A Final word on the concept
Okay, so here is the most exciting part……taking the design ( and off course the CAD model ) into the final stages……..and me getting some vital time to do the systems part…….but before that, a look at what i did in last three weeks or so….the most important stuff…….doing the interiors of the car, and making the car a bit more practical.
As you can notice, the design language follows the route set by BMW’s “Flame Surfacing”.
The intent is to create an interesting combination of convex / positive surfaces, convex / negative surfaces, and some rare flat surfaces that will embody the car’s volume in a way that justifies its function as a combination of ” City car” and an ” Utility Vehicle”.
The large wheels helps in adding to the car’s utilitarian character, while the transparent A – Pillar, the absence of B – Pillar, and the thick C-Pillar adds to the city car feel, where the passengers and drivers will enjoy the clear and unobstructed view of the surrounding city-scape.
The overall form of the car represents a strong character, which is necessary since its a part utility vehicle as well, while on the other hand, the low height and sleek surfacing gives it the agility and sophistication of a city car.
The design is dominated by two single curved lines, one which forms the shoulder line and runs over the front wheel arch, and the other which runs down the C-Pillar and cuts through the two doors to meet the front wheel arch.
The first curved line that i mentioned helps to give the car a fairly backward stance, indicating clearly that it is not a powerful car. On the other hand, the other curved line, which is aided by the two-tone color combination, helps in creating a visual shift of balance equally in the favor of front and rear.
Most of the surfaces exhibit a sense of function, which is a must for any utility vehicle. Amongst those, are
- The two separate shutters for the cargo bays at the rear end ( one for the flat floor bed for storage of long items and other one on the top for additional storage of large items ).
- The centrally split rear windows and the flat top rear end leading to it.
- The Front Scooped portion.
Reversed hinged doors ( better known as suicide doors ) opening at an angle of 90 degrees – allowing easy access to all the 4 seats.
Wait……..don’t start with the usual criticism of the front scoop yet……….because its nothing but a cargo area, and i have a couple of renderings showing the retractable cargo cover made out of reinforced fabric, which is supposed to be the solution for the front cargo bay.
I can understand your situation, as we have all grown up seeing the bonnets and specifically the ” power bulges ” on the bonnets giving us a clear idea as to how powerful the monster under the bonnet is.
Earlier, i had just planned to leave the front scoop the way it is, because it was meant to be a symbolic representation of a ” non-powerful ” car , by giving a negative bulge in a way….but people around me are so conventional, that they are used to see conventional things under the name of design, hence nobody seemed to welcome the idea of having a ” BONNET – LESS ” car- as nobody understood that im actually reducing the overall weight and visual mass of the car, and it was also about eliminating the material used to make bonnet and the hinges, etc.
Off course people asked -” if you want to make a bonnet-less car, then why don’t you make a VAN instead ?”
AGAIN – Conventional questions !
I didn’t bother to answer that, because i didn’t want my concept for car-sharing system to look like a van, since i had imagined it to be a combination of a city car and a utility vehicle. And i was ready to deviate a little from the conventional shape of a today’s car….others sadly couldn’t digest it.
I would like to question – WHY DO WE NEED BONNET ANYWAYS ? ” Just to hide the Engine ?
And what if there is no Engine there ? That’s it……there should be no hood at all.
And that is exactly why I still decided to keep the scoop as it is………in spite of all the possible discouragement by faculties, other designers, batch mates, etc……………. by using it as a cargo bay, and just giving a retractable fabric cover which will provide easy access to the small luggage bags.
Off course, the electric powered, retractable, reinforced and water-proof fabric cover will run along the guide rails, and fix into the top bit of the bumper via a simple locking mechanism.
CHECK THESE ONES ………….FOR THE SCOOP COVER
Okay, now enough explanation of the front scoop – since i have other interesting things to talk about as well.
INTERIOR DESIGN
The above few images show the seating mechanism of the car .
The seats are supported by the central shaft, which houses the fuel tank to store liquid hydrogen. So the seats rest on the fuel tank, and can be folded into a flat position, giving more than ample of space to slide large bags and daily cargo via the upper cargo bay at the rear end of the car.
Check out the section below, for a clear idea of the flat floor bed, and the additional cargo bay as well as the suspended flat-folding seats.
And since the seats are suspended over the fuel tank, it means that we get a clear , uninterrupted flat floor bed , which is very necessary for periodic cleaning purposes, considering that its a public transport vehicle.
The flat floor bed can be used for carrying large flat objects like surfboards, folding push-bikes, skateboards, etc, which comes to be very handy in case of day-to-day transportation of household goods.
Regarding the glowing wheels………well, the vehicle’s got a motor to propel it in each of its four wheels……so the neon lights in each wheel glow when the respective motors are powering the car – that means, if the car is being powered by the two front wheels, then only the front wheels will be glowing.
DESIGN OF THE INSTRUMENT PANEL
The Instrument panel ( IP ) is a very simple one – in tune with the minimalistic theme for the interior.
Effectively speaking, there isn’t a thing called as ” DASHBOARD ” in the car.
The place for housing the IP is just an extension of the central shaft – with the 13 inch LCD screen acting as the balancing point between the central shaft and the central IP dock.
