Smart's future vision

In an industry that's highly regulated, male-dominated, and generally a little bit on the conservative side, Smart has already proven to be able to step into a new paradigm. In this paradigm, cars are not so much designed as closed spaces of comfort on the inside, and impressive or intimidating displays of a static personal identity on the outside. Cars become minimal, open, friendly to all, shared, and flexible. The Smart Fortwo, in my eyes, has been the first global quantum leap towards this paradigm.

Smart has of course been looking to extend their philosophy further, and last summer they came out with an electric concept called the 'Forvision'. At the time I didn't think it was interesting to blog about because we all know about electric cars, and the form language lacked consistency. With the Forvision, Smart made a move towards cars that look more like intelligent, living organisms, than utilitarian products. But they completely overdid the design of course, and should probably have simply gotten rid of the idea of those angular, dented surfaces. These work well in some sculptural objects, but only when done extremely masterfully.




Now Smart has taken the prize in the LA Auto Show design competition, with a concept of a smart car that can switch modes. It can park by standing on its nose and hovering, it can fly, and even climb walls. What's more, Smart has taken a step in not putting the design of the car itself in the spotlights, but merging it into a larger, movie-like scenario. Watch it here:

Avant-garde car concepts for Opel Vauxhall

Opel has recently launched a competition in order to explore a design strategy based on the idea of the car becoming a lounge. Keeping in mind the slogan ´Sculptural artistry meets German precision´, design students from all over the world set off to the forefront of automotive design to create their dream car. The results are fascinatingly diverse, in some cases radically advanced in terms of technology, in other cases in terms of form language.

Here are some of the top entries.



Victor Uribe envisioned a car that goes wild on technology integration, while still creating an integral design that fits the idea of a car as a lounge space perfectly. The car consists of a flowing form that floats above its spherical wheels using magnetic levitation technology. Next to that it has all kinds of intelligent features such as sensors, projectors, even a Kinect driving interaction possibility, that sometimes feel a little superfluous, and in some cases plain dangerous. Perhaps the strongest feature of this design is the interior that allows one person to be a seated driver, while two passengers can lay down flat on intelligent, shape-changing lounge surfaces.



Javier Albizu entered the contest with a concept that is based on a deformable exterior. It can for example open and close the air intake on the front in order to either cool its electric motors, or improve its aerodynamic properties. The smooth hull of the car is made of a high-tech skin-like material that incorporates solar energy collectors, graphene to conduct electricity, and magnets to change its shape. The deformation that occurs is a stretching and contracting of the hull over its entire length, quite analogous to the car being one large muscle. This property changes the length of the car, and can be convenient in switching from a city-cruise to the hasty highway.



A girl named Lina takes on the challenge in a very different, very feminine way. She brings the fresh breeze that I feel is so needed in the still largely technology-oriented, male-dominated industrial design industry. Through intuitive and free-flowing sketches Lina has reached a very promising start for a car of the future. Her aesthetics clearly have evolved through her process, which she has suffused with peace, calmth, and feeling. And the final result is very powerful in subconsciously putting us in a similar state of mind.



Pierin Giacomo might have created the most holistic design of the competition in terms of experience and look and feel of both exterior and interior. Stepping into his bio-inspired car must feel like becoming absorbed by a flower. I can see this having a very soothing effect on people.



A last concept to mention is 'Opel Dynamis' by Acatrinei Lucian Nicolae. This very radically futuristic vehicle has some interesting innovations, such as electroactive polymers to adjust seats, 'Buckypaper' as structural reinforcement in the hull, and a flexible LCD display that serves as a dashboard.

A car that is grown instead of assembled

The chance that you are anywhere near L.A. lies probably near 0.5%, but if you are, and like terrific concepts, go to the Los Angeles Auto Show. It is there that you can see the result of a design competition for a future car below a thousand pounds of weight, including some radical but mind-opening concepts.

For once, innovative thinking goes into changing the entire means of production of cars, and draws its inspiration from biology. The Mercedes Benz Biome concept is one of the most extreme ones I have seen, if not the most extreme. It imagines a car that is grown out of one module, submerged in a `Nursery´ where cars are developed in a matter of days. Like the human body, the car would essentially be one integrated system, with except for probably the wheels, no separate parts. The car has no engine. Power deliverance is biologically integrated into the system by having it feed on a nectar that is synthesized from plants and from solar energy. This way, we make technology dependent, or in fact an intrinsic part of, our natural environment, so we have to take care of it very well. It´s a fair idea to me that we do not only create economic, human value out of nature, but that also we create natural value out of human endeavors.




