CES 2025: Italdesign’s Quintessenza Concept Showcases Legendary Company’s Design Vision and Innovative Solutions with Elaphe SONIC In-Wheel Motors
- Quintessenza: a distinguished design with advanced technical solutions
- A new partnership with Elaphe integrates innovative in-wheel motor technology on the Quintessenza
Moncalieri, Turin, Italy: After its U.S. debut at the Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance in August 2024, Quintessenza returns under the spotlight at CES 2025 in Las Vegas. Combining beauty with sustainability, technological innovation with functionality and flexibility of use, Quintessenza acts as an ambassador of Italdesign’s skills, decades of mobility experience, and direct support to the American market thanks to the company’s operational Italdesign USA subsidiary in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.
The strategic agreement with Elaphe on the occasion of Quintessenza’s return to the United States is showcased through in-wheel electric motors fitted on the Quintessenza, technology engineered to help increase high performance, power, and usage and application flexibly.
Quintessenza Design Philosophy
The quintessential relationship between humans and nature occurs in many forms. The Quintessenza design philosophy is rooted in a human-centric approach. The project revolves around humans as the central figures, serving as both creators and users. As creators, humans are responsible for the show car’s design, development, and construction. As users, Quintessenza connects the various elements of nature: water, earth, fire, and air. In this conceptual yet very tangible journey, humans emerge as the stars of their own world and determine how to interact with it.
Inspired by over 50 years of Italdesign heritage, the Quintessenza embodies flexibility, freedom, sportiness, and duality in both concept and architecture. Designed by humans for humans, it blends Italian design with advanced technology, creating a seamless connection between occupants and the outside world.
Quintessenza is tailored for youthful, adventurous individuals who seek a versatile vehicle for both urban travel and outdoor exploration. Positioned as a global multi-role vehicle, it fits within the performance pickup and sport activity vehicle categories.
Exterior
Italdesign’s Quintessenza has two souls. It embodies both the dynamic prowess of a GT and the versatile adaptability of a pickup truck, a potentially groundbreaking concept among current offerings. The challenge was to reimagine the automotive world’s well-established architecture, proportions, and style and seamlessly integrate them into a fluid and dynamic design that is realistic and functional.
The Quintessenza’s exterior design strikes a perfect balance between sportiness and practicality, combining the aggressive stance of an Italian GT supercar with the versatility of an off-road vehicle. The front showcases a sleek, muscular look with active aerodynamics, while the rear focuses on functionality, featuring elements typical of pickup trucks. A seamless design approach integrates spacious scissor doors, a light-sensitive panoramic roof, and a distinctive front and rear light signature inspired by the Italdesign logo. Its removable hard top enhances flexibility, offering an open-air experience, while advanced aerodynamic features and ADAS systems ensure top-tier performance and safety.
Interior
The Quintessenza’s interior is designed with simplicity, clean lines, and a human-centric approach, focusing on usability and efficiency. The floating central dashboard seamlessly extends through the cabin, featuring hidden touch controls under a marble-based fabric that appear only when needed. A multi-layered panel design integrates key functions, including navigation, climate control, and ambient lighting. The steering wheel houses essential controls, while a smartphone dock on the steering column serves as the primary interface for vehicle data and customization. A dedicated smartphone app allows users to personalize their driving experience, from lighting and audio to scent preferences. The spacious central console, equipped with haptic controls and a refrigerated compartment, slides for easy access. One of the standout features is the rear seats, which can rotate for a rear-facing open-air experience, perfect for stargazing or outdoor adventures when the hard top is removed. The interior combines cutting-edge technology with comfort, offering a unique and immersive driving experience.
UX-UI
Drawing inspiration from the “never lost” concept, the Quintessenza’s UX-UI concept provides seamless integration between the occupants and the external environment. This means the driver has control of the vehicle at all times, including — and this is crucial — the navigation system. A concept that essentially envelops passengers with a continuous projection that starts at the dashboard’s central panel and extends to the side panels and the rear compartment keeps them informed about the vehicle location and destination.
The Elaphe Quad-Motor In-Wheel System
Italdesign has partnered with Elaphe, an in-wheel technology pioneer, to integrate Elaphe’s advanced propulsion architecture into its Quintessenza concept vehicle, another example of Italdesign’s visionary and collaborative approach to innovative automotive design and engineering. With more than 20 years of industry experience, Elaphe has developed and integrated more than 30 e-machine designs and completed over 100 on-vehicle integrations across various vehicle segments.
The quad-motor in-wheel system fitted on the Quintessenza showcases the scalability of Elaphe’s latest generation of Elaphe SONIC family in-wheel propulsion technology with unmatched power-density directly in the wheels. Performance is significantly enhanced with this system, almost tripling the power output compared to the vehicle’s original three-motor setup. It also helps the Quintessenza shift effortlessly between off-road driving conditions and a sporty on-pavement drive thanks to high-precision individual wheel control, demonstrating unmatched versatility in electric mobility and blending practicality with a more engaging driving experience.
20-times faster wheel control compared to the previous on-axis motors, enables improved traction with Elaphe traction control, energy regeneration, sharper cornering stability, and a more engaging driving experience than conventional solutions.
The other Elaphe in-wheel motor features include:
Vertical motion control uses the suspension’s virtual pivot point, which generates vertical force on the chassis when motor torque is applied. With a low rotational inertia and high torque control responsiveness on the outer diameter of the of the wheel, it is capable of delivering up to 500 Nm/ms in both directions. This allows chassis control during dynamic cornering situations, improving vehicle posture and stability. Such a feature could replace or complement various conventional semi-active and active suspension systems, thus improving vehicles dynamics and simplifying a vehicle’s architecture while helping reduce vehicle production costs.
Elaphe Vibroacoustic technology (patent pending) uses proprietary inverter software to control electric motor vibrations, transferring them to the vehicle’s structure to produce authentic motor sounds and vibrations. This feature generates sound inside and outside the vehicle cabin without conventional sound speakers and allows for customizable sound profiles tailored to different driving modes, unique sound signatures for brand identity, and essential safety functions like vehicle awareness and reversing alerts.
Vibrational haptic feedback uses the same technological principle as vibroacoustic technology but works in a different frequency range. It can be used for safety or driver engagement and assistance functions, immersing the driver deeper in the driving experience or informing them about the surroundings, road conditions or current state of the wheel and tire (lane assistance, wheel slipping, driver alertness warnings, etc.).