The touch screen LCD panel can be swiveled in both directions along a central pivot point , so that it can be controlled by either the driver or the front passenger.
It will give access to exclusive functions like satellite navigation, google maps, street view as secondary options, while the service interface being its primary function.
Since there are no switches and buttons on the IP Dock, the controls for commonly needed major functions like air-conditioning levels, audio settings, light and ambiance settings, door locks etc are provided on all the four doors for individual access, leaving the central console absolutely neat and uncluttered.
There is a space for docking the i Pods on the central shaft, wherein every user can listen to his/ her own music via the wireless headphones.
Also provided on an individual basis, are the charging sockets for their cell phones, laptops etc, and a foldable table-top for personal use.
In addition to the touch-screen LCD, the other two components of the IP are the two large semi-circular Pods over the top surface, one each for the rev counter and speed display.
Alternatively, if the member changes the settings through the LCD screen, he gets to see the fuel level indicators ; for Hydrogen and Battery reserve level respectively , in those same two pods.
The whole interior space is fairly uncluttered, with no obstacles or hurdles in the way of any passenger or driver, allowing clear access and exit through the doors.
There is ample legroom, shoulder room and headroom for all passengers owing to the design and layout of the seats and the central console.
The chief intent behind this kind of interior design is the fact that this vehicle will be used for car pooling as well, which means that four fairly unknown car sharing members could be traveling at the same time.
Henceforth, every member should have individual access to certain functions which otherwise would be shared / common ones in any other car.
MATERIALS USED
Following materials were researched to a certain extent, wherein their properties, applications, merits and demerits were studied, and proposed in following areas -
MAKROLON Plastic – for the body of the car.
ZEOFORM – For the molded seats.
CARBON FIBER – For the fuel tank and chassis only.
SISAL – for dashboard, interior panels like floorboards, inner door walls etc.
ALCANTARA – Alternative for leather used in trim and other upholstery.
HID (High Intensity Discharge) lamps – new generation LED’s for headlamps.
INTERACTIVE LED lamps - for Blinkers.
LIGHT EMITTING WALLPAPER – for communication purpose .
SHAPE MEMORY POLYMER – for seat cushions, steering wheel etc.
IMPERMEABLE / WATER PROOF COTTON - for seat covers specially.
Day VIII – Splitting up the Cad model for CNC Milling
Now that the model was properly knitted, and converted into a solid without too much difficulties, time for splitting it up into parts which can me CNC milled. To make a physical model out of timber /soft wood, the 3 axis CNC router in the RMIT workshop demanded every single part / piece to be less than 90 mm – coz thats what the depth of the Drill bit was…..still it was recommended by Paul, the one man army at the workshop – that the parts should be 80 mm deep to be on the safer side.
And off course………..after all the above parts will be milled and glued together…….and with the wheels in their respective place…the car should look very close to what we see below -
Keep looking for more….
Day VII – Cad Model
So with most of the surfaces and knitting done – it was time to do a solid model of it…….and some minor fillets and adjustments as well……..so that the model could be converted into IGES file and the work on the physical model could be started as soon as possible.
Designing Cars for Low-Carbon Chic
As governments seek to cut carbon emissions through regulation and consumers react to rising fuel prices, automakers and designers are mapping out a new generation of lighter, sleeker vehicles that could give a radical new look to urban streets.
Toyota has already set a benchmark for low emissions and fuel economy. Its Prius model, introduced in 1997, pioneered new technologies, including the first fully integrated hybrid engine, able to switch between gasoline and battery power, and electronic and computerized controls replacing heavy hydraulic systems.
Toyota has been followed by another Japanese company, Honda, with a Civic hybrid, and a string of releases or planned models from European and American competitors. Carmakers are now racing to design more innovative bodies incorporating advanced aerodynamics and light, biodegradable plastic components. They are also trying to second-guess the kind of styling that the next generation of car buyers will want.
Gilles Vidal, designer of a recent “green” concept car, the C-Cactus, for the French automaker PSA Peugeot Citroën, said, “To make a real environmental effort, you need to work on all of the possible factors — materials, optimization of processes, simplifying, going back to essentials.”
Students at Créapôle, a leading industry-sponsored design school in Paris, are among those working with manufacturers to develop new designs and technologies that could become auto industry standards.
Alec Moran, a final-year master’s student at the school, said that instead of selling cars based on the size of the engine, the car’s relationship with its surroundings and how it interacts with people should be increasingly important.
“We are trying to develop the aesthetic element of the shape and interior comfort while assimilating the car’s essence to the cultural needs of a particular social group,” he said.
The evolution in fuel economy is continuing. For example, Ford fitted its EcoBoost engine this year to the new Lincoln MKS and Ford Flex models. The motor combines direct injection for higher fuel efficiency with additional turbo-charged power generated by using waste exhaust gas energy.
Guy Negre, a motor engineer and founder of MDI Enterprises, a company that studies new technologies and production concepts to reduce the environmental impact of carbon dioxide, invented a compressed-air engine in 1996. The engine emits one-third the carbon dioxide of conventional motors of the same size. Cold air, compressed in tanks to 300 times atmospheric pressure, is heated and fed into the cylinders of a piston engine. No combustion takes place, meaning there is no pollution, although the energy needed to compress the air may still come from polluting oil- or coal-burning power stations.
