Car seat design and aircraft seat design tend to stay in their own lanes. Plane seats are usually built to be as lightweight as possible without compromising air safety, while your car seat tends to be a bit more comfortable and engineered to withstand car crashes. But what if a car design studio designed a plane seat? This is the Stellantis Design Studio and Geven eForma Business Class Recliner seat. It’s a seat that’s designed like a car, and one of its highlights is smaller panel gaps.
I recently got to enjoy a free upgrade to first class on a United Airlines flight. It was my first time ever flying first class on a domestic flight and my second time flying first class, period. Honestly, it was awesome. It blew my mind to get an actual hot meal, a hot towel, and bottomless alcohol on a flight that never left America. The seat was great, too. I felt like I was sitting in a recliner, and I had ample space in all directions. If it weren’t for the cost of plane tickets, I’d never fly economy again.
For how great the whole experience was, it was fascinating to observe how even first-class airline seats can have design gaps, literally. In both of my first-class experiences thus far, I noticed that it’s technically possible to lose my phone in weird gaps and spaces, and some edges were a bit rough when I looked closely enough. But it was fine. The comfy seat, the food, the booze, and the space alone are totally worth it. I suppose I’ve never had this question before, but what would happen if car designers made a plane seat? The Stellantis Design Studio has collaborated with airplane seat maker Geven, and now we have the answer.
Car Designers Penning Other Things
Back in 2021, Stellantis launched the Stellantis Design Studio. According to Car Design News, the studio was born out of the Peugeot Design Lab and is intended to carry out design work and projects across the Stellantis car portfolio, but also outside of Stellantis. The studio isn’t one place, but has branches in Paris, Turin, Shanghai, São Paulo, Casablanca, and Detroit. The head of the Stellantis studio is Klaus Busse, who also oversaw design for Alfa Romeo, Jeep, and Maserati in Europe.
The Peugeot Design Lab was a bit of a skunkworks. It worked on cars, yes, but it also had design collaborations with Airbus Helicopter, Alstom, Bénéteau Groupe, Bombardier, the F.I.A., Gillardeau Oysters, Haier Group, Pleyel, Whirlpool, and Zodiac. The Stellantis Design Studio continues that tradition, and it has resulted in some weird and fun designs. Do you really like Batman? Well, the Stellantis Design Studio and Formitalia designed a furniture set that’s supposed to make you feel like you’re in one of those dark and gritty Batman movies.
The Stellantis Design Studio has also made its mark on the Maserati MSG Racing Formula E team, Peugeot’s new logo and brand identity, Citroën’s new brand identity, a Pecqueur watch, the Strasbourg Tram for Alstom, the Tofinou 9.7 sailboat, a Peugeot bicycle, and more.
The studio has been quite obsessed with aviation, penning the designs of the Airbus Helicopter H160 and the concept of the Auro Aero.
Most recently, the Stellantis Design Studio has gotten into designing aircraft interiors. The studio first teased its concept for a sort of first-class or business-class cabin (below). This one is sort of weird because it envisions an airplane cabin as a social space.
Each seat would have a privacy panel that comes down so you can converse with the passengers around you.
Car-Inspired Plane Interiors
What’s more interesting, I think, are the two interiors that Stellantis designed with actual aircraft interior equipment companies. Both were announced on the same day, and both are on display at the Aircraft Interiors Expo in Hamburg, Germany.
The first collaboration was with Italy’s Geven, a qualified seat supplier for Airbus, ATR, and Boeing commercial aircraft, plus a seat provider for Leonardo defense.
Unlike the above concept cabin, the Stellantis Design Studio and Geven collaboration is an upgrade for an existing product, Geven’s Forma seats. Introduced in 2022, the Forma seats (below) are fairly standard business class seats. Apparently, they’re also used for premium economy class on widebody jets. The seats have a fixed shell and recline inside that shell. It looks nice, like many other modern business class seats.
You’ll find Geven seats in the planes of 25 airlines, including Frontier Airlines first class, Lufthansa Group airlines, Wizz Air, Turkish Airlines, Icelandair, and others.
