Lexus UX Concept Interior Shows Us the Future of Car Tech

Lexus’s UX Concept, debuted at the 2016 Paris Motor Show, is an innovative new look at the crossover vehicle. Lexus said in a press release that the UX crossover combines off-road vehicle design and styling elements with a coupe-like driving position. The mixture of design elements is clear from the outside, but what really caught our attention was the interior of the vehicle. Lexus said it designed the UX Concept with an inside-out approach.

“The inside-out concept came from a lot of discussions within the team. We wanted to show the human-centric aspect of the concept in a visually as well as philosophically strong way. A strong symbiosis between the exterior and interior was felt to be important by all the designers involved. To create the anticipation from the exterior, which could then have a visual link and expand into the interior was a key goal” said Alexandre Gommier, an Interior Designer with Lexus’ French ED2 studio.

The design team seems to have achieved their goal. As interesting and multi-layered the exterior is, the interior appears to be even more so. The interior features the new Kinetic Seat Concept, a cabin length center console and a comfy looking loveseat-like rear seat to name just a few things.

Here are some of the additional interesting interior features:

• Cameras instead of side mirrors. The screens for the cameras frame the upper portion of the vehicle’s dash.
• A holographic vehicle instrumentation display that projects a transparent sphere with information.
• A second hologram on the center console’s crystal structure shows climate information and on both sides of the crystal structure are gear selector switches.
• An infotainment screen high up on the center of the dash.
• A three-dimensional dash and center console design with several layers and a four-spoke steering wheel that keeps with the vehicle’s overall look.
• A fin motif is used on the A-pillars and is repeated on the dashboard, concealing a removable sound bar built into the dash.

The UX Concept is the kind of car you could look at for hours and still find new things to obsess over. It looks like something out of science fiction video game or one of Ridley Scott’s Alien films. As odd as it is, it also makes a lot of sense. It’s an odd but logical step towards adding modern technology that’s not yet widely used in an automobile. Lexus said it was tasked with building a new genre of crossover. We think they nailed it.