“Obviously, we are obliged to make changes to the design in relation to the requirements and specifics of new technologies,” Mr. Negre said. “The weight, for example, is extremely important for many reasons. The heavier a vehicle is, the more energy is needed to power it and the more it pollutes.”
Mr. Negre’s engine will be offered as an option in Tata Motor’s new production model, the Nano, next year. The Nano, a minicar with an ultralow price tag, was introduced in January and is primarily aimed at the Indian market. Mr. Negre said a full tank of compressed air would cost about $3 and provide about 200 kilometers, or 125 miles, of driving. The tank could be filled by gas station compressors used for inflating tires, or a built-in compressor powered by plugging in to an electrical outlet, he said.
Designers at automakers like Chrysler, Toyota and Citroën are already adapting to changing customer needs and perceptions. The Citroën C-Cactus, a retro take on the legendary 2CV, is designed for a post-SUV urban world where small is beautiful and low environmental impact is a top priority.
Maria Mack, a senior design specialist in Brussels for Toyota, said, “From the very first stage of design, the project leader responsible for a particular vehicle sets environmental impact reduction targets.”
The C-Cactus is an example of how manufacturers are experimenting to reduce the industry’s total carbon footprint, including production and driving emissions. Besides choosing a hybrid engine, Mr. Vidal, its designer, said, he halved the weight of the car and simplified everything that could be simplified to cut energy consumption.
Olivier Frémont, head of Créapôle’s department of transport design, said: “Four or five years ago much of our design work was focused on the Chinese and emerging markets. But in the last three years or so trends have radically changed as designers have become much more ecologically minded.”
He added, “We are regularly looking to simplify the vehicle whether it be outside or inside,” and he said that “we are coming back to basic questions of what is actually useful inside the vehicle, what we actually need.”
Mr. Moran, the Créapôle student, has designed a car that addresses two main issues: the escalation of oil prices and the need to minimize environmental impacts. His car runs on an electric motor using a lithium-ion battery, substantially lighter than traditional lead-acid batteries. It has a chassis made of bamboo, reinforced with spiders’ silk and plant resin.
Car companies like Mazda are looking to bioplastics for the fenders and dashboards of future models. Mazda says that the plastic will be made from cellulosic biomass produced from inedible vegetation like plant waste and wood shavings. Toyota’s concept car, the COMS BP, an electric vehicle, also uses bioplastics for some of its body parts, including the hood, pillars and roof.
Mr. Moran said his car was designed for people he likes to call “No-Nos” — those who reject mainstream consumerism and popular advertising.
“ ‘No-Nos’ are a growing minority of people who care a great deal about their carbon footprint,” Mr. Moran said. “Aesthetically conventional but technically advanced,” he said, his target buyers would be “activist consumers who are both thoughtful and introspective.”
Cyril Randuineau, another master’s student at the school, spent some time at Toyota’s main design center in Tokyo, where he studied cultural trends and noticed that many Japanese people had small garages and tended to travel in groups.
His response was to design a car with a miniaturized hybrid engine to maximize passenger space within a small frame, and a molded cocoonlike interior where driver and passengers could relax in comfort when stationary.
He has also designed a car for an emerging African market that he hopes will take off in the future. He says that rising oil prices will open up the market for exciting new technologies using electricity and solar power, all of which will change the shape and functions of the car.
“It’s uncertain that this type of car would actually have mass appeal,” Mr. Moran said. “The aim of this project is really to throw the idea out there.”
BMW Design Chief Sees Art on Wheels; Some Just See Ugly
Since the 1960’s, BMW has pried open the wallets of the affluent by producing handsome, conservative cars known for handling, performance, luxury and, most of all, status.
But now, even as BMW threatens to overtake Toyota’s Lexus as the best-selling luxury brand in the United States, a 46-year-old American executive from Wisconsin is not satisfied. He is trying to make the yuppie dream car as idiosyncratic as it once was predictable. And a lot of longtime BMW lovers hate him for it.
Christopher E. Bangle, BMW’s first non-German design chief, wants each BMW to be a conversation piece known as much for design as precision engineering. Where BMW’s all looked very much alike, he is trying to make each model different — some with bulging back ends, some with unusually reflective surfaces and sharp curves, and some, like the Mini, just plain small.
Why change what is already succeeding? BMW’s new chief executive, Helmut Panke, is asking Mr. Bangle to help raise United States sales of BMW’s almost 50 percent, to 300,000, in just a few years. And that demand comes even as many other car makers enter the luxury car market, which, they think, will be the fastest-growing part of the business in the coming decade.
Mr. Bangle’s answer is to make cars that stand apart from the crowd and appeal to younger buyers’ sense of individuality. ”Car design got into a comfort zone in the 80’s and 90’s and people were terrified to break out of it,” Mr. Bangle said. ”BMW should be applauded for having the courage to say the future is ahead of us, guys.”
But many devotees view him as an interloping artiste sullying the exalted Bimmer by trying to foist on it his version of hipness. The controversy began early this year, when the talk of the industry was the bumptious trunk lid of the 7 Series sedan, which bulges above its posterior.
