Avatr design chief reveals Vision Xpectra secrets

While some brands appeared content to reveal thinly disguised pre-production cars in generic shapes and sizes at the 2025 IAA Mobility show in Munich this September, Avatr’s Vision Xpectra was a bold manifesto for something altogether more radical and futuristic.

At close to six metres long and more than two metres wide – but with a delicately thin-pillared glass canopy above – the Vision Xpectra provided an unexpected visual treat and twist at the downtown part of the busy Bavarian show, within the IAA Open Space at Königsplatz.

 The team behind the car – with its Global Design Center also based in Munich and many of its members plucked from premium German brands – has been assembled by Avatr’s chief design officer, Nader Faghihzadeh (pronounced Nadér Fa-geesa-deh). Also a graduate of ‘the German school’ via Pforzheim University and almost two decades at BMW, Faghihzadeh joined Avatr in 2019 to create and develop the name, logo, design philosophy and its first products.

“This vision car is an interpretation of a future sedan as a four-door grand coupé,” Faghihzadeh told Car Design News. “The idea was to communicate our design philosophy and make it expressive, but of course you can scale it down. It’s about connections with users and energy so we want to make this energy visible and tangible through different layers of experience from the inside to the outside.”

The exterior’s proportions are undoubtedly eye-catching and unified by this glass canopy. It features a long windscreen that rises at a dramatic angle from deep within the bonnet before flattening out over the cinched centre body section and then gently sloping back further over the proudly flared rear shoulders and long rear overhang. 

Inside, the light-filled cabin is unusual, distinctive and elegant. There’s a layered and louvred instrument panel, whose horizontal lamella ‘fingers’ slot beautifully into the well-defined gaps of the similarly designed door panels to present a unified and cocooning whole. And when the car’s doors open, these interlocking elements also cleverly hide the normally unsightly area where the dashboard’s edge and front door hinges reside and meet.

Then there’s the contrasting vertically ribbed top sections of the four seatbacks, using real aluminium woven into a shiny 3D knit, although still flexible enough to be comfortable. Or the ‘ice sculpture-like’ centre console which extends through the cabin and features wood veneer marquetry strips that superbly integrate into the top surface at its front. 

Perhaps most striking and original of all are the Xpectra’s see-through inflatable headrests, which seem to channel in equal parts, sci-fi product design and glossy upmarket puffa jacket style. 

“These headrests bring freshness, and a fashion attitude to the brand,” says Faghihzadeh, “and this was part of our philosophy from the beginning, the story of emotive luxury.” It also neatly aligns with the brand’s recent production car collaborations with prominent fashion designers Kim Jones and Matthew M Williams, already on sale in China as limited-edition versions of the Avatr 012 large executive coupé and 011 mid-size SUV respectively.

We want to make this energy visible through different layers of experience from the inside to the outside

 A crucial part of the brand’s design philosophy at the heart of the Vision Xpectra concept is the idea of a more genuine connection with the user. Unlike many brands that rely on virtual personal assistants with a notional name and a digital face, Avatr takes a more profound path: the car itself is designed to be the user’s avatar – hence the company’s name. 

The Vision Xpectra aims to redefine the connection between human and vehicle to create a deep emotional bond and personal resonance. In this vision, the car acts as an ‘emotive companion’ that accompanies the user and adapts to their emotions.

Faghihzadeh explains that the light-pulsing Vortex cavity in the top of the concept’s dashboard is the focal point. “This central nerve creates its own identity. The whole car is about this intelligence, this entity.” It’s a presence that can be dialled up or down by the user as required and is manifested in seats that purr and vibrate and subtle lighting that indicates when the car has received driver requests or inputs.

For Faghihzadeh, ‘emotive luxury’ is about feeling and self-expression, not owning. “The Vision Xpectra touches people because it is more than an object – it is a companion,” he says. “We give empathy a form that unfolds like states of matter from the inside out. From the pulse of light particles in the Vortex, to the soft, transparent layers of the interior, and finally to the exterior, which appears like a prismatic glasshouse. Its monolithic surfaces seem as if pushed outward by an inner force – like a visible energy field. In this way, the Xpectra becomes not just a car, but a companion that creates resonance and builds a living relationship with its user.”

Despite the future-facing details, the Vision Xpectra is also grounded by practical considerations. “Sitting low is a challenge in EVs, but we thought about the packaging of the batteries, and not only under the seats,” says Faghihzadeh. “In the luxury class, a flagship car needs length, so to place the batteries in the front and the rear to enable this great design was also part of our discussions. In production, we are thinking about these things too, especially in this sedan class, where it’s very difficult to get a low profile. But we can play with these things. This conceptual work is difficult, but we wanted to bring these emotional values back to the sedan of the future as a grand coupé.”