Hands-On with Vescin: MINI's New Vegan Friendly Interior That Replaces Leather | Hacker News Reader

Hands-On with Vescin: MINI's New Vegan Friendly Interior That Replaces Leather

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27 pointsteleforce71 comments

Practically speaking, I'd be more upset if we continued to kill animals and just threw their skin out rather than using it. If you're going to kill something, you really should to the best of your ability use every part of that animal. That's both reasonable and moral.

As far as I am aware, the leather industry doesn't really drive the farming of animals but instead exists purely as a secondary byproduct processing market.

Not “purely” as a byproduct. They are complementary industries. Without the leather trade, meat producers would have to pay to properly dispose of that byproduct.

I agree that would be wasteful, and I love quality leather products myself. But I recognize that the leather, meat and dairy lobbies all work towards the same goal of ever expanding the industry.

So I am always on the lookout for great vegan leather. If the demand market dries up, this will raise the cost of meat and dairy, which will give alternatives to those a better chance to thrive.

I think you are mistaken.

If meat industry disappeared, I don't believe the leather industry would exist on any sort of comparable scale. People would not be raising cows and devoting fields to feed and the whole chain of events that goes into slaughting and animal for it's skin. Leather would be profoundly expensive.

The meat industry on the other hand would be largely unaffected if the leather industry disappeared. They just need to find something else to do with the skin, and they would over night.

> They just need to find something else to do with the skin, and they would over night.

Not even. The skin would go into the same grinders as all of the "useless" parts of the animal and become whatever downstream products it becomes (dog food, protein additives for animal feed, etc)

Presumably they would earn less money for this than for leather, hence making it less profitable if only marginally.

To say they're complementary doesn't mean that they depend on each other to an equal degree.

I don't believe it would be easy to find a use for all that cow skin. Think of the enormous amounts. But even if they did find a use for it that doesn't cost them, it's not likely to be nearly as profitable as selling it as an input to the leather industry. (If there was a more profitable way to use cow skin we'd probably be doing that by now)

I toured the BMW works several times and I remember that they stressed that they can only use raw hide from special farms because most on the market has too many blemishes for example from barbed wire.

As others have noted, it's not a pure byproduct and if you believe that the way we treat cattle is immoral, singling out one industrial scale consumer of animal products in a web of interconnected and interdependent industries and saying changing them won't change the bigger picture is in isolation correct. But it misses the bigger picture, if you believe for ideological reasons, that there is no moral way to use animals at industrial scale - the same way that thinking of slavery as something negative is a subjective ideological stance, one that wasn't the mainstream opinion of many societies over time - dismantling the leather industry won't get you all the way there, but it's a step.

To take a personal stance, I draw the arbitrary line at insects, I'm fine with farming plants and insects in some kind of harmony with nature, but not mammals or fish. Live on earth is a co-op, you don't win by being the last species standing.

Gazelles cooperate with leopards, you say?

That's an old trope. I'm not talking about the individual level. But even in your example, if the Leopards hunt Gazelles and other Prey animals to extinction, there won't be any Leopards, inversely hunters play a crucial role in keeping populations of animals in a sustainable equilibrium.

It's possible to read your comment as the old trope of, if other animals kill to live why can't we? Well I'd be surprised if you'd argue that one person killing another over a personal grievance is the same thing as committing genocide on purpose. Yes both involve the killing of humans, but there are some substantial qualitative differences.

I purposefully talk about industrial scale animal use. It's something completely different for indigenous people to hunt and use animals. The latter I have no moral objections too.

Quibbles: leopards don't deliberately refrain from hunting their prey to extinction, humans do deliberately refrain from eating the entire population of cows and pigs and sheep, and leopards aren't motivated a personal grievance against gazelles. (Man, that gazelle is such an ass! I'm gonna eat him.)

Then there's the ethics bit, which goes like:

* We should not say animals are "only animals" and use that as a reason to eat them, that would be unethical,

* Furthermore, we should not hold them to the same ethical standards, and put the predators in prison and try to reform them. That would be ridiculous because they're only animals.