”It’s a very Wagnerian-looking car; that back end, you can’t explain it,” said Horst Reinhardt Jr., a 32-year-old mechanical engineer who lives in the Detroit suburbs and drives an older BMW but is not sure he will be able to stay with the brand. ”It’s just plain ugly,” he said. (Sales have not been deterred though; they are up 45 percent this year.)
Others have been puzzled by the design of the company’s new interior control system, iDrive, which unifies a dizzying array of functions into a single knob and has left some drivers scrambling for the manual just to start a new BMW. (”iDrive?” went a headline in Road & Track magazine. ”No, you drive while I fiddle with the controller.”)
BMW has also introduced a line of Mini cars, featured in the latest installment of the Austin Powers movies. And mixed feelings have sprung afresh with the recent debut of the company’s Z4 roadster, which resembles a metallic shark with a highly reflective surface and unusual lines. ”Just plain goofy looking,” is how one reviewer, in Automobile magazine, describes it.
Some BMW fans, who have long viewed their cars as unassailable temples, fear worse could be ahead. One of BMW’s most controversial recent prototypes was even off-kilter, with a back end that looked like it sprang from a Cubist paintbrush.
”There’s not one human being on this planet that symmetrical,” Mr. Bangle said. ”So why do we demand it of an emotional product?”
One of a coterie of designers trained at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, Calif., in the 1970’s who have gone on to leading industry roles, Mr. Bangle exudes confidence. He hails from Wausau, Wis., a town founded by logging barons. The name is an Indian word for ”faraway place.” Insurance is now the town’s biggest industry, hunting and fishing are favorite hobbies and the Green Bay Packers are a religion. If Mr. Bangle still pronounces ”roots” like ”puts,” in the Midwestern style, he has become somewhat Continental after marrying a Swiss woman and spending the last 21 years working for carmakers in Europe (the last decade for BMW).
Queried about his rank, he asked an American handler: ”I’m not a V.P., am I? I have no idea what I am in English.” He sometimes slipped into German as he talked to an American reporter.
Mr. Bangle has much of the deep-thinking artistic soul in him. He is supremely intense. At a dinner at the Detroit Institute of Arts — sitting under an imposing Diego Rivera mural depicting the auto industry of the 1930’s — he briefly grew teary when describing the frustrations of a profession that has him telling his artists, all at various points, that projects of years in duration will never see the light of day. Such is the car business.
Mr. Bangle often speaks in language that floats beyond pedestrian conversation and can leave one a little puzzled. For instance, he calls the Z4 a car that ”truly separates itself far apart visually from the predecessors of the last century.” How? To the untrained eye, it might look like just a flashy new roadster. But Mr. Bangle said it was a leap beyond other cars the way sculpture changed when classical sculptors discovered the power of draping cloth on nude forms and infusing them with motion.
”That nude, now with the revealing and energizing aspect of a tissue of cloth, is the Z4,” he said. ”To me that’s as big a jump in terms of aesthetic value systems as there was between an Eve before the fall, where she was innocent and pure, and the sexiness that she had was an animalistic pureness that radiated out of her, and an Eve after the fall who discovered and was aware of the surface of her body, could use clothes and the drapery of form, a slit here an opening there, to bring a new kind of erotic sensuality. Same woman, two different aspects.”
When Mr. Bangle joined the Munich-based BMW in 1992, the company had not even had a chief designer for several years. He has spent the last decade elevating his own role, and the role of design, to the point where he has the influence to play a major role in the transformation of the company’s image.
His hypercerebral approach to car design was apparent during an hourlong interview, in which he mentioned Archimedes, Vermeer, Pythagoras, Euclid and the British art historian Kenneth Clark.
Criticism? He is not shy in shrugging it off.
”I’ve often told people that the 7 Series, to me, is the first car of the century, in all of its contents and technical aspects and certainly in its presence,” he said. ”This car is miles apart from anything that came before.”
Not everyone can appreciate that. Even some dealers concede the car is not sold from the rear.
”No one falls in love with the trunk,” said Greg Dickson, general sales manager at Nick Alexander Imports in Los Angeles.
He added: ”Some people say it’s ugly. I say, come on, sit in this car for five minutes. You can’t see the trunk from the driver’s seat.”
The criticism has hardly hurt sales of the 7 Series — BMW’s most expensive line, starting at about $70,000 — which have increased 45 percent this year. One fan is Chris Cedergren, co-founder of a California firm that does market research for the auto industry.
”It moves away from everyone else and differentiates the brand,” he said. ”It makes a statement. The more you can get the consumer to be one with that vehicle and really link their emotion to that vehicle, that will translate into a situation where the consumer will say, ‘I want it.’ ”
”What Chris Bangle is doing is reading that into the marketplace, and, rightly so, developing vehicles that go after individual emotions,” he added.
BMW had 11.4 percent of the luxury car market in the United States during the first 10 months of the year, second only to Lexus, which had 11.6 percent. BMW’s share has doubled in a decade as domestic brands like Cadillac and Lincoln have plummeted, according to data compiled by Sanford C. Bernstein and Ward’s AutoInfoBank. BMW sales generally are up an impressive 17 percent this year, but all is not rosy in Wall Street’s eyes.
”The problem,” said Scott Hill, auto analyst at Sanford C. Bernstein, ”is every single mainline vehicle manufacturer is now trying to take their product line upscale.”
