[90ft]

6 Blurring product boundaries: driver seat with integrated center console armrest and slim seats

The idea behind Premium Attitude’s asymmetrical driver’s seat is that the floating armrest with embedded HMI-controller (inspired by the mobile phone industry) on the inboard side travels with the seat fore and aft so the ergonomics stay onsistent. Meanwhile the door panel armrest also automatically moves diagonally back and forth with the driver to offer the same benefit. The aesthetic inspiration comes from the Lama chair designed by Ludovica and Roberto Palomba for Zanotta[6] but its function far exceeds that beautiful (but static) domestic interior sculpture. The seat is slimmer than today’s automotive
seats thus creating more interior space and it appears even slimmer from the outside due to the placemnt of the integrated
seatbelts and the associated reinforced structure on the inboard side of the seat – instead of the normal outboard position.
The fore/aft track on which the seat moves has also been optimized for user comfort and vision. Tilted slightly more upward than is typical in car interiors – along a very shallow diagonal course – it gives a better adjustment for any occupant imensions. As Industrial Design Vice President Andreas Wlasak comments: “This slightly higher incline allows most people to be
low enough in the back and short people higher in the front. It gets closer to the best natural curve between these two points. I have not seen such a solution before. The old way of doing things comes from the time when people were working on drawing boards with conventional up/down, left/right measurements. But that has nothing to do with how comfort is perceived.” Both the slim seats and asymmetrical driver’s seat and armrest are validated innovations – the latter using Bluetooth technology to transfer information from hand controller to display screen, as there are no hard-wired links. In the future, another innovation Faurecia has helped develop called Seamless Mobile Integration (or SMI), will make the process work, see the next innovation.