But you don't seem to be saying that anyway, if subsistence hunters are OK. If the "industrial scale" is the main point, that looks like a solid argument - except why focus on animals? There's also tree plantations, mines, cities, and anything else that isn't sitting in the jungle doing craftwork.

> If the "industrial scale" is the main point, that looks like a solid argument - except why focus on animals? There's also tree plantations, mines, cities, and anything else that isn't sitting in the jungle doing craftwork.

I think the "factory farming" is the point. The manner of which animals are treated throughout their lifetime, and the manner in which they are dispatched, would make most people squirm. What's worse is that animals are shot and mostly just disposed of to keep crops from being eaten, and in many places it's illegal to sell meat from these or other wild caught animals. Often this is justified by a need to control disease or parasites, but more likely it's to protect the livestock industry. And of course, livestock will be crammed as close as possible to each other to 'increase productivity', and this poses a significant biohazard, as we've seen recently with the avian flu outbreak (and prior bird flu outbreaks, swine flu, mad cow disease etc. etc.) putting to question this justification of public health.

Hmm. You know, if instead of proselytizing this was framed as a sort of luxury preference, like "I'm so fussy and squeamish that I don't want to even imagine animals suffering anywhere near anything I touch", I could endorse it. People having picky preferences and being upfront about it is kind of cool. Then it just turns into a battle between the reach of the imagination and the allure of bacon, and is entirely about what feels nicest. In fact a friend of mine is vegetarian in an even simpler way, "I'm not making any principled argument, I just don't really like meat".

The biohazard angle is fairly persuasive too.

Personally I'm fond of venison, and puzzled by the part about laws banning the consumption of hunted meat, since meat is expensive and then there are frequent deer culls which are apparently also expensive, and yet this doesn't often lead to me getting venison pies, it's frustrating.

> if instead of proselytizing this was framed as a sort of luxury preference

> Personally I'm fond of venison

You just talked right past me. I was saying specifically—read the comment again—about factory farming and how that is distinct from wild caught food. If you really feel strongly that hunted meat should be consumed more, you should proselytize the ability to sell it. Animals can live their happy lives in nature, we lose a significant X-risk, and those with this 'luxury preference' of eating meat can do so without the extra step of lifelong torture. You might find some resistance from factory farms that have built a business model upon this kind of misery, and also from established fast food chains, and everyday consumers, that want access to consistently cheap meat.

How is that talking past you? You regretted that meat from wild caught animals or those shot to protect crops isn't sold, and that factory farming presents a health hazard, and I agreed with both points. I could accept a charge of being vacuous, since I didn't add anything, but I wasn't ignoring your words. I agreed with you, and I'll do it again.

Does this place always devolve into such bad faith trolling? Especially on this topic? Yes you did talk past them and yes you seem to be mostly missing the entire point ... And acting in bad faith, purposely saying nonsense with high confidence .

Not seeming to have even a basic grasp on morals or human decency and compassion .... In short this does not spark curiosity. And you are a rather nasty person who does NOT represent the bulk of humanity. And your attempts at dry or emotionless logic are easily dismissed .

I can't see how what I was saying could be framed as a 'luxury' preference. It's more like, here's government intervention in favor of factory farming. We should be able to go down to our local butcher and get wild caught meat, but this would be deflating the price of meat (or at least deflating the yield). Allowing the sale of wild caught meat provides an affordable and ethical option to people who lack the inclination, time, or ability to slaughter animals. The only problem is that it's money being diverted away from established corporations with their grubby fingers all over government.

(I raised the point about zoonotic disease to contrast the supposed justification of restricting wild caught animals due to disease)

They both completely ignored the factory farming part AND the entire point of suffering/empathy towards mammals... At this point I'm thinking don't feed the trolls. the only reason to dance around that subject so much is to avoid admitting they don't care about the suffering. Which they are aware is not very socially acceptable even among the heaviest meat consumers .

> except why focus on animals?