Stellantis Design Studio says that this new generation of Forma seat is now electrified and features touches carried over from car design. Apparently, the studio’s designers, which include car designers, worked to reduce the seat’s panel gaps, among other things.
Actually, I’m just going to directly quote the press release, because it reads like a marketing copy for a car, and that makes me smile:
Drawing on Stellantis Design Studio’s automotive heritage, the new eForma prioritizes precision and durability through carefully controlled details.
Each enhancement is thoughtfully designed around the user experience while preserving visual purity, ensuring the seat remains both highly functional and elegantly understated. Hidden or minimized shutlines create a cleaner, more refined interaction between body panels and adjacent surfaces, while fewer visual breaks and consistently tight gaps enhance perceived quality throughout.
Also, like a proper car press release, there are a lot of flashy words. Check it out:
Stellantis Design Studio strengthens the design language of Geven’s new eForma, bringing greater clarity and consistency to its overall identity. Unified surfaces, volumes, and interfaces reflect Geven’s Italian elegance, creating a calm, balanced presence and a more coherent silhouette from every angle. The result is improved visual continuity across all components, with design choices deliberately focused on long‑term value rather than unnecessary complexity.
You know what? I like it. Obviously, I haven’t seen it in person, but it looks like something that can be bolted into a plane tomorrow. If the real product is anything like the pictures, the seats could have that little extra attention to detail that I thought the seats in the planes I’ve been in didn’t have.
How much do people care about that? I have no idea. But I admit that I spend quite a lot of time staring at different surfaces inside planes. I also know that I am weird.
Still, I can’t stop giggling at the idea of car designers reducing panel gaps in airplane seats. I hope they had some great fun penning this work. Hey, Stellantis, when are we getting Hellcat plane seats?
One More Stellantis Plane Interior
On the same day that Stellantis announced the new Geven seats, it also announced a new concept aircraft cabin interior with Sogeclair. This latter company is not specifically focused on aircraft interiors, but on industrial engineering. Sogeclair makes a little bit of everything, from driving simulator rigs and train driver simulators to aerospace systems and naval architecture.
This concept interior, called Vista, doesn’t have any car inspiration. Instead, it’s supposed to be a bit of a pod suite with its own private door, walls, and a living room inside. The pod has a full-height wardrobe, a built-in minibar, and lots of nooks and crannies so your carry-on luggage can be tucked away.
Stellantis says that this interior would utilize natural wood finishes and leather, among other surfaces that would be pleasing to the touch. The tech was also minimized where possible for more of a living room touch.
This interior is far more of a futuristic designer dream than the eForma seats above. However, Stellantis and Sogeclair contracted TailWind Airline Consulting to ensure the design would meet certification standards in case an airline wanted to implement this interior. Apparently, this interior was designed to work with existing layouts, and it’s feasible to produce it. But, since it’s a concept, who knows?
Either way, it’s just pretty awesome that a bunch of designers at Stellantis seem to be having fun designing things that aren’t cars. I must admit, I did not have “Stellantis airplane seats” on my Bingo sheet. But I love it. There’s a chance I’ll never fly on a plane with one of these seats, but it’s still neat that at least some of what these folks are designing will exist.
So, the next time you’re flying international, or heck, if you’re one of our lovely readers in Europe, take a gander at your airplane seat. Maybe, one day, you’ll see a Stellantis logo somewhere on it.
Top graphic images: Stellantis; Pentel
If you do lose your phone in a gap, the crew advises you to leave it where it is and notify them.
Here’s Why You Can’t Retrieve Your Phone If It Falls Between Airplane Seats
If it’s not too much to ask, could the plebs in economy get seats that are at least modestly comfortable and supportive? I can live with the panel gaps, but my butt going numb while my knees are glued to the seatback in front of me doesn’t make me want to upgrade my ticket, it makes me want to upgrade my airline.
OK… now we need a new Airwolf.