Mr. Hill thinks the trend is already putting pressure on the company’s profit margins and will give BMW less flexibility to raise prices. He also says Lexus will have an advantage in an increasingly competitive environment because of Toyota’s greater manufacturing efficiencies.
Mr. Bangle is confident. But speculation has already begun on whether he will continue to push the design envelope or pull back.
Just don’t call his cars automobiles.
”We don’t make automobiles, which are utilitarian machines you use to get from Point A to Point B,” Mr. Bangle once wrote. ”We make cars, moving works of art.”
So Efficient, L.E.D.’s Are Now Fashion Plates, Too
IN recent seasons, a new fashion accessory has become a must-have for the debutants of the auto-show circuit. No automaker introduces a new concept car, it seems, before dressing it up with L.E.D. jewelry.
Light-emitting diodes are replacing the car’s trusty glass light bulbs much as compact fluorescents are replacing Edison’s ancient incandescents in home lamp sockets. L.E.D.’s are longer lasting, more compact and consume less electricity.
Familiar as indicator lamps and later in powerful flashlights, the solid-state lights first found their way into cars as brake lights, an ideal application because L.E.D.’s illuminate more quickly than traditional lamps with wire filaments. Even if the difference is measured in milliseconds, L.E.D.’s can alert drivers sooner and help to prevent rear-end collisions.
Until recently, however, they have been about 10 times as expensive as traditional lights, according to LEDs magazine, a trade publication.
Now that is changing. Luxury cars are using the diode lamps in abundance, and they have already migrated onto more affordable vehicles.
“L.E.D.’s have finally become cheap enough that we can spread the goodness around,” said J Mays, group vice president for design and chief creative officer of the Ford Motor Company. Lincoln, Ford’s premium brand, has broad bands of L.E.D.’s on the rear of some of its models. “You have to have a way to handle them,” said Mr. Mays. “We have one for Lincoln that will reveal itself,” he added, referring to future models.
L.E.D.’s offer bold possibilities for signaling brands and vehicle personalities.
Designers have developed a sweet tooth for L.E.D. eye candy. Younger designers in particular see the lamps as a token of the future and as high-tech jewels. They are deployed across every concept car — from the face of the new Ford Explorer America concept to the turn signals of the Hummer HX, a design study for a smaller new model that would compete with the Jeep Wrangler.
Now L.E.D.’s are found in the taillights of most luxury cars: in the circular constellations of red stars in Infinitis, in bold horizontal bands on the liftgate of the Lincoln MKX crossover wagon, in a quartet of brand-signaling bands on BMWs and as hints of tailfins on the Cadillac DTS.
They have also begun to show up at the front end of cars as daytime running lights and turn signals.
Lexus offered the first L.E.D. headlight on the LS 600h L. Now Audi is able to claim the first all-L.E.D. lighting package for the front of a car: high and low beams of the R8 V-12 TDI Concept’s headlights as well as running lights and turn signals.
L.E.D.’s appeal to engineers because in most cases they will outlast the cars in which they are mounted. And they use less energy — a big attraction because the electrical systems of today’s cars are already stretched to support entertainment systems, power steering and electronic controls.
But designers like L.E.D.’s for other reasons: they offer a whole new world of expressive possibilities.
“They look very high-tech and precise and accurate,” said Stefan Sielaff, Audi’s head of design. “This is part of our Audi design philosophy.”
Precision and technology are important components of Audi’s design theme, and its motto, “vorsprung durch technik,” or “progress through technology.” The Audi motto takes on visual expression in L.E.D.’s. The diode lamps, Mr. Sielaff said, also take up less space and give designers more flexibility in placing them.
The R8 lights are made by Automobile Lighting, a division of Magneti Marelli, a leading auto parts supplier based in Italy.
The Audi A5 coupe and the newest A4 have different arrangements of L.E.D.’s, more tubular in shape.
“Each car needs a personality with lights,” Mr. Sielaff said. “I have an expert team doing nothing but light design. You do not just draw a pretty curve and see if it can be built. It takes working with engineers who know light itself, and the manufacturer of the lights and so on.”
The first practical light-emitting diode, which was red, was developed in 1962 by Nick Holonyak Jr., an electronics professor who wanted to make a transistor do something he could see. Professor Holonyak, now the John Bardeen Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Physics at the University of Illinois, soon realized the advantages: for each watt of electricity, L.E.D.’s produced more lumens, or units of light, and lasted longer than conventional incandescent or fluorescent light bulbs.
The diodes make possible all sorts of electronic wonders; they are used, for instance, in the superthin screen of the new Apple Air laptops. Another variation, called organic L.E.D.’s, hold the promise of being flexible — future screens or lights may roll up like scrolls.
In headlights, L.E.D.’s make a light that is closer to daylight than traditional lamps, Mr. Sielaff said. The R8’s lights have a color temperature, a measure of the light’s hue, that is toward the blue end of the scale, at about 6,000 degrees Kelvin. Even brilliant rivals like the bluish xenon lamps measure below 4,000 degrees Kelvin, meaning they are yellowish. Blue lights improve contrast, make it easier for drivers to distinguish objects at night, and cut driver fatigue.
