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Ford's Vertrek concept gives us an idea of what the company's future dashboard might look like
Sure, we're fresh from sampling Ford's next evolutions of MyFord, the Mobile and AppLink systems, but those are due to start hitting cars in the next months and years. Sometimes it's fun to look a little further down the road, and that's what the company's Vertrek concept is doing, giving us a taste of exterior styling to come in the company's C-segment cars (like the C-MAX), plus a taste of some future innovations in the drivetrain department, most notable being an alternator that boosts its output under braking to provide a regenerative-like effect despite this not being a hybrid. While the exterior is quite striking -- showing clean, sharp, dynamic lines and the impossibly small mirrors of a concept -- it's the interior that caught our eye. Yes, futuristic interiors like these rarely look little like their subsequent production successors, but we can get some ideas of what Ford is looking at going forward, starting with what looks like an LCD (or possibly OLED) gauge cluster, something that's increasingly common now. The concept still has MyFord five-way controllers on the steering wheel stalks, but nestled down between the seats and duplicated on the dash is an Audi MMI or iDrive-like jog wheel. Interestingly there's the silhouette of what can only be an iPhone displayed on the center, perhaps giving an indicator of where the current media is coming from. We'll see if we can track the thing down on the show floor and find out. Update: Thanks to KC for pointing out that we made a little typo here. It is the Vertrek, not the Veritek as we originally spelled it. Our hopes for a Minmay Special Edition have just been dashed. %Gallery-113591%
