Why manufacturers are turning away from leather

Maybe it’s a vintage Mercedes. Or a Rolls-Royce from the Roaring Twenties. Or a brand-new top-of-the-range Audi A8. As different as these cars may be, once you settle in, you will notice one thing that they all have in common – the same smell, generated by seats made of the same material: leather.“As far back as the days of carriages and in more than 120 years of automobile construction, this material has always stood for luxury,” says Marc Lichte, chief designer of German carmaker Audi.Generally speaking, the more impressive a manufacturer wants the car to be, the more leather will be used. To fully upholster and outfit a Rolls-Royce Phantom, for example, requires the leather of nearly a dozen cattle.But in an age when people’s values are rapidly changing and customers are becoming more environmentally aware, the lure of leather is starting to wear off – and carmakers are keen to establish a new image. That means designers are searching for a new kind of luxury, Lichte says.“We want to accompany and push the change of values, including through the use of new materials,” the Audi designer says.The new E-Tron concept presented by Lichte a few months ago, Audi’s first wholly electric car, has some pretty high-tech features, including a glowing badge on the front, high-resolution touch screens on the interior and digitally controlled LEDs at the front and rear. However, for the first time in a luxury Audi, there is no leather in sight.“We are experimenting with a very high-quality material made of bamboo fibres, which fits nicely with the ecological side of an electric car and has a good prospect of going into serial production,” Lichte says.Similarly, Gerry McGovern, chief designer for British company Land Rover, is also talking about embarking on a new era. He stresses this by citing the interior decor of the new Range Rover Velar.“A female colleague here from the colour and trim department is vegan and has sensitised us to the issue of whether leather is still the best choice for the interior,” he says.British carmakers are not yet ready for a complete abstention from leather, not wanting to scare away more traditional customers. But with the Velar, for the first time, the company is offering a Range Rover with seat covers made not from leather, but from a man-made diamond-cut material.Still, designers are up against some entrenched value systems, Lichte says. “From the outset, leather has stood for luxury. So no matter how noble a material might be, to the customer it initially seems to be cheap.”He worries that it will therefore be difficult to demand the same prices and still provide the customer with the same feeling created by leather.But that doesn’t mean the industry isn’t trying. Carmakers are actively trying to find ways of boosting the brand image of the materials they are using. For example, Land Rover chose Danish furniture designer Kvadrat to make the material for the Velar.“With its nice-sounding and prestigious name, Kvadrat is compensating for what the material itself perhaps may be lacking in reputation,” McGovern says, pointing out that a Velar with Kvadrat outfitting costs the same as one fitted with high-quality leather.Other manufacturers have introduced non-leather interiors in response to pressure from consumers. When Tesla presented its Model X car, company boss Elon Musk was handed a petition by the animal protection association PETA calling for a vegan interior.With the petition bearing thousands of signatures, Musk did not hesitate to banish leather from one of the cars in the Model X line. The seats are covered in synthetic fabric and the steering wheel and door panels are made from synthetic leather, the Silicon Valley-based carmaker proudly points out.Lutz Fuegener, a professor of design at Pforzheim Technical College, agrees that we are seeing a trend towards a more sustainable mix of materials in car interiors, and especially towards the search for alternatives to leather.But he says using the term “vegan car” is a bit of a stretch. “Anyone who in fact advertises a wholly vegan car is probably only trying to ride a trend and make use of a vogue word,” Fuegener says.In fact, the trend is not yet especially strong – at least not with established car brands.This is confirmed by German company Mercedes. “Worldwide and in every vehicle segment, we offer models that can be outfitted with a leather-free interior,” says press spokeswoman Silke Koegler. “But based on very thin demand, these are always singly made cars.” - DPA