Wanted: the police car of the year 2025.
The Los Angeles Design Challenge 2012 is looking far ahead in search of the “Highway Patrol Vehicle 2025”. Tomorrow’s law enforcement will be faced with even more congested roads with electronically monitored and controlled traffic as well as a decidedly denser population. The new age will require a new type of police patrol vehicles. They must be able to reach any conceivable location even off road via the shortest route while demonstrating extreme environment-friendliness thanks to alternative drives. The basic virtues of a police car in the year 2025 therefore include pronounced green-car assets and all-terrain capabilities. The Vision Ener-G-Force, which Mercedes-Benz presents as a design study in Los Angeles, meets these requirements as an eco-friendly SUV and could support police and emergency services in all corners of the world.
New off-road design idiom.
Gorden Wagener, Director of Design of Mercedes-Benz Cars: “The Vision Ener-G-Force is the vision of an off-roader that while reflecting tomorrow’s adventures also invokes the genes of the Mercedes-Benz off-road icon, the G model. Modern and cool, it could also be an indication of a new beginning for the off-road design idiom of Mercedes-Benz”. The small windows make the police car a safe cocoon for law enforcement facing many dangers.
Rotating beacons integrated into the roof make the car’s presence known, the striking front end commands respect and the giant wheels guarantee the vehicle’s right of way, even where there is no way.
Pure, rendered science fiction.
The Vision Ener-G-Force for the Los Angeles Design Challenge is pure, rendered science fiction, of course. The idea of the all-terrain vehicle of the future nevertheless fascinated the designers at the Mercedes-Benz Advanced Design in Carlsbad,
California to such an extent that they were prompted to develop the fiction of the police variant into a civil version, which they have even produced as a 1:1 model.
Radical reinterpretation of the G-Class.
Similarly to the “Highway Patrol Vehicle 2025”, the civil Vision Ener-G-Force also takes its essential design from the G-Class – the off-road icon whose uninterrupted story goes back to the 1970s and which still tackles the future today as an SUV embodying advanced design and technology. Like the police variant, the model representing the civil Vision Ener-G-Force is unmistakably based on the G-Class, which has long been considered an automotive icon. It presents a radical reinterpretation of this classic, however, looking far into the future. Key genes such as proportions and features have been adopted in their essence and refashioned in a completely new and modern guise with a clean concept for the distant future.
Vision Ener-G-Force designer Hubert Lee: “Of course we wanted to take a clear step forward, but we also wanted the G’s characteristic features“. The Vision Ener-G-Force displays a similar profile, but with a high shoulder line and smaller windows.
The child of a modern era.
The clear design idiom of the G-Class has been retained while endowing the surfaces with a dynamic and exciting aura. The meticulously crafted details also clearly reveal the Vision Ener-G-Force as the child of a modern era.
It comes with full green car credentials, too: the Vision Ener-G-Force carries recycled water in roof-mounted tanks, supplying this water to the “hydro-tech converter”.It converts the natural, renewable resource into hydrogen to power the fuel cells. The storage units for the generated electrical energy are located in the striking side skirts, where they are readily accessible.