- Audi’s design chief emphasizes the importance of tactility
- He condemned big screens in a recent interview with Top Gear
- The Concept C showcases a beautiful analogue interior
The man behind the hugely successful Land Rover Defender and recent Range Rover iterations left the UK to join Audi in the summer of 2024, and since then he’s been busy setting the German brand on a new design direction – one that isn’t afraid to ruffle a few feathers, it seems.
Fresh off the back of the design of Audi’s new F1 car as well as the release of the tantalizing Concept C, which shows an upcoming electric two-seater sports car, Frascella spoke to Top Gear UK about the future design direction of the German marque.
During discussions, the creative lead dropped a few truth bombs, including the fact that he believes electric cars don’t need to look like electric cars. “A car has to be electric and be efficient, but it has to look premium in execution of proportions,” he said.
In addition to this, Frascella reiterated what he believes to be the importance of “tactility”, arguing that “big screens are not the best experience” and that huge touchscreens that now span the full width of many modern car dashboards are “technology for technology’s sake”.
“For us, the technology is there when you need it, not there when it’s not needed. This mix of digital and analog, the tactility, the perception of quality that is so important to Audi, the precision, the metal parts… we’re talking about the Audi click. These made Audi what Audi is,” he told Top Gear.
This approach is perfectly embodied in the Audi Concept C interior, which fuses physical controls, made of anodized aluminum, with a small 10.4-inch foldable center display that disappears when not in use.
Not everyone is a fan
Audi’s ‘shy tech’ approach can be seen as a backlash against the current trend towards an increasing amount of screen real estate inside cars. Interiors are now, more often than not, bereft of physical buttons.
Mercedes-Benz has been pushing ever more into this area with its latest electric cars, packing interiors with ‘Hyper’ and ‘Superscreen’ technology, and a chat between Mercedes design chief Gorden Wagener and Top Gear last year revealed exactly what he thinks of Audi’s approach.
He said the Concept C’s interior looked “like it was designed in 1995” at the time and that there was “too little tech” inside. Despite being a fan of analog things, Wagener said “going back to all switches won’t work”.
However, this statement runs directly counter to what much of the internet and car-buying public is demanding, which is a return to physical switches and buttons, especially when it comes to controlling key functionality in the car.
Indeed, Europe’s leading car safety assessment programme, EuroNCAP, has said it will toughen its tests, rewarding manufacturers for the “location, clarity and ease of use” of key car functionality and penalizing those who commit everything to a complicated and distracting touchscreen.
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