In the middle of the four-seater car sits the floating centre stack made out of handmade, solid Orrefors crystal. It floats like a gentle wave from the instrument panel all the way to the rear seat backrest.
Driver-oriented environment
The driver's environment has been designed to provide good visibility and convenient control. The combined instrument too has the centre stack's floating, almost weightless feel about it and is built up in several layers.
"The speedometer is designed as a three-dimensional glass spiral. The low numbers appear closest to the eye and the figures appear to be increasingly distant as you accelerate. The idea is that the speedometer should provide a visual reminder of the forward motion," explains Steve Mattin.
Slim, floating leather seats?The floating theme continues in the concept car's slim, lightweight contoured seats, made of soft Light Blond leather with contrasting stitching. The seats are attached to the centre console's lower section and inner sill, which means that they don't actually touch the floor. Both the seat belt and the armrest are integrated into the seat itself. The backrest's pony-tail slot, first featured in previous concept cars, has a new, slightly asymmetrical design.
"The aim is to create a pleasant living-room atmosphere with gentle, invisible transfers between the various surfaces. For instance, the dark, ecologically tanned saddle leather on the floor continues up on the lower part of the door," relates Steve Mattin.
The upper part of the doors is faced with genuine blond birch wood of the same colour as the Scandinavian coastline's salt- and sun-bleached wooden piers and driftwood.
New technology detects pedestrians in the danger zone
The S60 Concept also presents a safety innovation that can detect a pedestrian who steps out into the path of the car and the car's full braking power is automatically activated if the driver does not respond to the danger. The technology, Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake and pedestrian detection, will be introduced in the all-new Volvo S60.
"Up until now, we have focused on helping the driver avoid collisions with other vehicles. Now we are taking a giant step forward with a system that also boosts safety for unprotected road-users. New sensor technology also makes it possible to advance from 50 percent to full automatic braking power. To our knowledge, none of our competitors has made such progress in this area," explains Thomas Broberg, safety expert at Volvo Cars.
Avoids collisions at speeds below 12mph
The car's speed has a significant effect on the result of a collision with a pedestrian. If speed drops from 31mph to 18mph, the chance of a pedestrian's survival increases.
"Our aim is that this new technology should help the driver avoid collisions with pedestrians at speeds below 12mph. If the car is being driven faster, the aim is to reduce the impact speed as much as possible. In most cases, we can reduce the collision force by about 75 percent," says Thomas Broberg.
This technology is also highly beneficial in the event of rear-end impacts with other vehicles. Studies indicate that half of all drivers who drive into another vehicle from behind do not brake prior to the collision. In such cases, Collision Warning with Full Auto Brake can help entirely avoid a collision if the relative speed difference between the two vehicles is less than 15mph.
Visual warning on head-up display
In an emergency situation, the driver first gets an audible warning together with a flashing light in the windscreen's head-up display. In order to prompt an immediate, intuitive reaction, the visual warning is designed to look like a brake light coming on in front. If the driver does not respond to the warning and the system assesses that a collision is imminent, the car's full braking power is activated automatically.