, tell Mercedes me to send an address to the car’.”

Oddly, it’s available in English first and in South Africa and Malaysia, rather than German or Chinese, and it can be retrofitted to cars built after 2014 with a Mercedes me communication module.

It’s not all good news, though, as the fourth-generation A-Class follows Volkswagen’s Polo in refusing to offer overhead grab handles, though there are coat hooks on the inner handles of the hatch so people can hang coats or bags or laundry while they pack the rest of the hatch area.

But it’s the leap in both technology and trim quality that will stand out, along with an ambient light show that includes 64 colours and even lights up the inside of the sculpted, circular air vents, which come straight from the E-Class Coupe.

Less reflections
Mercedes has found a way to ditch the traditional cowl that shades the instrument cluster, keeping night-time reflections off the windscreen.

The short, two-tier dashboard is topped by an instrument cluster that looks a lot like the S-Class’s two conjoined screens, only without a cowl, making it stand free and look for all the world like it’s the interior of a concept car.

Three versions of the system will be available, starting with two 7.0-inch screens, a 7.0-inch instrument cluster with a 10.25-inch infotainment unit in the centre of the car or two 10.25-inch units side by side.

They’ve used a louvred-style film on the screens to stop light reflecting off the windscreen and windows, and the simplicity of the look allows the two-tiered, sculpted dash itself to be symmetrical, reducing complexity and fussiness.

New switchgear
There is an all-new row of switchgear for the ventilation system, carved out of aluminium in a ribbon below the three central vents. There’s also a soft-covered armrest behind a squared touchpad.

“The A-Class is the first series-production model to dispense completely with a classic cockpit shroud,” Daimler’s head of interior design, Hartmut Sinkwitz, insisted.

“This literally places the large widescreen cockpit, with its bonded glass technology, in the forefront.

“There is no longer a display in the A/C control panel, as the visual representation is exclusively via the central display. This helped us to realise our clean, puristic and reduced design approach.”

The A-Class’s interior uses a lot of equipment from other Mercedes-Benz offerings, including the steering wheel-mounted switchgear from the S-Class limousine, including the two trackpads that navigate around its instrument-cluster functions.

The biggest news is that Mercedes has bowed to buyer pressure and moved the cruise control switchgear onto the steering wheel after decades with its single lever behind the left side of the wheel.

New seats too
Its seating package has had a huge overhaul, too, with top-spec models including seat ventilation and massage functions, while even the base cars adopt height adjustment for the front passenger seat for the first time.

“The interior of the new A-Class is a major step towards the avantgarde, and unique especially with respect to the open space architecture and the ultra-modern display and control concept,” said Daimler’s head of interior design, Hartmut Sinkwitz.

“It lends a new quality to the term ‘modern luxury’ in the compact segment, and is an inner revolution.”

In a move to thwart an upwardly mobile Volkswagen Golf and an upcoming new Audi A3, the A-Class also adopts materials like open-pore wood trims to justify a climb upmarket.

It also apes the A3 by swallowing 1.5-litre drink bottles in the front door pockets and one-litre units in the rear. The centre console’s cup-holders also take a half-litre mug and can be removed from beneath the roller-door cover to create extra storage space.