Trends en ontwikkelingen 3
Auto’s van de toekomst
Auto’s van de toekomst
One Car Per Family
3 juli 2007
Inspired by what he learned as the industrial designer on the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) project, Yves Béhar presented a similarly conceived bare-bones automobile concept whose flexible design encourages do-it-yourself modification. Intended for dirt roads and in areas of undependable or no power infrastructure, the car is projected to have electrically driven wheels, but to accept various power plants. These might include batteries and charger, a small internal combustion engine, a hybrid system or even — in a scientifically over-optimistic suggestion — solar panels.
Customizable Modular Car Comes With a Bunch of Attachments
Designer Vincent Chan‘s vehicle concept is one of those ideas that make you wonder why we haven’t been doing things his way all along. The Citi.Transmitter combines the best parts of tiny urban vehicles and semi tractor trailers. Like a little urban commuter car, the basic part of the Citi.Transmitter vehicle is a tiny two-seat conveyance.
And like a semi truck, a variety of back end pieces can easily attach to the “cab” as needed. Chan’s concept includes back ends specifically designed for carrying large or small cargo loads or a number of passengers. There is even an attachment with tank tracks that makes the vehicle able to travel off-road.
The concept makes a crazy amount of sense — a lot more sense than renting or borrowing special types of vehicles when you need to do something that your own car isn’t capable of. Although it is just a concept and not yet a reality, it is easy to imagine this type of modular car becoming a reality in the near future.
Future Mass Transit: Semi-Private iPad-Clad Electric Cars
Januari 2013
Perhaps the future of commuting doesn’t lie with trains or buses at all; maybe in the future we will all get around in semi-public cars which are community-based but not as large and impersonal as buses. These semi-public vehicles will feature shared community ownership and run on electricity, cutting down on transportation costs for participants while greatly reducing the amount of commuter emissions.
The car’s unique shape is perfect for a cargo vehicle, and when all six seats are removed from the passenger compartment that’s exactly what it becomes. Different vehicles in the same fleet can be used as taxis, delivery vans, and commuter buses. An entire city full of electric vehicles would reduce emissions by staggering amounts while providing convenient transportation for everyone.
Rule of Thirds: Three-Faced Urban Delivery Vehicle Concept
Februari 2010
Getting around a traffic-packed city is challenging for anyone, but especially so for huge delivery trucks. With traffic, lack of parking and small spaces to navigate, it’s easy to see why a smaller, more maneuverable delivery vehicle would be beneficial. London industrial designer Adam Schacter has a great solution: the CarGo delivery truck concept can transform itself from a very small vehicle to a larger-capacity pickup truck easily, so it can navigate spaces most delivery vehicles can’t go.
Transforming EV Will be What You Need When You Need it
Mei 2013
The world is all about the smaller, more efficient, electric vehicle these days. And that’s a great thing, of course, except for the fact that smaller cars are far less stable than their larger-wheel-based counterparts, particularly at high speeds. Designer Heesang Ahn proposes a pretty radical solution that will let people indulge their need for speed when appropriate…but still drive that sensible city car when needed.
The MONO is only a little larger than a motorcycle when in its smaller city car configuration. It’s agile, swift, and able to fit into those tiny downtown parking spots.But when what you really want is to drive fast on the open road, the car transforms. The tires, which previously sat directly under the passenger compartment, move out and the body of the car gets lower to the ground. You’ve got a speed machine that is still (mostly) eco-friendly since it runs on electricity.
Modular Motorhome: Hybrid Camper Car + Caravan Combo
Datum niet bekend
Campervans are great for the wide-open road, but what happens when you reach your destination and want to travel in something a bit less clunky? This variant concept RV comes with a detachable car to let you cruise city streets once you exit the high-speed freeway.
This design challenge was tackled by Christian Susana with great attention to detail, from how each portable portion (car and camper form) looks separately to how they appear as whole when plugged back together.
Volkswagen Modular Transverse Matrix (MQB)
4 februari 2012
Volkswagen Group has announced the introduction of a new vehicle architecture that optimizes standardization and use of technologies, extending from compact cars to large SUVs and sedans.
This year Volkswagen Group will be introducing the Modular Transverse Matrix — the German acronym is MQB — for the Volkswagen, Audi, ŠKODA and SEAT brands.
The MQB strategy optimizes the design and production of future automobiles with transverse-mounted engines by standardizing many vehicle component parameters across brands and vehicle classes, and by allowing access to luxury class technologies for high-volume models.
The first new vehicles to be produced based on the MQB will be the successor to the Audi A3 and the next generation Golf.
Renault-Nissan modular car chunks could see 40% savings
20 juni 2013
Renault and Nissan have shown off the common car concept which the two companies expect to save up to 40-percent of new model developments, by reusing key chunks of engine, underbody, and electronic tech. The Renault-Nissan Common Module Family (CMF) consists of five key segments which, once initially developed, can be adopted across anything from compact cars to big luxury sedans, with new modules planed for SUVs, minivans, and more. Paring development costs and the timescales involved in developing new cars has become a hot topic within the industry, given the increasing number of sub-categories of models drivers have come to expect.
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MOJO — modular Car
25 september 2009
MOJO can be used as small two-seater electric vehicle or, equipped with additional modules, as utility vehicle or family van. Additional modules bring their own batteries.
Why Won’t Big Automakers Build the Car of the Future?