That Sogeclair concept it pretty nice. I think any international business class launching without a pod/suite concept in 2026 is behind the times. Doors and soft lighting is the future, the retrofits can’t happen soon enough.
While I appreciate the intention, it’s not the panel gaps that impact perceived quality. Aircraft seats have to endure A LOT: someone’s butt in them 12+ hrs a day, getting bumped by carts and bags, uncivilized people standing on them etc etc.
I’ve seen some seats that looked great new but were completely trashed by gouges on the surfaces, lettering rubbed off the buttons and so on. My point is durability counts for more than ppl realize. Until it’s been tested in the field, there’s no way to know what shape they’ll be in after even a year of regular use.
Some of the bigger seat suppliers (Recaro and Safran for example) will have in house design studios for this. But there is also a lot of work being done by consultancy studios (like the Stellantis one mentioned here) that work in this realm. Places like JPA and Priestman Goode have a pretty deep catalog of work in the airline world. The first and long haul business class products are one of the few places where weight, while a concern, isn’t quite as closely watched. Those lay flat seats are very hefty chunks of hardware.
Panel gaps and fitment are something that has really changed significantly across all industries in the last couple decades. It’s one of those little areas that wasn’t specific designed for but was the result of humans getting better at making precision things. Processors get the spotlight but putting all electronics aside it’s truly remarkable that we can physically manufacture an iPhone and do it by the millions. That has the effect over time of both introducing a lot of knowledge and manufacturing abilities but also public perception of what quality is so we start looking at broader things like airplane panel gaps and asking why does this look so janky.
The quest to eliminate panel gaps also leads to things becoming nearly unrepairable.
Old coach-built cars, or Porsches and Karmann Ghias even, had bodies where everything was leaded together. Even the doors were leaded shut then cut apart so that they fit perfectly. Of course that meant that they weren’t interchangeable.
Statistical quality control has gotten really good at making parts that fit together and are interchangeable. The thing is, one good bump or just a lot of accumulated stress, and you are trying to fit a square peg into a trapezoidal hole.
Frontier Airlines has a first class? Maybe it’s so “elegantly understated” that I didn’t notice.
Frontier only recently announced it and is rolling it out.
I was excited back in the day to read that Frontier was buying out Midwest (formerly Midwest Express, not to be confused with Midwest Connect) Airlines and their fleet.
I was hoping they would continue the all-first-class configuration (and the cookies!) Midwest was known for, but, Nope. They gutted the 717s and turned them back into cattle cars.
I haven’t flown Frontier since.
To be fair, it’s not a surprise Midwest’s business model wasn’t sustainable.
But it sure was great to fly on them for a few years.
I once had a Midwest flight attendant tell me that I looked like a hungry guy (I was 5’10” and weighed about 160 lbs.) and then proceed to give me about two dozen still-warm chocolate chip cookies wrapped in foil as we were descending into Boston one evening.
!!!!! I bet that’s what did them in.
I annually fly SAS (Scandinavian Airlines) to Denmark in the fall to stay with friends. Volvo seats in SAS planes (with in-flight Legos, saliimakki licorice, gravlax, and akavit) would totally be on-brand and I might splurge on a non-economy ticket just to soak it all in.
It’s good to know Stellantis has solved all of their automotive problems and are now free to branch out into other areas. 😉
To be fair, I’m not familiar with any major complaints about Stellantis seating. So the seats department may in fact have plenty of time to spread around 😀
I’m told the seats in the Wrangler/Gladiator leave some things to be desired, but they probably designed the seats for the next Wrangler three years ago and are waiting for the folks at drivetrain to catch up.
After spending 3 hours in a company issued Charger… Ugh, they are miserable, in my opinion.
Yes, but, can they keep laptops from falling into the neither regions of the plane?
Based on the experience I have with stuff falling between the seat and console.. no?
The neither regions? That would be the space between first class and coach where you wait for the restroom?
The nether regions swallowing up of laptops is actually the air vent looking like a good place to store a laptop then having to tear the seats and floor out is it not?
