- Hi everybody, this is Sean from The Verge

and I am standing here in front of what's probably going

to be the most ridiculous thing we see here all week

at the 2020 Consumer Electronics Show,

which is a Mercedes-Benz concept car

inspired by the 2009 film, and soon to be franchise, Avatar.

Honestly, there's a lot,

I don't really know where to start with this car.

It is a concept car first

and foremost which means that this thing

is not gonna be on the road anytime soon

and it's really meant to be a showcase for

a lot of different technologies

that Mercedes-Benz has spent some

of the last couple of years working on.

Whether that's autonomous vehicle technology,

electric vehicle technology

or human-machine interface interaction,

user experience inside the cockpit kind of technology.

But first I think we should just talk about

the look of the thing.

There are 33

bionic flaps or scales going all the way up the rear end

of the car that move up and down

and Mercedes-Benz say they could potentially be used as

a way of communicating with maybe other vehicles

on the road, pedestrians who are crossing around the car.

One of the other really wild things about this car is

that it has these sort of spherical wheels

that can move in multiple different directions.

They enable the car to move not only sideways, but diagonal.

We had a little bit of a taste of

that when the car rolled out here on stage tonight.

The wheels on the car where supposedly inspired

by the seeds from the big tree in the movie, Avatar,

and that's not the only thing.

There are a lot of other touches on this car

that are supposedly drawing inspiration from the film and,

in fact, it wasn't just inspiration, Mercedes-Benz went

and worked with some of the people behind Avatar.

Like pretty much every other automaker

on the planet right now, Mercedes-Benz

and its parent company, Daimler, have laid out pretty big,

ambitious goals for reducing their carbon footprint

over the next 20 or so years

and so that's really where

I think the inspiration actually came from for this car.

The company wanted to present a concept that was going

to reflect how they are thinking about these green,

sustainable technologies

and so they decided to make this car,

which is an electric concept car, it has, you know,

sort of, vegan leather on the inside,

it has recycled plastics used on the interior materials

and I think as they started to work up some of those ideas

and cohere them into a concept car

there must've been some partnership struct

with the people behind Avatar and their themes

that run through that movie and the upcoming movies about,

sort of, protecting the natural resources around you.

Apparently melded well enough for them to design

an entire Avatar car.

The Ava-car, if you will.

And I will.

The inside of the car is another really, kind of,

wild looking piece of tech which

is this control unit which comes up out

of the center console.

Sort of, accordions up to meet your hand

and according to Mercedes-Benz,

it will vibrate a long with your heartbeat and breathing.

And I got to try the tech earlier today,

it's still very concept version,

it's not actually really working, like,

it wasn't really actually mimicking my breathing

but the thing did come out of the center console.

It was, sort of, vibrating a little bit,

the seats were vibrating too and then that's supposed

to be something that you could use to,

kind of, control the car.

It's really the only way you can interact with this car

because there are no buttons, there's no steering wheel.

There's just one giant display

that stretches up from the center console

and into the windshield.

If anything, this is, kind of,

like the ultimate Consumer Electronic Show concept car

and that's what it hits.

Pretty much all of the beats

that we typically see automakers pick at.

We have futuristic tech

that doesn't really actually work today

that may work someday in the future.

We have outrageous design with lights coming out

of the wheels and scales on the back of the car

and we have really ambitious

goals and ambitious claims about what this car's going

to mean for the company that are really hard

to check right now in the present.

And to top that all off,

we have a partnership with an entertainment company

and a massive piece of IP

that people are really familiar with.

Puts all of those things together in the one package

that is admittedly pretty radical

and I certainly wouldn't mind a drive,

but it's definitely the most ridiculous thing

we're gonna see this week.

Thanks so much for watching.

If you wanna see more weird tech, amazing tech,

bad tech that we've seen here

at the Consumer Electronics Show,

make sure to go to youtube.com/theverge and click subscribe.

Thanks for watching.