WATCH: The world’s coolest concept car – Mercedes AVTR

There are a lot of concept cars out there, but the Mercedes AVTR may truly be one of a kind. Designed as a collaboration between the people behind the movie Avatar and the top guys at Mercedes-Benz, the car looks like it just dropped down from the moon of Pandora, from the bionic scales on the back, to the lights designed to look like the seeds of the Tree of Souls from James Cameron’s 2009 movie masterpiece.

In this video, Sergi Galiano takes a closer look at a few of the features of this futuristic and truly unique machine.

Video transcript:

All right, this is one of the craziest cars on the entire planet. There’s only one of these in the world. We’re taking it to the desert.

I’m gonna show you around and we’re even gonna get to drive it. So today’s video is an absolute banger. Make sure you watch until the end.

This is the Mercedes Vision ABTR. I’m not gonna lie, I’m super excited. I mean, this is the kind of car that when you get the call, your eyebrows go up.

Mercedes called me, they were like, hey, Sergi, you wanna do a car review? I was like, yeah, sure. They were like, it’s the ABTR. I was like, you know, it’s one of those kinds of cars.

This thing is super, super special. And if you don’t know what this is, this thing is basically a clash of the titans between the team over at Avatar and Mercedes. ABTR basically stands for Avatar.

It also stands for Advanced Vehicle Transformation. First, you’ll see that everything here is completely like lit up, it’s glowing, right? But when you charge it, it also changes. So when you charge it, everything kind of goes inwards.

This is super cool. And at the same time, it’s also an indicator, like a turn signal. So when you wanna turn, all you gotta do is press the button.

And there it is. There’s your indicator. I thought I had cool rims.

And then you see this thing, my rims look like a little plastic hubcap next to this. So the inspiration for this is also from the movie Avatar. It’s from the seeds of the tree of souls.

And I’ll be damned if it doesn’t look exactly like the seeds of the Tree of Souls.

I mean, that is literally it. You’ll also see that these don’t look like normal wheels.

They’re actually spheres. And each one of these wheels can turn about 30 degrees and they can each drive separately. So what you get is you can drive in different unique ways.

This thing can literally drive sideways. It can drive diagonally. Obviously in the front, what you have is the Mercedes-Benz logo.

Getting closer, right? What you’ll see is that you have all these little individual lights. That is super cool. I mean, that looks like the future.

All right, let’s go around the side. You have the glass doors. We’ll open them in just a second because first I want to show you the back.

This is my favorite part of the car. What you have are 33 scales. Mercedes calls these bionic flaps.

And what they do is they move. Look at that. So now they’ve all turned red.

When you brake, it turns red and they all move like this. But then when you accelerate, they all press forward and turn blue.

Actually, even when you’re driving, these things will turn with you in different directions.

And it makes such a satisfying sound. Oh my God. That is super, super cool, right? So again, this thing makes the car literally look like it’s alive.

So when Mercedes calls these bionic flaps, obviously bio comes from the Greek root word life and bionic is an artificial body part. So these are literal artificial scales which make the car look like a creature, right? It makes it look like something that is no longer just a vehicle. Down here, you have these subtle lights, and the faster you go, the faster these lights will actually push.

You have this awesome taillight going all throughout the entire back and obviously Vision AVTR, Vision Avatar. All right, time to go inside. So, no door handles or anything, right? Well, there’s a secret button, a little fingerprint scanner.

Let’s see if I can get this right. And, oh yeah. This is so cool.

You see how it literally looks like a wing? Insect wings are like transparent. That’s kind of what it looks like. It’s even got that kind of curved shape.

It’s super cool, super cool. All right, so take a look at the inside. No steering wheel, no problem.

I’ll show you why in just a second. But look at this thing, look at the inside. This looks like a spaceship.

All right, so let’s go step by step. First of all, these seats are vegan leather. So, what Mercedes has done is they’ve combined luxury with sustainability.

And even this part, it’s actually wood. It comes from a tree. And some of you guys are thinking like, what, you cut down a tree for this? No, actually the root can become invasive if it overgrows.

So what Mercedes does is they get a win-win situation by literally cutting and extracting this wood carefully right before the wood becomes invasive. So, save some plant life and at the same time, you get a super cool little interior. This is both the driver’s and the passenger’s seat because you can drive this car from here or from there.

It doesn’t make a difference because this is both the steering wheel and the brake. To accelerate it, you push forward. To turn the car, turn it sideways.

And you can crab-walk it by literally spinning this entire thing. We’re gonna drive it in a second. All right, what’s also super cool is that the back seat, you see the rear seat, that actually arches and becomes the headrest.

So when I put my hand on here, you see that the entire thing comes to life. Look at that. There it is.

You have a projection. Oh my God. This is exciting.

That, that’s super cool. That is super cool. Yeah, you feel like you’re in some sort of like a fairytale.

It doesn’t even feel like you’re on the road. You hear that? Little heartbeat. Do, do.

So what this is doing is this is actually scanning my heartbeat and it can actually tell through this scanner and this projector, who’s driving the car. So it’ll actually adapt to you, which is completely crazy. All right, here it is.

Let’s drive it. So first I’m gonna pull forward. And we’re off.

Wow. All right, look, so I can, I can, I can, I can slowly turn it like this. Look at that.

We’re crab-walking now. We are crab walking. We’ll crab walk the other way.

Oh my God. Look, look, look, look. We’re driving towards Ludo right now.

We’re completely crab-walking. Look at this. Man, it’s, it feels so strange to be, be crab walking right now.

So look, so when I turn it left like this, when I tilt it, we turn like that. When I turn right, you’ll see we’re turning. And when I turn it the other way, we’ll start turning the other way.

Forward is accelerate. And backwards is to brake. And you can also reverse.

Look. That was one of the craziest driving experiences of my entire life. No joke.

I went about 20 kilometers an hour, but it was more than enough. I mean, it was absolutely crazy to drive that thing and actually see a crab-walk and everything.

What do you guys think?