In the Audi R8’s front lamps, a complex array of diodes is arranged in front of curved reflectors in a pattern that Audi engineers liken to a pine cone. Another portion of the lamp takes inspiration from the shell-like roofs of the Sydney Opera House. The complex taillights comprise more than 50 L.E.D.’s with various functions. Even the engine compartment, a carbon fiber container for the dramatically presented R8 powerplant, is lighted by L.E.D.’s.
Headlights are the eyes of a car, of course. But now the eyes need not be round like eyes. They can be narrow slits or twists, like the Ford Explorer America concept.
At their most extreme, L.E.D.’s can be deployed as stars or bits of eye candy, sweet and irresistible. But they can also be deployed in tubular fashion, like raspberry frosting from a baker’s frosting bag. An example of using L.E.D.’s almost to draw is visible in the Mazda Taiki concept car, with headlights and taillights that bend and swoop to follow the body’s shape, or the Mazda Furai, where the headlights are onion shaped.
The arrival of halogen lighting inspired lamp designers to all sorts of creativity, from the Tizio lamp to the dramatic creations of Ingo Maurer, recently displayed in the Provoking Magic exhibit at the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. New technology for automotive lights is likely to spur a similar burst of creativity.
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THE steely blue beam of high intensity discharge headlights was once a way for luxury carmakers to distinguish their products after dark. But with the H.I.D. lights increasingly popular on midprice cars, luxury-level marketers need a new novelty.
The 2008 Lexus LS 600h L will pioneer one new direction as the first production automobile to use light-emitting diodes, or L.E.D.’s, as headlamps. It will rely on L.E.D.’s only for its low beams and daytime running lights. H.I.D. lamps will do the heavy lifting on high beam, partly because they work better with the sensors in the car’s collision-avoidance system.
As cars gradually abandon the descendants of Thomas Edison’s incandescent bulb and switch to L.E.D.’s, developing headlights that automatically adjust to driving conditions may become simpler.
“Headlights could adapt to speed, steering wheel input,” said Fred Peterson, engineering director for Osram Sylvania, which produces lamps for automakers. “All the information you have the vehicle collecting could be fed into L.E.D.’s.”
Mr. Peterson said that an L.E.D. headlight could use an array of about 25 high-powered diodes. In the same way that diodes can be switched on and off to create images on stadium scoreboards, the diodes in a headlight array could be dimmed, brightened or switched off to alter the beam pattern for driving at high speeds on dark highways, to accommodate snow, rain and fog, and for turning corners.
A few issues must be resolved before that happens. Mr. Peterson said that current high-powered L.E.D.’s drew more electricity and produced more heat than conventional lamps. L.E.D. headlight designers will have to rely on materials for lenses and reflectors that will not melt once darkness comes.
IAN AUSTEN
What Young designers dream of ?
THE design studies known as concept cars, which are staples at auto shows and often inspirations for the cars of tomorrow, are also test beds for new ideas. The newest designers in an automaker’s studio often have a hand in these — with ideas that spring from creative young minds to become dream-car matter.
Who, at the moment, are the young designers worth watching, the young people who may become the next Ralph Gilles (creator of the Chrysler 300) or Franz von Holzhausen (who designed the Pontiac Solstice before moving to Mazda)? In conversations with senior designers, auto executives and design school faculty members, a few names came up over and over.
Here is a look at some up-and-comers who played significant roles in creating concept vehicles being displayed at major auto shows this year, including some that will be featured at the New York auto show, which opens to the public on Friday, March 21:
BILL ZHENG
CHRYSLER
Even when he lived a half a world away, Bill Zheng, 30, seemed destined to become a designer for Chrysler. Mr. Zheng said he had been a fan of Jeeps since he was a child in Shanghai. Then, in the 1990s, after his family moved to Michigan, he was impressed by the “dynamite” concept cars and production models coming from Chrysler’s studios.
And Chrysler designers were involved in the industrial design program at the Cleveland Institute of Art in Ohio, where, in addition to car design, Mr. Zheng got experience in furniture and product design. He was hired by Chrysler upon his graduation in 2000 and is now design manager for small, premium and family vehicles.
The Dodge Zeo, a design study for a sporty electric car, sprang from a studio competition. “Bill’s design hit it out of the park with the first sketch,” said Joe Dehner, vice president for small, premium and family vehicles. “It was a side view with the doors open and it blew me away proportionally. At the end of the day, big wheels and tires, a long wheelbase and short overhangs still look good.”
The end result was an electric car that defies expectations. Mr. Zheng contended that electric vehicles will yet become as common as those powered by gasoline or diesel fuel, and that they deserved to have different design personalities. “So to say that electric cars should look like electric cars is a dated thing,” he said.
He did, however, want a hint of an electric vehicle identity. So, the conventional grille was abandoned in favor of a version illuminated by blue L.E.D.’s.
“The Zeo is basically a muscle car, but it’s not powered by a V-8,” Mr. Zheng said. “It’s quiet, but it goes superfast. The image of a green car is kind of timid. I’m very environmentally conscious, but I love sports cars.”
JENNIFER HEWLETT
FORD MOTOR COMPANY
As part of an image overhaul for Lincoln, the brand imagined its latest concept car, the MKT, as an example of guilt-free luxury, a seeming contradiction in terms. Jennifer Hewlett, 28, a color and materials designer, was tapped to come up with an appropriate interior.
