New Mercedes-Benz E-Class Interior Design (European model shown)
Mercedes plans to release an all-new version of its signature E-Class sedan for the 2024 model year later this year. Automakers often tease an upcoming new car, releasing photos and bits of trivia before the final unveiling. Mercedes is no different, and, understanding that the E-Class’s appeal has always been about its opulent interior, they’ve started from the inside out.
We don’t know what the 2024 E-Class will look like from the outside. We don’t know what will power it or how it will handle. But we do know you can host Zoom meetings from the driver’s seat (not while you’re driving, thankfully).
Mercedes showed off the 2024 E’s cabin this week, and a list of features that sounds more like a new phone than a new car.
I’ll Drive, You Watch The Movie
The showpiece is an optional dashboard made up almost entirely of screens. It’s not quite the Hyperscreen of the S-Class. That one is a single pane of glass covering virtually the entire dashboard. This one, instead, has a separate 12.3-inch screen in front of the driver, housed in its own bezel. The rest of the dashboard appears to be a single pane of glass. Mercedes calls this version the Superscreen.
It houses several separate screen surfaces – a 14.4-inch central touchscreen that manages climate and entertainment functions, and a separate 12.3-inch entertainment screen for the front passenger. The latter is shielded so the driver can’t see it, allowing passengers to watch movies without distracting the driver.
Hold Meetings In the Car
Continuing the phone theme, there’s a built-in selfie camera. “When the vehicle is stationary, the driver can participate in online video conferences via Webex or Zoom, and take photos and videos,” Mercedes explains. The company plans to add the same function for the front passenger “at a later date.”
Zoom and Webex won’t be the only apps you can download to your pho..er…Mercedes.
“A new App Store has been integrated into the Mercedes me Store, with a gradually expanding portfolio of apps,” the company says. The cars will ship with, among other things, Zoom, the Vivaldi web browser, TikTok, and Angry Birds.
Program In Your Routines, Or Let the Car Learn Them
Perhaps our favorite function, however, is what Mercedes calls “routines.” Owners can program the car to execute functions in patterns. For instance, Mercedes suggests, you could program your E-Class to warm the cabin to a pre-set temperature on days when the outside temperature is under 40 degrees or run a “date night” routine on Friday evenings that plays romantic music via Bluetooth and sets ambient lighting to a rose-colored hue.
Speaking of ambient lighting, owners can set it to respond to music.
In the future, Mercedes says, it plans to use in-car artificial intelligence to learn the driver’s routines and automate them. If you tend to switch the radio to news as soon as you drop the kids off at school, for instance, the car will learn to do it for you.
Talk To Your Car Casually
And, while many of today’s cars accept voice commands, the 2024 E-Class will listen for them without a prompt if you’re alone in the car. Rather than saying “Hey, Mercedes” to wake up the voice command feature, you can simply speak to it. Drivers can even chain commands together – “turn on the seat heaters and call home,” for example.
It’s an extraordinary set of interior technologies but tells us nothing about the driving experience. We expect Mercedes to begin teasing mechanical details soon.