It's a gamble. My assumption is that extrapolating from my personal experience of experiencing the world around me, to other humans is often wrong, but the main gist stays the same. I would feel awful, if someone were to cut off my limbs one by one, so I don't do that to others. Extrapolating from me a human being to a orangutan doesn't seem so far fetched. I think they would also feel awful being cut into pieces. Looking at cows, they have such varied and often human like behavior and expressions, that I think chances are my experience of the world, while still drastically different is still similar enough that the treatment in a farm - any farm - is not something I want to subject them to. Continuing this thought I could go all the way to bacteria or even maybe further. But to me that seems impractical and I think extrapolating from my emotions to the emotions of a bacteria has so little predictive power as to be effectively zero. So as I said, I draw the line at insects, where I think they are different enough that applying my perspective isn't useful anymore.

I could be wrong, and the cow really doesn't mind being torn apart limb by limb, or the other way as well and trees do mind. Maybe society is right and it doesn't matter, but what if not?

Extrapolating your reasoning... Why have morals at all?! Seems just another inefficiency to optimize away right?

Beyond the animal aspect, producing leather is a _horrendously_ dirty process, and particularly difficult to clean up even if the manufacturers want to. Note where it's produced; despite the EU having more cows than China, say, China's production is far, far larger than Europe's, and Europe's is falling sharply as grace periods on RoHS etc compliance run out.

China's recently been on a bit of an air and water pollution improvement binge, after the situation became really bad at the start of the century, so one would wonder how long that Chinese leather industry is for the world.

Here are a few links that support what you say:

https://ecocult.com/is-leather-truly-a-byproduct-of-the-meat...

https://www.latimes.com/business/story/2019-08-18/america-is...

I don't see any downside (in the U.S. at least) to curbing our desire for meat. We are over-fed, and most of us get much more protein than our bodies can use (https://www.mayoclinichealthsystem.org/hometown-health/speak...).

Behold the power of marketing. "Vegan leather" is just... plastic.

On the other hand, I don't think I've seen cloth seats advertised by any car manufacturer as "plant-based" or similar, yet.

It was once termed "pleather" by unkind folk.

Second this, I expected a mycelium-based alternative instead of plastic.

I was kind of hoping for cloned skin cells grown in a vat.

It’s all fun and games until the seat in your car—or spaceship—says, “Moisturize me!”

I'm trying to work out whether Mini actually uses the word "vegan" or this is just the journalism.

Mini says this for instance:

> Only leather-free trim options are available for the upholstery and seats of the MINI Cooper (2024). Depending on the trim, you can choose from different fabric and vescin variants or fabric/vescin combinations.

Although elsewhere they say:

> The MINI Favoured Trim in the MINI Aceman (2024) is the most expressive variant of the MINI Aceman in the interior and exterior. Parts of the dashboard are covered with a two-tone knitted textile in Petrol with an orange pattern. The sport seats made of perforated vegan leather (Vescin) are available in a light and a dark colour with coloured accent stitching. The frame of the front grille is finished in Vibrant Silver. The front and rear have a visual underride protection in Vibrant Silver.

MIRUM is one that is entirely plastic free, and they supposedly were working with BMW on using it in cars. Wonder what happened to it.

I really hate that the industry managed to pull off the pleather to "vegan leather" rebranding.

Everyone back in the day was clearly aware that pleather meant it was gonna be some shitty inferior product. While the exact same stuff called "vegan leather" manages to be marketed as a premium product and successfully tricks people.

We are starting to pay the price for basic entry level cars that was what a luxury car went for just a decade ago. Yet somehow the materials the car is made out of is universally worse.

> Getting into a new MINI with Vescin for the first time it’s clear that Vescin is a step-up from what we’ve known as Leatherette. In the all the handful of new MINIs we’ve experienced it in the seats were softer to the touch than leatherette and felt much more supple. But how do they compare with leather? In short very well. Compared with the standard Chesterfield or Cross Punch leather seating, Vescin feels softer and more premium. Not surprising given that MINI’s standard leather is almost a veneer over other materials.

So the point of the article you're commenting about is that the pleather in these cars is better than the leather was (but the leather in MINIs wasn't great to begin with).

Personally I hate the feel and smell of leather (or pleather), especially wearing shorts on a hot day. As if yeah that's when I want to sit on a corpse's shell.