At the College for Creative Studies in Detroit, Ms. Hewlett studied industrial design, fine arts and furniture building, gaining experience in working with wood, metal, fiber, ceramics and glass, and particularly in learning about how to relate such materials to one another. “It’s one of the crucial points of a vehicle, all these materials coming together and harmonizing,” she said.
Her previous work included color and materials for the 2009 MKS.
“When the new MKS was coming out we thought it would be a really good match for her because of her taste level, her sense of style, as well as her skills,” said Susan Sage, the color and materials design manager at Ford.
It was because of the success of those vehicles that Ms. Hewlett was chosen to be part of the team that designed the 2007 MKR concept car and now the MKT, Ms. Sage said.
Ms. Hewlett said that with the MKT, her design inspiration was a feather. She tried to bring the lightness, translucence and layering of a feather to the colors in the passenger cabin, while using earth-friendly materials, like a rug made with banana fibers.
The stained oak veneers come from recycled oak, already found in some other Lincolns. The MKT’s leather is made using an organic tanning method, free of harsh chromium additives.
Ms. Hewlett said she liked using these organic materials and processes because, “It’s something that makes our customers feel good about the products they are buying.”
BERNARD LEE
MAZDA
Furai is Japanese for “sound of the wind.” Streamers, kite tails and a sheet in the wind are images that Bernard Lee, 32, imagined when designing the Furai (pronounced FOO-rye) concept.
“I chose wind because a racecar is all about downforce, and aerodynamics are very key to its function,” he said. “So I wanted to see how materials can be manipulated by the wind and get the visual interpretation of that force of nature.
“If you look on the body side of the car, there are these really waving lines, and it’s supposed to mimic the way a sheet in the wind moves. At the beginning, it’s very graceful, and then as you get to the tail end of the sheet it becomes very turbulent and it flutters.”
Franz von Holzhausen, design director for Mazda North America, said Mr. Lee’s model had “a really nice balance of proportion, of sense of movement, of controlled chaos and quietness.”
After graduating from the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena in 1997, Mr. Lee spent three years at Honda and seven years at Ford. He joined Mazda a year ago and is a senior designer.
Though he had drawn cars since he was 5, Mr. Lee might have become a doctor like his father had his parents had their way. Instead, it was a sixth-grade teacher in Los Angeles, who had caught him drawing in class, who steered him on the road to design.
“I thought I was going to be in a lot of trouble,” he said. “But she took my drawing and said, ‘That’s pretty good.’ She told me her son was a car designer and that I could do this for a living. She showed me some of his drawings, and I was so blown away that someone could be so talented and draw cars for a living.
“Because of her,” he added, “I got to live out a childhood dream.”
GARY RAGLE
MITSUBISHI
It is as if Gary Ragle never had a choice but to be somehow involved with autos: he is the third generation in his family to work in the auto industry. His grandfather worked for British Leyland; his father for Ford.
Now Mr. Ragle, 29, is a senior designer for Mitsubushi Motors Research and Design of America in Cypress, Calif.
“I was always good at art and I always loved cars from Day 1,” he said. “My dad is a big hot-rod guy and some of my earliest memories were being crammed into the small front seat of a ‘34 Chevy coupe going to the hot-rod shows.”
But it wasn’t until Mr. Ragle attended the University of Cincinnati in his hometown and decided to go into industrial design that he found out people could make a living designing cars. When he graduated in 2002 he joined Mitsubishi.
Dave O’Connell, the studio’s chief designer, said: “Gary is very creative, innovative and very hard-working, and as an artist the guy does amazing art work. You look at the renderings that he does, even the loose sketches, and they really get you excited. And I’ve been a designer for 30 years.”
The assignment that became the Concept RA (which stands for “Road Alive”) was to design a vehicle that would showcase new technology, including a 4-cylinder turbodiesel engine and all-wheel drive.
His vision was selected after an internal design competition against about 30 others from Mitsubishi’s studios in Japan, Germany and California.
He said the Concept RA doesn’t look environmentally friendly, although the diesel was intended to provide good fuel economy and low emissions. “There are vehicles like the Prius out there that look environmentally friendly, but I think a sports car should look like a sports car,” he said.
MICHAEL THOMAS
GENERAL MOTORS
If someone says “automotive design,” what usually comes to mind is a vehicle’s exterior, not components like the steering wheel or radio. General Motors’ Michael Thomas, 30, admitted that he was no different.
“You don’t think of it that much, which is kind of ironic considering that’s what you interact with the most,” he said. Now, after working in component design — he is creative designer for G.M.’s Component Design Strategy Center — Mr. Thomas has a different perspective. He designed the steering wheel for the Cadillac CTS.
He attended the Cleveland Institute of Art and was initially interested in jewelry design, partly because of the influence of his parents, who were stained-glass artists.
Working at Ford, Bose and finally G.M., Mr. Thomas gained a growing understanding that parts of the interior can be a kind of jewelry that are important to a brand’s image and to an owner.
“For the CTS you really want to emphasize luxury and quality,” he said. “It becomes critical to iron out things like the fit and finish, craftsmanship and materials so that when the customer is handling it, it feels like luxury and it feels like quality.”
