GreenBkk Auto | Ideas Almost Lighter Than Air

Ideas Almost Lighter Than Air

Credit: The New York Times (www.nytimes.com)

GOOD BONESG.M.’s design for an ultralight car was the Cadillac Aera with a latticework frame.

By PHIL PATTON

EACH year, the auto design studios of Southern California compete in the Design Challenge in conjunction with the Los Angeles auto show. Because the entries are digitally produced — no full-size or scale models required — participants can let their imaginations run free.

GOOD EGG Maybach DRS is an "electric-powered rickshaw."

But for 2010, the seventh year for the challenge, the designers were put on a diet.

This year’s assignment was to envision a four-passenger vehicle of less than 1,000 pounds, roughly a quarter of the weight of a Chrysler 300C and less than half that of the original Mazda Miata, a tiny two-seater.

Furthermore, the vehicle would have to be — conceptually, at least — “both comfortable and safe, while delivering satisfactory driving performance, without sacrificing the styling consumers demand.”

As they sought to meet this daunting challenge, most of the designers’ first move was to throw away the engine. Many entries featured vehicles propelled by compressed air — a mode of propulsion that may work fine for party balloons, but not one many auto engineers take seriously, given the energy required to compress the air.

This year, in addition to the usual entries from the California studios of automakers, Mercedes-Benz studios from Germany and Japan took part.

The winning designs were announced Thursday evening. The four judges, three of whom head university-level design programs, selected the Cadillac Aera and the Smart 454 as co-winners.

The Aera (a combination of Aero and Era) would be built around a latticework frame, like a sort of geodesic dome morphed into a car. The skin would be polymer, and the power plant would run on compressed air.

The Smart entry, designed by the Mercedes-Benz studio in Germany, looked like a futuristic pod. Designed to be made of carbon fiber, it would be “knitted” by high-tech robots.

Here are some of the other entries:

HONDA AIR Part roller-coaster, part wing suit for skydiving, this entry from the Honda Advanced Design Studio in Pasadena, Calif., was said to weigh, hypothetically, less than 800 pounds.

MAZDA MX-0 Mazda would use electric motors for propulsion and save weight by sharply reducing the number of parts. Mazda promised nothing less than “impossible acceleration.”

MAYBACH DRS The Mercedes-Benz design center in Japan offered an “electric powered rickshaw,” for some reason wearing the name of Maybach, the company’s unsuccessful high-end brand. The Maybach DRS is a sort of huge Segway, which, the designers said, would be “controlled by an onboard computer plugged into a megacity’s transport infrastructure.”

MERCEDES BIOME Instead of metal or carbon fiber, the Mercedes North American design center imagined using plant material for its “biome” (bio plus me) concept, grown from genetically engineered seeds that would contain “Mercedes-Benz DNA.” The vehicle would be powered by a system to collect energy from the sun and store it in a fluid called BioNectar 4534.

NISSAN IV Nissan’s effort was also inspired by plants. Called iV, it is built of ivy, along with spider silk composite. The materials make up what Nissan designers call “organic synthetics,” a new form of manufacturing.

TOYOTA NORI Toyota’s Calty studio also thought botanically for a concept called Nori, like the seaweed. It “presents the idea that the body and chassis are one as a Podular form; that is designed to be strong, light and beautiful.”

VOLVO AIR MOTION Volvo took the idea of compressed air further, envisioning a novel infrastructure of “air replenishment sites” — huge wind turbines high in the air would gather energy to run electric motors for air compressors. The car would have a clamshell structure of carbon fiber.

Compressed air may be just the right metaphor for the tone of this year’s entries: they may not have much substance, but there is a lot of airy thinking packed into small volume.

Credit: The New York Times (www.nytimes.com)