It’s 2025 and not all “vegan leather” looks like the plasticky pleather of 3+ decades ago. $20 Amazon jackets? Yeah, that is gonna be disposable plastic junk. And the article describes this material as certainly not junky.

I have experienced too much degradation of both leather and plastic material over the last twenty to thirty years to know what's what, leather needs feeding and oiling to retain its properties, and plastic deteriorates in numerous ways from stickiness to brittleness. Leather that outlasts the car seems stupid, my friend and I have a complete set of Saab 9000 Aero seats that we salvaged from my car about 15 years ago, still waiting for either of us to turn them into useful seating for the home.

I've had trouble with cheap bonded leather, but never with real full leather.

You’ve not foolishly neglected a Billingham bag’s straps over 33 years, like I did. They need replacing now because they became so dry and brittle.

UV is the biggest enemy of both.

Also be aware that ozone generators, which some people like to use periodically to deodourise their car, will also accelerate the degradation.

The problem with plastics is that they encompass such huge range of materials that you can't really make any reasonable generalizations for them. The most you can say is that they are mostly hydrocarbon based, which is almost completely unhelpful.

Indeed. My 1999 Crumpler is sticky, as are similar things from that era, but the clear windows on my ski jacket’s helmet cracked into pieces. My old 1980’s Walkman case did both on the same case with both materials as you suggested.

Framing it as "vegan" feels misleading and confusing. Just call it "synthetic". There are leather hiking boots and synthetic hiking boots. Leave the bloody vegans out of this.

But, vegans are people that don't consume any animal or animal derived materials. They don't use leather shoes, for example.

I thought it was a good description actually?

The problem is vegan is now a Bad Word. I no longer say I am vegan, I say "I don't consume animal products", which seems to get a better reception than "vegan".

I wonder if using the word "vegan" will harm them in the long run from people who take pride in avoiding "woke" vegan things. A cursory glance at the right-wing tabloids in the UK will I think demonstrate that this is a real concern.

I think you're just better of ignoring people that consider vegan a bad word, they're just a small group. We should not change word meanings for them. A word defines a thing or a concept. If it, by itself, elicits some emotional response, you loose some of my respect.

I hope rationality wins in this regard. But it seems to be a growing battle.

Yep, Murdoch and friends have successfully managed to turn something positive into negative.

Vegan just means trying to avoid / reduce harm to animals / environment where practically possible. It's pragmatic not dogmatic.

People who consider "vegan" a bad word are neither going to seek a replacement for leather either nor buy an electric car, so I don't think it will harm their sales in any meaningful way.

I find more problematic they call "leather" to something that is not leather at all.

What's problematic about it? Do you mind calling soy milk milk?

Except that oil and plastics are ultimately animal derived.

I personally hate that the plastics industry has managed to greenwash and convince people of it being a "healthier better option" because of the Vegan label, while slowly suffocating and killing us all.

The fact that Vegans (the Vegan community?) are fine with being co-opted with mass pollution, destruction of the environment, and sterilisation of the animal kingdom shows me how shallow their opinions are.

Just look at the other comments here. We should be pushing for more sustainable solutions, not just any old thing just because it's not leather.

> Except that oil and plastics are ultimately animal derived.

While technically true, that has nothing at all to do with veganism. Even as someone with little interest in veganism I can see that.

Is there a single group that you can point to that are doing something right for you?

It seems you are expecting vegans to manifest a fully integrated no-cruelty world instantly or they are all hypocrites.

> manifest a fully integrated no-cruelty world

I don't expect the Vegan society to "manifest" anything. Only to advocate towards a better world, and I do not see how greenwashing plastics will fulfil that as ultimately I see plastics as detrimental towards life.

Good luck in your future activism.

> I personally hate that the plastics industry has managed to greenwash and convince people of it being a "healthier better option" because of the Vegan label, while slowly suffocating and killing us all.

Plastics are, generally, _absolutely_ a cleaner option than leather. Leather tanning is a horrendously dirty industrial process, and particularly difficult to make clean. I mention it in another comment, but it's one of these industrial processes which is being wholesale evicted from the developed world, and may start to have serious issues in China too as China gets more serious on air and water pollution.

