The future of car interiors? Ask London studio NewTerritory

Look back at the evolution of car construction and styling over the course of a century and the progress is evident. Today’s cars are styled like spaceships compared to the boxy, top-heavy motorised carriages of old. But when it comes to interiors, the evolution has been a little slower. Inspect the cockpit of a 1912 Rolls-Royce and you’ll likely find four or more forward-facing seats, quilted leather, wood trim, milled metalwork, intricate dials, a clock, pedals, a gear lever and a steering wheel. It might be a little low-tech and drafty compared with the modern-day equivalent, but the format remains much the same.

‘Historically, car interiors have been designed as singular, controlled environments, offering occupants a unique, hermetically sealed experience,’ says Luke Miles, founder of brand-experience studio NewTerritory. ‘While exterior design often represents the brand, the interior has been a missed opportunity for delivering more meaningful, multi-sensory experiences.’

Formally head of design for Virgin Atlantic and LG Europe, Miles founded London-based NewTerritory in 2017, which specialises in experience design for transport brands such as Delta Air Lines and Mercedes-Benz AG. The Clerkenwell studio is awash with design literature, intriguing samples and mock-ups of an aircraft cabin and a car’s cockpit. It’s no surprise this buzzy townhouse studio caught the attention of US experience consultancy Geniant, which acquired it in July 2025.

Inside the studio, Miles and his team work across a variety of top-secret transport-related products and solutions for well-known brands, all designed to take interior spaces into the next level, instil that particular brand’s ideals on those travelling and, all being well, give them a positive experience to write home about. Not all that easy when your audience of travellers is either busy, distracted, stressed or all of the above.

‘Historically we’ve done a lot of work in aviation spaces, which are very high-density experiential spaces, with an audience that’s captive for a long time. But with automotive, it’s different – you’re in a sealed environment and have complete control over your climate and what’s going on around you,’ says Miles. ‘Other than just the physicality of the interior, we’re looking at how can you pull in more of the senses to deliver an experience that is meaningful and memorable.’

While the structure and format of car interiors hasn’t changed much in a century, it hasn’t dampened carmakers’ appetite for experimentation. In 2013, Mercedes made in-car fragrance diffusers mainstream when it incorporated its Air-Balance package into the S-Class, which pumped scents such as ‘Nightlife Mood’ or ‘Downtown Mood’ from refillable cartridges into the cabin.

Despite it being a slightly more upmarket take on the air freshener dangling from the rear-view mirror, Mercedes still uses fragrance, alongside sound, climate, lighting and seat massage functions, to ‘boost driver wellbeing’, as part of its comfort programmes in cars like the all-electric EQS. It’s as full-on as it sounds, particularly when accidentally triggered it on a quiet motorway stretch at night.

At Jaguar Land Rover, the Range Rover Sport SV saw the arrival of the ‘Body and Soul Seat’ (BASS) in 2024, which plugs into the entertainment and vibrates the seat to the music – something that was added to the new Defender OCTA also. While both Mercedes’ and JLR’s in-cabin innovations can be passed off as slightly eccentric novelties, there is one aspect of car interior innovation that all carmakers have homed in on: the screen.

‘There’s this kind of centre of gravity pull towards the screen, which has led to screen dominance,’ says Miles. ‘There’s so much you could do sensorially with that space. It’s not about just chasing technology and going for screens because they’re there, but about trying to be more quiet, sensitive and empathic with how that vehicle communicates with you. It’s hard to demonstrate a brand through the screen because it becomes this midpoint where you can’t really tell one from the other,’ he adds.