Mercedes-Benz
Gorgeous.
- It's called "multicolor ambient lighting."
- It creates a breathtaking experience inside the Mercedes E400 Coupé.
- The feature comes standard on the E400.
The new Mercedes-Benz E400 Coupé is a terrific car. We sampled a $90,000 tester at Business Insider and were blown away.
The E400 has quite a lot going for it, but one of the real show-stopping features is the ambient interior lighting. The system allows owners to adjust the tones using a slider that moves through the color spectrum, providing much more subtlety than what you might find in other vehicles, where the colors are pre-loaded. Owners of the E400 can also change the brightness and the intensity.
"The 'multicolor ambient lighting' feature, actually comes standard," I wrote in my recent review of the E400. "We settled on a luminous purple as our favorite, calling it an homage to Prince, RIP."
Benjamin Zhang/Business Insider
The Merc's ambient-lighting is just the latest example of a significant trend in luxury cars: creating a soothing and enveloping, customizable environment inside vehicles. To a certain extent, the trend has been influenced by smart devices and their numerous customization options.
The trend is trickling down into cheaper, mass-market cars and SUVs, but not with the same rich drama we enjoyed in the E400 Coupé.