He likened the CTS wheel, with its leather and stitching, to a fine purse. “You say, ‘What makes the leather in a purse appear high-end, and how can we incorporate that into the design?’ ”
As a musician who plays professionally with his wife, he draws inspiration from instruments. “If you look at the details of a clarinet, something people have been using for centuries, that design has been so refined and executed so perfectly. That can be inspirational.”
MATT SPERLING
TOYOTA
The A-BAT, a four-wheel-drive hybrid pickup, is Toyota’s attempt to respond not just to compact trucks that are getting bigger and bigger, but to increasingly important environmental issues.
Matt Sperling, 28, of Toyota’s Calty design studio in Newport Beach, Calif., designed the A-BAT’s exterior. He said he could relate to those issues.
“I have a Tacoma myself and I love that thing to death, but sometimes it’s a little too big for me,” he said. “This was kind of my own personal response to that. If I could get my hands on this in real life I would use it every day.”
To make an environmental connection and link it to the Toyota hybrid family, Mr. Sperling gave the concept the trapezoidal silhouette of the Prius.
Mr. Sperling was hired in 2002 after studying at the College for Creative Studies, where his mother had enrolled him in a car-design course when he was a high school senior. Her reasoning: at school, he was always drawing cars instead of paying attention.
“It was the most brutal course I ever took,” he recalled, “but it got me introduced to the world of car design. I fell in love and that was it.”
Putting the box on wheels
THE box is back. The cube, the geometrical primitive that warms the hearts of Steve Jobs, Pablo Picasso and alumni of the Bauhaus, is influencing auto design. Mr. Jobs ordered up a cube shape for his Next Computer. His Apple Mac cube is in the Museum of Modern Art design collection, and he decreed a glass cube for the Apple store on Fifth Avenue.
And in the show “Home Delivery” at the Modern is a 9-foot-cube house designed by Richard Horden that contains a tiny kitchen, bathroom and living space. Its name, Micro Compact Home, recalls Micro Compact Car, the name originally applied to what became the Smart car.
Nissan will bring its Cube car to the United States next spring. The spy photographs suggest a model little changed in appearance from the current one. The boxy Cube stands out for its cuteness. The high ceiling is refreshing and cheering, like a small apartment with a cathedral ceiling in the living room.
While Scion backed off the rectilinear lines of its xB with the more chamfered second generation, released last year, Honda’s Element, the Fiat Fiorino Qubo and the bulldog boxy Mini remain popular. Ford has introduced the Flex crossover, which its chief designer, Rich Gresens, who is no longer at Ford, called “the most basic execution of the two-box vehicle.”
At an introduction for the Flex, Ford passed out a sheet bearing silhouettes of S.U.V.’s and minivans, challenging journalists to identify them. I gave up right away; point taken. “Silhouette definition,” J Mays, Ford design chief, called the process of making the Flex boxily different.
Ford’s Flex is an American take on the boxy vehicle, inspired by woody wagons, specifically the 1948 Ford woody, as well as by old Land Rovers. The theme is family travel, and Ford’s designers kept talking about the horizon. Anthony Prozzi, a Ford interior designer, talked about primal family trips toward that horizon, beach and vacation trips. “We thought of taking the whole family to the beach and looking at the quiet horizon — that was the overall inspiration for the interior.”
“The quiet horizon” symbolizes opportunity and excitement and adventure — the American frontier. A horizon line organizes the interior shapes. The horizon idea also shows up in the horizontal lines on the side of the Flex, evoking both the seams between planks in a woody and the parallel speed lines of the 1930s.
The box effect is heightened by blacked-out pillars that create a floating roof of optional white or silver in the manner of the Mini or two-tone cars of the 1950s.
“The Cube’s proportions are just about perfect,” said Bryan Thompson, a Nissan designer. The car is on the edge of appearing top heavy; perhaps only the BMW 2002 or Alfa Romeo Giulia pay such exacting and risky games with the proportion of the greenhouse.
Nissan sees the Cube as the car of the future. It emphasizes space more than speed. It is a car for going slow, said Shiro Nakamura, Nissan’s design chief. It is aimed to appeal to young people who see it as social space.
The Cube is the descendant of the emphatically boxy Nissan Chappo concept. The high interior of the Chappo and the Cube suggests they were inspired by Japanese domestic spaces; there is even a sliding shoji screen in its back.
“Unlike Europe, Japan has no tradition of the horse-drawn carriage that is so much at the basis of automobile coach building,” Mr. Nakamura said in an interview. Instead, Japanese cars have sometimes tended to look back to the sedan chair, the box and seat lifted to the shoulders of servants for transportation through the crowded streets of London or Tokyo.
Day VI – Cad Model
Was charged up – coz the car was taking its desired shape eventually….with fortunately all the surfaces knitting properly……it was a lucky day by all means…….
Things got really funny……….when boredom crept in…….and surfaces started deforming and distorting…. ORGANIC FORM…became a bit too much to handle !!!!
Day V – Cad Model
Finalised the front end scoop – and started the work on the rear end …
Day IV – Cad Model
the most difficult day of all…… nothing much happend…..just managed to get the wheel arc and the front end out of the mess …..well almost !