12 mei 2013
At car shows and in TV commercials, automakers like to brag about their “radical engineering.” But there’s nothing radical about the automotive business. It’s the ultimate incremental industry: conservative, afraid of consumer rejection, and comfortable with innovation that proceeds at a slow drip.
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You might argue that Edison2 and Illuminati Motor Works are small outfits with no hope of ever putting their cars into production. But to me, their smallness is exactly the point. They didn’t have armies of engineers and designers and coders and marketers. They didn’t know any billionaires. They were working in the depths of a severe economic recession, maxing out credit cards. Yet they solved a hard and important problem. These mere mortals had three years to reach 100 miles per gallon and 200 grams of carbon dioxide per mile. That was their race. And they won it. They prove that we can do better.
The auto companies are now in a race of their own. They have 12 years to hit the government’s tough new government efficiency and emissions rules. By 2025, vehicle fleets must average 54.5 MPG — that’s twice the current efficiency — while halving emissions to 163 grams per mile of CO2.
These targets are tough and won’t be easy to hit, which is why the big automakers should pick the brains of the Auto X Prize teams. They should ask folks like Edison2 and Illuminati Motor Works to build them prototypes using the constraints the auto companies have to live within — sort of like an automaker’s version of the X Prize. Then the automakers should test the results in their wind tunnels and crash facilities. Poke them, prod them, bash them. It would be a smart way for the automakers to study and create the future — to approach the people who are unencumbered by legacy thinking and brave enough to build what they dream.
The companies probably won’t do this. Even today, with new government targets looming and with potentially disruptive technologies like autonomous vehicles gaining speed, the automakers are still resisting radical change. They think they can clear the regulatory hurdles by adapting vehicle architectures that already exist. They’re not rethinking the automobile from scratch, from the ground up, like the successful Auto X Prize teams did; they’ve ceded leadership on self-driving car technology to Google, a competitor from outside the industry, which has been free to envision a completely new kind of driving experience.
And with a few exceptions, such as the BMW i3, the automakers are also failing to make significant investments in bringing down the cost of advanced composite materials that are light, strong, and durable. (One Nissan executive recently “quipped” to Green Car Reports that the company doesn’t want to make cars out of carbon fiber because it’s too durable: “We don’t need such a material,” the executive said. “That means we cannot sell a new car in 30 years.”)
All of this means that when the automakers do introduce innovative new propulsion systems — electric drives, hybrid drives, fuel-cell hybrid drives — they’ll likely install them in old, heavy boxes. They’ll bolt the future onto the bones of the past.
But the terrain beneath the industry is starting to shift. It’s shifting due to tighter government rules. It’s shifting because of internet culture: In the era of the smartphone, Americans no longer venerate the automobile the way they once did, viewing it less as a sacred object and more as a humble tool. Finally, the terrain is shifting because it has to: the planet is baking, oil is a finite resource, and physics is physics.
The cars of the 21st century can’t be like the cars of the 20th century, or else we’re screwed. And if the big guys won’t lead, the little guys will. As the men and women of Illuminati Motor Works wrote in chalk on the wall of their barn: “Somebody has to do something, and that somebody is us.”
Concluderend
Het idee van de LEGO auto was de mogelijkheid om de auto volledig naar jouw wens aan te passen. Hoewel ik het (eigenhandig) in elkaar zetten van een auto a la LEGO nog steeds interessant blijf vinden, wordt dit voor veel mensen een gedoe en ingewikkeld. Sterker nog, ik beschik ook niet over de kennis om een auto op die manier in elkaar te zetten, laat staan te ontwerpen!
In Carable zou alles mogelijk zijn. Staand ping pongen in een auto zou zomaar een van de mogelijkheden worden. Carable zou daarom een andere vorm hebben dan de bovenstaande beschreven modulaire auto’s die (voornamelijk) ‘zitten in een auto’ als uitgangspunt hebben genomen. Alleen uit het gebruiksonderzoek (meer hierover te vinden in Design Onderzoek) bleek dat het simpelweg niet nodig was om alles te kunnen in een auto (compleet modulair). Gebruikers ondernemen namelijk veel activiteiten zittend (smartphone). Door te focussen op deze zittende activiteiten is het dilemma van aerodynamica vs. energiezuinigheid opgelost (basketballen of klimmen bijvoorbeeld in een 4 meter hoge rechthoekige auto, hierover meer in ‘Design Onderzoek’).
Zodoende heb ik verder gekeken naar modulaire auto’s en kwam ik tot de conclusie dat Carable onvermijdelijk sterk naar de al bestaande modulaire auto’s zal neigen. Het kunnen staan in een auto was een radicale verandering, maar blijkt simpelweg niet nodig te zijn en ook niet energiezuinig. Het chassis als standaard bestempelen lijkt noodzakelijk om de auto relatief goedkoop en modulair te maken.
Overigens zijn eerder beschreven auto’s slechts de top van de ijsberg.
Pivo, Gina, Splinter en de Mazda Kaan zijn uitwerkingen van andere interessante visies op de auto van de toekomst.
Lees verder
Carable — Usable for you
Trends en ontwikkelingen 1 — De zelfrijdende auto
Trends en ontwikkelingen 2 — Elektrisch rijden is de toekomst
Trends en ontwikkelingen 3 — Auto’s van de toekomst
Trends en ontwikkelingen 4 — Maatschappelijke veranderingen
Design Onderzoek — Gebruikers spreken voor zich
Stakeholders — Veel te behalen voor iedereen
