Making of Volvo C40 Recharge – design story, interior desig & exterior design
Hello now we’re in the c40 and i’m going to talk to you about the in-car system that we’ve been working on so this is the google android system and one of the great things is that there’s going to be apps available and here we have the principle of of connecting to your home um and your home life is filled with different apps and and things you use so like when
When i’ve set this up i’ve put my spotify application over here so the same music that i have available at home or on my phone when i’m on the run is available in my car for me whenever i want and i didn’t even have to connect my phone it’s just just available and of course with the google system the other thing that’s available is google maps that gives you
Really efficient directions to wherever you’re going now one of the things that are really great is uh there’s a number of features that make it easier to own an electric vehicle so sometimes when we’ve talked to customers they have some questions about where do i charge my car and those kinds of things well you can just ask google charging stations show up you
Can get very quick directions to them and so it’s all available right there for you the other great thing is there’s little details in in google maps so you for example you can get the charge level that you’ll be at when you reach your destination which is really good for planning long trips and knowing if you have enough uh power to reach your destination or if
You need to charge on the way so some really smart things happening there to help simplify uh the complexity we’ve also looked at things like the settings to make it easier to understand combine things and keep all of the capabilities but do it in a really smart way to take the hassle out of managing your car and finally we have google assistant that i want to
Take you through some really great features and capabilities in the car it allows you to control the car and do various actions without ever taking your hands off the wheel or your eyes off the road you can give it basic commands like hey google can you start the seat heater okay turning on the seat heater for the driver helps you control your comfort you can
Of course control music and other commands in the car there’s one more thing of course you can do to have a little bit of fun in your car hey google tell me a joke why did all the students eat their homework their teacher told them it was a piece of cake let’s talk about interior design and color materials but first let’s talk about nature reika what a beautiful
Backdrop we’ve got today it’s so beautiful today out there i just love the contrasting seasons here living in sweden and the light is very special too even when i came to sweden first time here nature stood out for me it’s magical and it’s give you different kind of energy all together c40 is a very bold and confident design and on the interior it’s described
By the key pure lines in the design so for example the instrument panel has a continuous graphical window in which the technical elements such as the vents and the screens we work to embrace that within that continuous line and then in between those elements leaves this area where we can really showcase the deco material in a beautifully concave surface with
Some light tell us about the deco yeah deco is a very unique element for us in this car it is a combination of the technology and the design and my specialist she got inspired from scandinavian landscapes how you see the pattern which has been digitalized and it’s unregular and it’s abstract and when you backlit you see the magic of how it came out we were really
Surprised and it really uh fits very well inside our interior and it gives you very light feeling it’s a topography graphic where the light comes through the layers isn’t it it’s really beautiful so other than space and a calm purity we’re also really looking for functionality in the interior and c40 here has really good examples of functionality so for example
The the door pockets they’re really usefully large due to the fact that the speakers are positioned in front of the instrument panel the tunnel also has very good functionality it has the wireless phone charger in the front it has a small closed storage as well as two very good cup holders and even tissues and a place for a trash bin super practical but tell
Us about the process lisa yeah absolutely because the process that we use is really important to help us feel connected with the space and determine the areas of reach and where the functional element should be so we use full-size clay models and there we not only can find the space but we really get the attention to detail and the craftsmanship into all the
Surfaces and then we also use virtual reality so state-of-the-art in the goggles where again we can get a really good sense of the space and even try lots of material options so behind me is the new volvo c40 and we’re going to go through today the the design story behind this car meet the designers listen to the inspirations behind their work we’re going to
Start with exterior and move on then to interior materials and really understand their inspiration from nature and light also talk about sustainability and using natural materials we’ll move on to then the user experience so connecting the the mobile phone really with the car and also using the google assist with our new system now the the c-40 really is a new
Vehicle for volvo but it enhances encapsulates the benefits of an suv so that’s the easy ingress egress the high seating position and the versatility which really connects with the lifestyle of our customers yet this is a sleek dynamic modern car now i have tijon here with me from exterior design tijuana let’s maybe talk about that sleek dynamic line that we have
On the c40 well i mean the the starting point and very any good exterior design is is with the proportion and and that’s essential in this car meaning the profile of the vehicle we we’ve established in the market a super successful xc40 where the play upon that vehicle was sort of this tough little robot that had a lot of attitude and i think this this vehicle
