Yanfeng Automotive Interiors (YFAI), the world’s leading supplier of automotive interiors presented its innovations for the automotive interior of the future in a press conference on 13 September at the IAA in Frankfurt am Main. Shortly before, we gave our customer Daimler AG an exclusive preview. Dr. Klaus Zehender, Member of the Divisional Board of Mercedes-Benz Cars, Purchasing and Supplier Quality, invited automotive journalists to a guided tour of select suppliers and visited our booth.

The main emphasis of the tour was to address how suppliers are preparing for the revolutionary changes in the future: megatrends such as networking, autonomous driving, car sharing and electric drives (CASE) each have the potential to fundamentally change the automotive industry. Because of this the challenge for suppliers is to combine these trends into innovative concepts.

At the YFAI booth, tour participants were able to discover our ideas for the interior of the future: our interior concept eXperience in Motion (XiM18) shows how people will travel, work or relax in cars in the future, when they no longer have to steer the vehicle. Our CEO Johannes Roters and CTO Han Hendriks presented the four driving modes to our guests, as well as many innovative product and process solutions of the XiM18, including Smart Interior Surfaces with integrated electronics, light effects and lightweight materials for interior components.

“Individual mobility and the entire automotive industry will undergo radical changes. As the world’s leading supplier of solutions and products for automotive interiors we see this challenge as an opportunity. We are creating the extended living space of the future, which seamlessly integrates visual appearance, comfort and functionality into the interior,” said CTO Han Hendriks during the presentation of the concept car.

As a response to CASE, future topics such as electrification, autonomous driving and weight optimization are also the focus of our other interior innovations. For example the YaKoMo-Module (“Yanfeng-KOSTAL-Module”) provides an intelligent surface with a 3D glass in which authentic 3D glasswork is seamlessly combined with innovative HMI technologies. Our activeSkin-Concept enables digital data to be displayed on soft surfaces. This illustrates intuitive controls in the vehicle interior which merge the boundaries between the digital and analog world. Further highlights of the tour were lightweight construction solutions, including an extremely lightweight instrument panel, which was produced entirely by the CHyM process (compression hybrid molding) and to a large extent from environmentally friendly natural fibers.

“To drive change forward we need the right partners, because we need to identify what will be integrated into our vehicles in five years’ time” said Dr. Klaus Zehender from Daimler at the end of the visit. Read his impressions of the tour here.