Either, but primarily the second as that causes flight delays and unschedualed landings
The issue with these designs is the armrests don’t fold up which is quite essential when the row is full and the person at the window wants to exit. Anyone who’s big or tall appreciates the ability to create more room for ingress or exit (especially in an emergency)
It’s a new era for the Auro Aero: an airy aura, more flora, and wifi from Eero!
Eero Saarinen probably could have come up with something. He did plenty of chairs , and the TWA terminal at JFK , but did he ever design aircraft seating?
Oh and Dulles, but that’s not my favorite at al.
I would trade any of those seats for a mid 2000s Volvo seat
Or the seats out my 914. They are super comfortable to me.
The main problem is that the lower part of an airplane seat isn’t long enough and it cuts the circulation in my legs and I keep sliding off.
If they would just fix that, the seat could be made of plywood and it would be fine.
“Each seat would have a privacy panel that comes down so you can converse with the passengers around you.”
This adds another level of social awkwardness. Now you have to figure out a nice way to say “Conversation over. Bye.” and pull up the panel.
I know, right? I’d pull up the panel the second I get to the seat and never put it down. The render seems to suggest it’s a single panel, though, so maybe the other person will get to push it down?
That’s the uber-awkward situation: the stranger sitting next to you puts down the divider to talk to you.
I use a made up language that has its own cadence. I throw in some globally-adopted English words and names, I repeat and stretch nonsense words as people often do with real words, and include filler words along with body language, like “I don’t understand” or whatever the occasion calls for, usually with polite smiles or laughs because I just want to be left alone, not necessarily be a dick. Of course, you can’t let them hear you speak English, so this is best used when alone, though it also worked in Egypt when I was with a friend. As a note to that, it’s amazing how many languages the scammers know to try to hook you in with. Ultimately, I don’t know if they were convinced I spoke some novel language or realized what I was doing and gave up, but the reason they moved on isn’t important, only that they did.
I work in a field where ppl have a lot of questions when they find out what I do. My colleague found he could keep this from happening if he told people he was a “process engineer.” Worked great, until his seat mate really was a process engineer eager to talk shop.
That’s hilarious as I did process engineering for a few years! I’m not a process engineer, though, it’s just one of the roles I ended up taking at a small company.
He texted me about his situation when he was still on the ground with two hours of flight time ahead of him. I had a lot of fun thinking about what was happening up in the sky that whole time.
This reference might be really dated, but maybe he should have chosen to pretend to be an architect.
Seinfeld?
Yes
Also marine biologist.
Same.
One of those “someone has to do it, and I don’t see anyone else doing it it” situations.
The company got acquired by another company, and they wanted to know who the process engineer was, and I said I am, and they said we thought you were the system architect. Startups are fun.
Aren’t we all process engineers?
Man I’d talk his head off. Gant and waterfall vs agile. UPS and left turns. Different kinds of queues. How trees grow, by doing the same thing repeatedly.
I tell people that I alternate between reification and abstraction.
I think Recaro does a big business in plane seats.
You think correctly.
Yeah, here is the Recaro plane seat biz site: https://www.recaro-as.com/en/index.html
BTW for those wondering about Recaro automotive seats, Wikipedia (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recaro) says:
There is also an Autopian article from 7/24: https://www.theautopian.com/did-private-equity-push-recaro-into-bankruptcy/
…Hellcat aircraft seats sound like something that’d go into a WWII Grumman product. Either that or something like a Van’s RV.
…As in the series of planes, not a camper.
If you like United’s domestic first class try their Premium Plus Economy on long haul flights. The seat is similar in size to domestic first but tickets are a lot less than Business.
“Forma seat is now electrified”
So like an electric chair?
“Stellantis airplane seats”
Hmmm…
“The seats have a fixed shell and recline inside that shell. It looks nice, like many other modern business class seats.”
This needs to be more widespread. If you want to recline – fine. Your seat slides forward. Some Asian airlines do this in economy.
Way better than in US domestic economy where the person in front of me reclines back and knocks my coffee into my lap.
And the oblivious speed at which so many people throw their seat into recline. I never recline my seat quite all the way, and I’m always slow in doing it so the person behind me has time to notice and adjust.
And then there’s the screen peckers behind you who don’t somehow realize that the entertainment screen is part of someone’s headrest and that the screen will respond to very gentle touches, so they stab hard at it and you’ve got this bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap bap transmitting into your skull from the moron playing candy crush or whatever.
Amtraks new Airo fleet (Siemens) seats do this.
Well yeah, isn’t that kind of the point? 😀
Listen here, you! lol
Kidding aside, the real travel hack is having a job that requires international travel and pays for International Business Class. There’s no way I could afford that out of my own pocket, but the bonus miles (which have sizable multipliers when you fly Business) and airline status I earn on those flights give me free domestic first class upgrades and I can use points to get steep discounts on international flights.
Economy Plus is totally fine for any domestic flights, but flying 12+ hours on international business class does really spoil you for those super long flights. I’d be really hard pressed to fly Economy to Asia anymore.
The best way I could describe international business class is that it makes the world feel smaller. Traveling is a lot less daunting and stressful.
I can’t sleep sitting down, reliable sleep over long flights is a game changer.
Exactly. For me, it’s the difference between feeling moderately refreshed and ready for work when I land or being a complete zombie. Since I usually have some meetings or presentations within a few hours of landing overseas, it really does help my productivity.
Everyone is different, but in my experience it doesn’t matter economy vs lie-flat if you’re only realistically getting 4 hrs of sleep. Yeah of course a bed beats the alternative but I don’t think anyone getting off those flights feels “good,” just different levels of bad. Of course ultra long haul (12+ hrs) is a different story.
I just want a headrest that is up at the level of my head, and not pushing my shoulders forward, turning me into a crumpled ball of misery
At least on AA, the headrests up front extend, though hardly anyone seems to know this. First thing I do when I sit down. Though on an Airbus recently the thing came off in my hands (not that it was Airbus’ fault, AA uses the same F seats on both fleets other than the older A320s). Oops. I was able to put it back together.
Delta is the same way. You can slide the headrest up quite a bit, which is a lifesaver at my height.
Don’t get me wrong, my lower back is still in agony by the time I reach my destination, but at least my upper back isn’t joining it.
I am pretty sure that even F seats are pretty universally designed by descendants of the Marquis de Sade across the industry with rare exceptions. The big poofy seats AA has in thier hoary old A320s is one of those rare exceptions. They are actually SOFT, not made from leather covered plywood like the rest of them.
I have a Thermarest seat pad that collapses to about the size of a pop can that I usually toss in my carryon just in case I end up in one of the truly awful seats. Of course, that makes the armrests even more useless because it raises me up higher, so it’s not a perfect solution.
I like that that it has adjustable little sides too, to hold your head up when snoozing. (At least the ERJ planes do)
All the newer ones do. Those ERJ F seats are pretty comfy, other than the recliners don’t hold as well and they tend to self-recline under takeoff thrust! E-175s are my current favorite airliner.
Even the seats with extending headrests are too low, closer, but still more around my neck unless I figure out a way to slouch, and shift the burden from upper to lower back. Seems odd that they would put the effort into the extension, but not allow them to go higher.
You must be immensely tall. I am a VERY long-torsoed 6’2″ and I have no problem with this at all.
6’5″, and on the rare occasions I meet anyone taller than me, I feel bad for them
Yikes – I feel for you! You must not fit in a lot of cars too, because I sure have that problem.
Meanwhile Boeing worked with the guy who designed the Ford Ranger jump seats to design their main cabin seats
Airplane manufacturers as a rule do not design or build the seats. Blame the individual airline for poor choices.
They still have SOME control. They’re the ones who can determine whether another seat can be crammed into a row like Boeing did with the 777 modification that allowed going from 9-to 10-abreast. And then there’s Airbus figuring out how to trade bathrooms for more rows of seats. I guess you can say it’s up to the airlines to opt for these configurations, but ultimately the blame is on us for choosing the fare that’s $10 cheaper without thinking about what that might mean.
Still completely up to the airlines subject to regulatory restrictions on how many total seats are allowed in the aircraft per exit door and evacuation requirements.
And yes, you can get whatever level of sevice and comfort you are willing to pay for, as in most things.
Don’t forgot union scope clauses and economics on how many FAs the airlines want to pay for!
Scope clauses usually end up making the airlines put far fewer seats than the airplane can otherwise legally hold. The only place that makes a huge difference is that they are keeping the Embraer E2 jets out of the US market entirely (they wiegh slightly too much). But they hold about the same number of pax as the originals, so there is no real passenger comfort advantage there, the new birds are just more fuel efficient. The big winner for passengers was the old Avro RJ85s – rest of the world they were 6-abreast airplanes, in the US scope clauses held them to 5-abreast and tons of legroom. The European airlines crammed over 100 seats in them single-class, US airlines were mostly ~70 in 2-class configs.
The FA rules don’t really matter much, it’s fundamentally one FA per 50 passengers. Would be an odd situation where adding seats puts an airplane JUST over needing another one, at that point you just leave out those seats and stay right at the limit. A handful of seats isn’t going to change passenger comfort at all.
United has a CRJ-something with a walk up snack bar for first and an extra coat closet or two, all to take up that extra space. Clearly the economics make sense to them or they wouldn’t have put it in service.
To be clear, 95%+ of the pax experience is controlled by the airlines. I’m pointing out that manufactures have a (small) impact. Even airbus opting to make the A320 family a few inches wider than the 737. But, best I can tell, the average flyer cant tell the difference and certainly doesn’t seek out A320s over other options. So maybe the lesson is don’t bother?
That is down to their scope clause limiting the number of seats. In other countries, they fit a bunch more people in CRJs in all-economy configs, making them even MORE miserable than they already are. The big CRJs have +/- 75-80 seats in a 2.5-class config in the US. That snack bar and closet take up the room of maybe 8 seats. Or does United leave out a row of F seats to make room for that stuff? Absolute certified maximum for an all-coach CRJ-900 is 90. Historically the big savings with the CRJs/ERJs is crew cost, but salaries are MUCH higher today at the regionals so the savings is not so high. But they do allow “right-sizing” the airplane to the market. You make money on a full CRJ, you lose money on a 2/3rds full 737.
Most airlines like AA who fly both Airbus and Boeing narrowbodies put the same seats in both, spacing them slightly farther from the cabin wall and taking up the rest in a slightly wider aisle. That extra 6IN is meaningless. It’s literally an inch a seat if they bother to spec the wider seats, and chances are you won’t notice the difference. Most people are far more concerned with legroom than with seat width. Note that CRJ seats ARE notably narrower. Pitch varies wildly depending on whether they have “main cabin extra” or whatever your airline of choice calls extra legroom/extra cost seats or not, and/or first/business class cabins. All of this is completely up to the airline. All the manufacturers do is certify the max number of seats each model can be fitted with. Typically only the lowest of low budget and charter airlines ever fit that many. If you think that space is tight on a US Big Four airplane (or even Spirit/Frontier) – try an Asian LCC. Might want to put your legs in the overhead bin. Most airlines put about 160 seats in a 2 or 2.5 class 737-800, but they are certified for up to 189 in an all-cattle config.
Weird, I’ve always felt it was the designer of the Iron Maiden who came up with those.
Can they do that on the auto-side?
If we’re going to have auto designers do airplane interiors, then they need to go find the guy responsible for the seats in the 1980 Lincoln Continental Town Car and drag him out of the retirement home
Gross. Those old American seats are ALWAYS significantly lacking in lumbar support. Feel great going around the block, agony going across the country.
Hard disagree, your body is just weird
And yet this was a common criticism in reviews back in the day. People who like these crap floatbarges are the wierd ones.