Somehow captures even more character um with with the roof line and this this came from the initial sketch really yeah and then just how this project started because i know that um the a lot of projects start through of course a strategy and a design brief but i have to say on this one it really did start with the sketch i mean when that sketch was created by
The designer it was it was like wow here’s a here’s a no-brainer i mean it was compared nose to nose with an xc40 so that really led us into development right away and what we tried to play is take all the successful elements of the xc40 design and really how do we how do we capture them in this vehicle and one of the ways we did that was playing upon this painted
Roof for the different color roof that sets up an architectural item so we have this one line coming down the belt and up the c pillar and then really the the clamped roof that plants the car design and that gives it the strong graphic between the the roof and the lower part and it makes it easier identifiable as this this strong scandinavian design because it’s
Simple but it’s the strong graphics yeah and when we talk about that clean lines and clean form language as well one of the attributes in xc40 that has such a strong character again is this sort of monolithic approach one of my uh favorite sculptors is brancusi and he really plays upon that monolithic sculpture um in his work and i see that here as well which we’re
Very inspired by having this more or less one volume and then we use and carve through sections and it’s so clear and obvious of a theme in xc40 and c40 and that’s the beauty so we’re taking almost a solid form carving away the material and from that it creates then the clean graphics of the car yep it’s a very logical simple theme setup for the entire car so
You see that in the in the body side like i just mentioned but then you also see it in the main theme of the shoulder that wraps around into the front of the car great and now let’s talk about the the front because i know um certainly our philosophy with volvo is about strong light signature the thor’s hammer so we we keep that with this car of course and and i
Think it’s also plays the importance of light with scandinavian design there’s this strong um element of light that you recognize the car what about the rest of the the front i mean we have uh now the electric face i mean this is a full electric suv yeah i mean that was one of the challenges in this vehicle how do we create this uh electrified expression sort of
This efficiency in the vehicle when we start with the nose profile it really has carries on a similar character to its older brother let’s say the xc40 um but with a closed grill yeah we’ve taken out the grill frame yeah around it really gone flush and modded and that’s again communicating that efficiency in the front it also helps above the grill itself we have
One line coming across above the headlight which i refer to as kind of an eyebrow it gives a structure to the eye of the car so the facial expression is still there of this very menacing and powerful front end and when you combine that with the lower wings on the front of the vehicle that really helps plant and set the car architecturally on the ground so in the
The front with the lights as we were talking about they have the latest state-of-the-art pixel technology which is great how does that play out on the rear i mean we we have a very strong dna identity of the vertical tail lights as that head comes around but we did a little twist on the rear lights yeah i mean we have our our extended roofline profile that goes
From from above thor’s hammer in the front all the way kind of up and over the roof and down the rear taillights and what you’ll notice uh for the first time we’ve really taken our our vertical signature and laid it down onto a coupe profile uh and that was that’s definitely something new for us i mean volvo really is clearly identifiable in the rear with those
Vertical tail lights much like thor’s hammer in the front so we have a very strong strong light lighting identity um and we did a bit of a twist with this on the on the c40 where instead of a solid line up the whole whole play we did a segmented approach on the vertical element it’s a very big lamp but it allows us to do quite a sequential uh welcoming light
Which is is quite cool yeah i remember that i mean we did a whole journey with the engineering team because it is such a big lamp but doing the segmented light i think helped out to that but it gives it a very modern graphic which is identifiable for the c40 yeah now it’s one of my favorite views from the rear because of course we also encapsulated that width of
The car how did we do that well i mean again it’s to the lamps where where the the suv bigger brother let’s say the xc40 has one vertical lamp that goes around to the side but we’ve decided to swing it back and clamp the puzzle piece or shield as we call it in the rear that’s between the tail lights and that shield stretches all the way out past the the trunk
Opening in to the lamp area with body color elements there so that’s how we’re really getting that ultimate width view in the rear cool and then looking basically at the side of the car again i mean the the car is sat on some really nice modern aero wheels uh yeah tell us about it yeah i mean the stance of the the three-quarter view in the rear is impeccable again
Accentuated from that wide rear tail lamps but again it’s planted on these beautiful wheels you can correlate the connection between what we showed design language-wise in our 360c concept with this very solid architectural approach and we’ve done a five-spoke version here to be a bit more dynamic which plays with the c40 itself fantastic great all right so i
Think now let’s uh let’s maybe move on to talk about the interior and color materials as i said earlier it’s it’s really about now listening to the the story of the designers about how they’ve been influenced by nature and light similar to exterior design and also their take on sustainable materials and using natural materials so so so you
Transcribed from video
2021 Volvo C40 Recharge Interior Design Story // Making of VOLVO C40 By Kondor