Not all plastics are animal derived. There are plant-derived plastics

Oil comes largely from plankton, FWIW. Much of that was algae, some animals, some fungi.

Coal and natural gas are almost purely fossilized plants.

At some point, people picked up the simplified thinking that fossil fuel = dinosaurs, but the carbon-rich deposits are primarily from the Carboniferous period, at which point animal life was mostly invertebrates, fish and small tetrapods.

It is actually meaningful though, as it says something about the origin of the materials. Synthetic could still mean that it was based off of animal products.

And how would that be relevant?

Synthetic, non-vegan*:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milk_fiber

If you care that cows only express milk after birth and thus the industry is a combination of forced pregnancy and infanticide (most calves aren't economical), that's a long-winded way of saying "milk is immoral", and people quite often go from "$thing is immoral" to "I will not purchase $thing".

* Or at least, can be non-vegan: there's bacterial sources of casein but I don't know how economically relevant that is.

It's meaningful if it's vegan certified. If it's stated by the manufacturer that they're using synthetic leather but in the article 'vegan leather' is used, then probably it's not very meaningful, it's actually misleading since not all synthetic leathers are 'vegan friendly'

Gluten-free leather!

The gold standard for not-leather on automotive interiors is, as far as I can tell, Mercedes MBtex. The current version is good, but the stuff they used pre 1995 or so was so convincing that dentists and accountants would swear to you that the 100% vinyl interior of their S-class was infact all cowhide.

Leather needs to be taken care of; which conflicts with American expectations of how much maintenance one should have to do to a car (preferably, not even oil changes). This is why full-leather, full-grain interiors that cost four figures on the option list gave way to full-(top-grain)leather, then bonded-leather "seating surfaces", where the thin hide in question would be least likely to crease or split.

Rolls, Bentley, Mercedes-Maybach...still do the full-leather thing, mostly from cows they source from Scandinavia, where barbed-wire && tabanid horseflies are less common so the hides have fewer scars when they get to the tannery. It is assumed that yr. servants have a bottle of Zymol to keep the inside of your Phantom VII or Mulsanne in good shape.

Id be happy with just "leather from particularly joyful animals" or whatever

Perhaps, but it's also the chemicals you want to avoid, formaldehyde for one, that are used to get the leather in a useful state. It's not just about animal well-being.

That seems very cruel. If anything I'd want to have leather from animals that voluntarily decided to commit suicide despite having access to all amenities.

suicide leather just doesn't sound like it would sell :/

I was thinking happy animals that died of old age

Searching for 'vescin' all I seem to get is marketing results from BMW and Mini. So what exactly is it beyond 'a proprietary vegan material'? What is it made of?

Probably just vinyl or some other plastic. Don't worry, it's 100% recyclable, honest.

They do claim in TFA that the new material "happens to be much more environmentally friendly to make and is 100 (sic) recyclable to boot". I hope that's not just marketing.

> happens to be much more environmentally friendly to make

This would not be difficult; leather production is an extremely dirty process.

Perhaps I misunderstood your message but as I read it thats true for the real/animal based leather.

What they call "vegan leather" here is a synthetic material that try to mimic the desired properties of real leather. They claim it being more environmental friendly.

edit : I did missread your message by missing "This would not be difficult"

Yup, that's what I meant; I'd definitely believe their claim here.

My assumption would be that it is some form of plastic.

It might just be their term (like how BMW and Toyota have house names for their synthetic leathers).

It might be based on MIRUM, since I recall BMW (who own Mini) working with them awhile back. MIRUM is one of the few plant based leather “replacements” that uses no plastic - although I obviously don’t know if the material used in Minis is this and is 100% plastic free, just throwing some possible leads out.

I had a leather worker make me a wallet out of a batch of MIRUM I got a few years ago and they were surprised at how close it gets to working with leather. It’s certainly not perfect - or at least wasn’t back then - but it was apparently far more usable than the plastic backed alternatives. Still holds up today and aged decently well. If BMW/Mini are indeed using it finally, IMO it’s a win over their earlier alternative leathers.

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