Volkswagen is opening a gateway to the future at the CES in Las Vegas.
The time machine: a zero-emission vehicle – the avant-garde BUDD-e minivan. The first model based on an equally new and progressive Volkswagen technology matrix for electric vehicles. The van’s range: up to 233 miles (USA/FTP 72) or 533 kilometers (Europe/NEDC). And BUDD-e also has charisma with its iconic design. A Volkswagen that breathes the brand’s history, while simultaneously setting its sights on the immediate future with precise clarity. And it is as networked as possible, making BUDD-e a mobile interface between the world on board and the outside world. The car in the Internet of Things. With access to your home – Smart Home – or your workplace. Equipped with next generation Infotainment to turn travel into an interactive experience. BUDD-e offers a completely new method of operation and information processing. Everything is more intuitive than ever before. Touch and gesture control merge seamlessly; switches and buttons are a thing of the past; individual displays blend into large infotainment panels; analog mirrors are replaced by digital screens. The matrix of these new, interactive infotainment and operating systems gently launches passengers aboard the Volkswagen concept car forward – to the end of the decade.
Volkswagen demonstrates how much travel will have changed by the time we are in or around the year 2019 at the CES on board the BUDD-e. Four friends will set off on an imaginary journey in the car from San Francisco to Nevada to go to a legendary American festival on what is to be an interactive journey into the world of tomorrow. A world that will most probably have become the world of the present in January 2016 in Las Vegas with the technologies of the future presented in the BUDD-e. These technologies include Volkswagen’s new conceptual matrix for electric vehicles: the Modular Electric Drive Kit (MEB), with which it may, for the first time, become possible for the pure electrical of large series models to match that of today’s gasoline-powered cars by the end of the decade. In parallel to this, the time it takes to charge the batteries should have been cut to about 15 minutes (80 percent capacity) by then. This would mark the breakthrough of electric cars.
The BUDD-e’s designers focused on the clear aesthetics of functionality. It is not least because of this that this Volkswagen van is characterized by an iconic charm – functional, progressive, clean, powerful and likeable, all at the same time. The concept car has a two-tone color scheme, with the body painted in “Nevada White” below the window edge and the roof painted in golden “Phoenix Copper”.
The architecture of the new Modular Electric Drive Kit (MEB) completely changes the package of the car, which is a tall order for the interior designers, who had the opportunity to create a space that is hardly restricted by the drive technology at the front of the car. This is precisely what the BUDD-e demonstrates, because the conventional dashboard along with all its knobs and switches have been entirely done away with. It just isn’t necessary any more in the future of electromobility. Instead, the design team arranged the instruments – the next-generation human-machine interface – as a display that looks like it is floating in mid air, like a tablet floating in the space in front of the driver. But it isn’t just the driver’s workplace that is characterized by lightness, but all of the interior surfaces, which are immersed in blue, silver and white.
Everything is operated intuitively by gesture control, touch screen (displays and touch slider) or voice control. The driver can often choose between the various control modes (multi-modal interaction), and that is intuitive, too, because – despite the multitude of functions – Volkswagen will continue to adhere to the maxim that information and controls ought to be self-explanatory. For example, in the concept car you simply need to say “Hello BUDD-e” to activate voice control. What is more, the system also offers completely natural speech interaction. For example, if you simply ask it to “turn the heat up a bit, please”, the car responds appropriately right away. Last but not least, the system is able to locate the passenger who spoke to it and react accordingly. If, for instance, someone sitting on the left in the back says, “it’s too hot here”, BUDD-e could immediately lower the temperature in that passenger’s zone. The Active Info Display and the head unit (HU) in detail:
