Seat design boss: ‘the car industry is in a stage of design chaos’

Seat’s charismatic design chief Alejandro Mesonero-Romanas has frank words for the future of car design, as new technologies and ecological demands force a complete rethink of how cars are or built, powered and driven. 

“We are facing a kind of chaos at the moment.”, he says. “No-one really knows how or when autonomous driving will be an accessible-to-all reality. We are putting every technology in a big melting pot but really we don’t know what we are cooking.

“All brands are really looking to see what will happen when – and have a prepared set of scenarios. As our CEO announced yesterday, Seat will get its first pure EV in 2019. I’m working on electric car projects coming further away than that. I can tell you we will be competitive, since we are the VW Group, because we can profit from the group projects. We are investing in connectivity and electrification, because this will be the future," he added.

So, if Seat design is poised to get more radical from its current triangular form, is that a hint VW’s Spanish outpost is getting a tad conservative? Mesonero shakes his head. It’s all part of the plan, see…

“With the Leon, we started something," he says, "and the Ateca was obviously related to the Leon to establish an SUV with a link to Seat. And you can see this has been very successful! With the Ibiza [pictured], we go a little bit further, with new design elements. It has more sculpture, more ‘nerve’. The Arona [Seat’s Juke-sized small crossover) will come later in 2017 and go another step on the ladder.

“Now, I can’t tell you when, but we will do a much bigger design step soon. You can’t just keep on doing evolution. But we will keep our own elements – you will never confuse our cars with a Skoda or Audi or Volkswagen. Altogether, I am currently working on nine new projects, which will all come to market by the end of 2025."

What about the future of car interiors? Seat’s built a reputation for ergonomic, solid, and not particularly memorable cabins. Will Alejandro attempt to park his interior design tanks on Audi’s lawn?

“Thanks to new technology, we can have bigger screens inside.”

Oh dear – potentially. Minimalist cabins look ace, but ask anyone who’s tried to operate the climate control in a Peugeot 308 or set the sat-nav while rolling in a Tesla and it’s hard to get around the fact that glass screens require way more eyes-off-the-road time than good old fashioned buttons and knobs. Mesonero sees this nitpick coming and has this response. 

“Here we have a dilemma that the whole industry is facing. The logical thing is to have fewer buttons and put all the functions in the screen. In our next generation of cars, we will move all our climate controls into the screen and delete the buttons. The trick is how to make it easy to use. In my team, since 2016 we have hired 25 user-interface designers to get around these problems. To make a car complex is very simple, but to make a car simple to use – that’s very complex…”