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Until Pixar came along and ruined things, headlights were often seen as a vehicle’s eyes. But Mercedes-Benz refuses to give up on that anthropomorphic fantasy. Even to the point of designing a mechanical turn signal system in its new Concept Style Coupe that looks like fluttering, flirting eyelashes.
Instead of simply animating a row of LEDs to indicate that the vehicle was turning right or left, the Mercedes-Benz engineers went a little overboard with a series of metal plates that raise and lower in sequence, revealing a yellow light underneath. The effect is not unlike impatiently drumming your fingers on a table, but it furthers the illusion that the vehicle is defiantly staring you down… or just trying to get your phone number. [Notcot]
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Ok, but why? I get a lot of the new technology they’re showing on cars, but I’ve never looked at an indicator light and thought ‘that isn’t doing it’s job well enough, maybe if somebody invested lots of money into weird blinking technologies they’d be much better’…
Yeah, but it looks cool.
You raise a good point however it would be like raising the question of why bother making cars fancy or different at all if they are just meant to get us from A to B?
Aesthetics and looks and what that brings is just as important if not more these days and having a car that stands out has value to people.
well, check out the free press it’s getting right here
They don’t create the effect of flashing in a way that is obvious enough to ever be safe on the road. The metal needs to curve on down over the front of the orange line to obscure it more and create a more visible signal.
Very true, it’s bad enough that so many recent cars have hardly-visible indicators as it is.