Here's What Mercedes' New 1.4-Metre 'Hyperscreen' Looks Like In A Car

Mercedes is placing such a big emphasis on tech these days, that we tend to see images of the screen festooned interiors of new cars long before the outside. That’s what happened with the most-recent S-Class, and for its ‘EQS’ electric brother, our first official look involved images of a disembodied, 1.4-metre wide ‘Hypercreen’ destined for the car.

Now, Merc has shown us how the Hyperscreen looks in situ, and it’s rather dramatic - the whole dashboard really is just one massive screen, and there’s a conspicuous absence of physical buttons. As far as the dash goes, there’s the stop/start button and the hazard lights switch, and, well, that’s about it.

As revealed a few weeks back, the 141cm-wide curved unit gives a 2432 square-centimetre viewing area, backed by 12 haptic feedback actuators. The glass coating is made at 650 degrees centigrade, and there’s a special coating which “simplifies cleaning”. Handy, since this thing is going to pick up a lot of fingerprints.

Concern is growing over distracting car touchscreens, and you can’t help but be worried about what a unit like this will do for the longevity of the cars it’s fitted to. On the former front, at least, the Hyperscreen does have some solutions. For one thing, it uses a “zero layer” format, by which Mercedes means you don’t need to scroll through any menus to access “the most important applications”.

Although we’re yet to try the display ourselves, we’d imagine the climate controls remain fixed at the bottom of the central screen portion. There’s also a light sensor that dims or brightens the Hyperscreen depending on the conditions, which should avoid it becoming unpleasant for the eyes at night.

Powering all that is an onboard computer with 8 CPU cores and 24GB of ram. The system is smart enough to proactively suggest particular functions based on who’s in what seat using facial recognition, remembering - for instance - the hot stone massage Geoff likes on the average winter Tuesday evening. Clever, creepy, or a bit of both? You decide…

As for the rest of the car, Mercedes has now revealed that it has a super-slippery drag coefficient of just 0.20Cd. The EQS is dubbed as the “first production car in the world” to get such a figure, although by that, Merc seems to be referring to volume production models and ignoring limited-run stuff like the VW XL1.

The reveal is still a few weeks off, but we do know that the car sits on a bespoke EV platform, unlike the EQC, which is best thought of as a GLC with the internal combustion bits ripped out. Power will come from a 100kWh battery pack giving a range of over 400 miles, and in terms of price, we reckon each derivative will be a little pricier than the equivalent S-Class, giving a starting point of £80,000 - £90,000.