Other almost equally far-out concepts are the Toyota Nori, made out of seaweed and carbon fiber, the bionic Nissan iV, and the Smart 454 that is produced by knitting robots. Is that hinting at an answer to how an aging population can still add value? Personally, I will be quite excited to see either one of these concepts on the road in my lifetime.

What's your ego emission index?

The road is one of those environments where people are continuously tested on their ability to master their ego-drives. The body is driving, but the ego wants social self-reaffirmation, and seeks this in other people who can reflect their ego with their own ego. And that's often how the game is played on the road.

Now you might think that living with an ego as your constant inner companion is alright and natural. Everybody seems to have one and plays along, so it has to be good, right? This is how the world turns. Moreover, flowing along like that feels good, it's fun, it's comfortable, and you're not confronted with reflective thoughts that interrupt the flow. But the ego-mode also completely detaches you from your body. It just lives on the skills that you developed as an infant, without staying aware of what it's really doing. Your mind can send a command to your body, and your body will do it almost automatically, so why would you completely connect to it anyway? And sure, in environments where the body is not really needed but we can just sit back and passively relax, you're fine without that awareness of your inner body. But on the road, this can be a more important matter, as a slight unpredicted change can have major consequences, when paired with a fraction of distraction.

It has recently been proven by Canadian researchers Cale White and Jeff Caird that a simple conversation with someone else in the car can be enough to increase driver errors, and that the risk is greater the more you are attracted to the passenger, and the more extroverted you generally are. In addition to a higher risk to get involved in an accident, the study showed that chattering drivers also drive slower, have more anxiety, and responded less to pedestrians. An important notion here is that drivers did not alter their looking behavior, but they simply did not take in what they saw as much as they would without being engaged in the conversation. In conclusion, conversations in cars make people's minds disconnect from their bodies up to a dangerous degree.

And this concerns only conversations with other people. Consider the influence of your inner conversations and reactions of resistance on your mind-body connection as well.

Now it is not easy to reconnect the body to the mind. And probably most of us will never become the perfect 'Zen driver' that is completely focused, and acts relaxedly instead of reacting actively.

But there are a few techniques I would like to briefly share with you that I found to work in calming you down and making you more focused. The first is simply doing breath exercise. This involves trying to breath deeply, calmly, and evenly. You will be amazed how quick the mind will follow the calmness that you bring into the body.

The other technique is in my experience the best way to regain focus in a situation. And the tip is simply: focus physically! We often think of focus as a mental quality, but in practical, physical, terms, it simply means to use the muscles in your eye to focus its lens at whatever you are looking at. This way, your mind gets engaged, because it stays active in being aware of what the eye is doing, instead of habitually wandering around your field of vision. Whenever you focus your eye on the point you are looking at, you are focused. You might find this to be hard, especially when you can also see things in the corner of your eye and 'get the idea', but to drive mindfully is to focus constantly. And soon you will become very competent and alert. This state of mind of being nowhere else but in the now feels very refreshing, I can tell you.

Another way of improving our mental state comes through designing cars that give us relevant feedback at the right time. The car industry is now introducing feedback systems that make people drive more environmentally friendly, and I think a next step is to implement feedback that makes people drive more mindfully. One system you could think of recognizes when people are triggered to react to other drivers. This always adds more nervousness and takes away awareness. Such feedback needs to be very subtle and delicate, maybe even unconscious and peripheral, so as to not trigger the driver even more. I think it would be an excellent idea to introduce an 'ego-meter' that over time comes to indicate how much ego the driver exhibits. You have a bad week in which you make it regular practice to shout to other drivers, lose a little bit too much control over your gas pedal, and hit the horn as if you were playing whack-a-mole, and your ego-meter shoots up.

How I got here is an advertising campaign I recently came across, that was led by Volkswagen back in 2006. The company played on the idea that people often exhibit strange behaviors in the car because of their ego, and introduced their Passat as the car with the lowest 'Ego Emissions'. A website was even created at which you could determine your own ego emission index by the way you dressed, the car you drive, etc.





Especially the television commercials VW made were on the spot:









Again, I think it's a wonderful idea to encourage people to drive more calmly, worry less about what others are doing, and have them use their ego-meter to its fullest potential.

Honey, can you walk out the fish today?

The content of car commercials was already peaking in far-fetchedness, but this is just insane. Apparently if you drive a Volkswagen Spacefox, why not go for the Fishdog as well?

Cardboard cars

Audi Q5: Unbox The Box

If only it were that easy. I'm sorry car manufacturers, but all cars are still fundamentally functionalistic boxes, all attempts to make the experience more humane compromising with the inherently inhuman system underlying its manufacture and distribution. Of course I'm not going to talk about the third industrial revolution, for now just enjoy this little video for the Audi Q5.