Audi’s Grandsphere concept is 5.35m of road-going opulence

Another Audi Sphere is here, this time with a focus on pure luxury.

Where the recent Skysphere was a look at where Audi wants to take the sports car, the Audi Grandsphere is the brand’s look at the next generation of cars like its A8, or the Mercedes S-Class.

The biggest change from what we’re used to? The Audi Grandsphere features a purely projected dash display, lit up along a smooth, curved surface – which can also hide the steering wheel behind it.

And the Grandsphere has a retractable steering wheel. When in drive mode, it’s held out by a mechanical arm – which can retract behind a panel, putting the wheel completely out of sight and reach of the passengers.

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Wheels asked the interior designer for the Grandsphere, Maksymilian Nawka, if this is the sort of tech Audi expects to make it into real production cars – in terms of safety, for example.

“We always design everything we do to be 110 per cent safe…I don’t see any bigger issues to be honest.”

Audi’s conference moderator Josef Schlossmacher added the brand believes Level 4 autonomy, as is present in the Grandsphere, will be here sooner than most people would expect.

“At the VW Group and at Audi we are sure it will come [in] the second half of the decade.”

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The firm even put rally veteran Walter Rohrl in the Grandsphere some time ago, and said that after a short time he became more comfortable than anyone expected.

“In the first minute you could see it in his arms – he was a bit nervous. But after a few minutes he relaxed, with his arms just on his legs and trusted the car ‘like a good chauffeur’ is what he literally said.”

When the Grandsphere is manually being driven however, Audi says it has an impressive 750km of driving range, with only 10 minutes of charging enough to put 300km worth of charge into the battery.

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Its 530kW and 960Nm output also allows for a rather quick 0-100km/h in just over four seconds – we imagine the 5.35m ‘lounge on wheels’ isn’t particularly light.

Inside, Maksymilian Nawka has kept things to a minimum – no screens or fittings, everything projected onto a surface.

There’s also no leather in the Grandsphere, instead opting for wood, wool, and synthetic textiles and metals. Audi says this is “in keeping with a progressive understanding of luxury”.

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For the exterior, the car’s designer, Amar Vaya, described what Audi calls a "dynamic monolith". Wheels asked what major design elements from the Grandsphere would be likely to make it onto a production car soonest.

“Take this and put it on the street! No, but we try to bring a lot, for example, the clean surfacing and the balance between soft and sharp.

“The new headlamp feature will be on our production cars, and for the front end we’re experimenting a bit to see what the best response is. From there we’ll decide on a direction for the future.”

The next ‘Sphere’ concept to be revealed is Audi’s SUV-style Urbansphere. Stay tuned.