Close your eyes and allow your imagination to envisage what the car of your dreams might look like in 2035. Use your senses to picture how new bodyshapes, new materials and new technologies might combine to produce a vehicle that will epitomise future luxury on four wheels. This is the stimulating assignment the team at DS Automobiles were given – to imagine what a dream car could look like in 2035. The fruit of their labour and collective fantasy is DS X E-TENSE, a car of incomparable refinement.
A GAUNTLET THROWN DOWN TO FUTURISM
In addition to a reputation known for being an automobile brand capable of turning avant-garde ideas into reality, DS Automobiles has emerged as an ambassador for French savoir-faire.
Recently, DS Automobiles decided to rise to a singular challenge – that of exercising its world-renowned expertise and culture to imagine an object of pure desire.
In today’s fast-moving automotive industry, the team at DS Automobiles were tasked with bringing to life their dreams for the car of tomorrow, uncurbed by predetermined constraints.
THE FRUIT OF THAT PASSION, UNRESTRICTED JOURNEY IS DS X E-TENSE
Their vision for 2035 is very different from today’s quest for mobility. Instead, DS designers sought to blend the benefits of advanced technology with a large measure of poetic creativity.
customers will indulge themselves and how they might perceive the notion of luxurious French style eighteen years from now, however diverse their needs.
The result is a breathtakingly beautiful car, but also sensuous and inspiring. It takes the same revolutionary mould as the original DS, which captivated the public’s imagination eight decades before 2035.
A RADICALLY DIFFERENT EXPERIENCE
The cockpit is accessed by an Elytre door trimmed with a carbon fibre/leather texture. 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.
The two-tone Millennium Blue and Navy Blue Aniline leather is finished with DS trademark pearl stitching. Elsewhere, the pedals have been subjected to the designers’ obsessive attention-to-detail. These factors alone contribute to the promise of a unique experience once installed inside the cockpit and provide the driver with an adrenalin rush even before they pull away.
A SOOTHING COCOON
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 an outstretched bird’s wing, with a feather star motif crowning the top of the back. Travelling with the autonomous mode engaged is an exceptional experience as other senses come into play, including enjoyment of the Hi-Fi sound bar that forms the ‘dashboard’.
The see-through electro-chromatic glass floor provides a view of the road as it flashes beneath the car, while the cabin’s lavish blend of leather, wood and metal draws the eye and relax the mind.
The association of navy blue and rich red hues soften the light that enters the car, while the fluidity of the lines is accentuated by the absence of screens, with the role of the familiar tablet display played by the car’s glazed surfaces.
The passenger benefits from a reassuring, protective environment, including filtered, scented air that plays a part in creating an environment 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 as three.
In addition to being connected to the outside world, a personal assistant – IRIS, which takes the form of a hologram – tends to the vehicle’s functions.
INSPIRED TECHNOLOGIES
Taking a step back from preconceived ideas has resulted in a car that is as ‘light as a feather’ and as ‘silent as a breeze’, forged by its creators’ passion, for people who are passionate about cars.
Located within the front wheels, the two motors selected as the source of the all-electric DS X E-TENSE’s power provide unrivalled response. For road use, peak power stands at 400kW (540 horsepower), a figure that rises to 1,000kW (1,360 horsepower) in ‘circuit’ mode which allows the driver to savour the exquisite performance of the suspension engineered by DS Performance, the technical team behind DS’s Formula E programme.
The carbon fibre chassis sits on innovative springs and torsion bars, while traction, grip and deceleration is controlled by an advanced active system conceived to optimise performance, whatever the type of road surface.
Imagining a dream car for 2035 led DS Automobiles to create an asymmetric, three-seat concept founded on a unique association of two vehicles in one that allows owners to select the driving mode that matches their need of the moment. Due to new technology, the body is capable of recovering its original form after an impact, while the configuration of the front grille and the DS X E-TENSE’s cooling capacity adapt to the driver’s whims. Thanks to DS LIGHT VEIL light curtains, the brightness of the lights adjusts as a function of the requirements of the occupants, the car and its surroundings.
