In today’s fast-morphing automobile industry, the men and women at DS Automobiles were tasked with bringing to life their dreams for the car of tomorrow while sharing their passion of automobile, uncurbed by predetermined constraints. The fruit of that passionate, unfettered journey is DS X E-Tense. Their vision for 2035 is very different from the current, near-obsessional quest for characterless mobility. Instead, the designers at DS sought to blend the benefits of advanced technology with a large measure of poetic creativity. Their answer explores how customers who have no qualms about indulging themselves and how they might perceive the notion of a luxurious French style eighteen years hence, however diverse their needs.
The cockpit is accessed by an Elytre door that is trimmed with a carbon fibre/leather weave. Inevitably, the eyes are drawn to the pyramidal architecture of the single seat, which adapts perfectly to the driver’s build like the fitted seats seen in motor racing, while its reclined position helps to keep the car’s centre of gravity low. The steering wheel, meanwhile, in keeping with the symbol it has always represented vis-à-vis the passion for automobiles, is an enticing combination of leather, wood and metal, and incorporates capacitive senses to monitor the driver’s efforts.
DS X E-Tense’s asymmetric architecture provides distinct ambiences left and right. Climb into the cocoon part of the interior via the gullwing door and the driver, alone or accompanied, becomes a passenger. This asymmetric layout frees up a different type of space underneath the clear glass canopy, with the passenger enclosed in a sensuous capsule, snug in a ventilated, massaging seat that stretches back like a deployed bird’s wing, with a feather star motif crowning the top of the back.
The see-through electro-chromatic glass floor provides a view of the road as it flashes beneath the car, while the cocoon’s lavish blend of leather, wood and metal draws the eye and settles the mind. The passenger benefits from a reassuring, protective environment, including filtered, scented air that plays a part in the impression of exquisite refinement as the occupant is swept away by the driver in the cockpit, or alternatively by the car in autonomous mode. An additional seat even makes it possible to travel three-up.
