Dutch designer Gijs Schalkx has retrofitted an old car to run on an unusual fuel source: waste plastic that is turned back into oil.

Schalkx's DIY project, titled The Plastic Car (Is Made of Metal), consists of an old red Volvo with a roof-mounted "de-refinery" that heats plastic to obtain oil for the fuel tank.

The project began as a follow-up to the Sloot Motor motorcycle that Schalkx made as part of his product design course at the ArtEZ University of the Arts, which runs on methane harvested from local bogs.

Schalkx, who is interested in DIY as a form of responsible design and living, wanted to build a car with a similarly original energy source and chose plastic because there was a ready supply to be found in his own household recycling.

He sourced an old car from a scrapyard in Germany, fixed it up to be road-legal and fitted his "de-refinery", which he says is quite similar to a "normal oil refinery", to the top.

Plastic is loaded into this reactor and burned in an oxygen-free environment to make it evaporate into gas. When the gas condenses again, it is in the form of oil, which then drips down through a tube into a fuel tank in the back of the car, ready for use.

Schalkx used only his own household recycling to power the car, which he drove for around half a year while making a video of the work, needing around one kilogram of plastic for every seven kilometres.

The de-refinery takes roughly one hour to produce 12 litres of oil. The designer calls the process "very inefficient", but that's part of the point.

Cars "will never be efficient" as a form of transport he says, and The Plastic Car is a way of "being honest" about that fact rather than covering it up.

"In comparison to an electric car, where you do not see the pollution because it's on the other side of the world, I tried to be very transparent, very honest," Schalkx said, referencing the outsized emissions involved in manufacturing an EV and its lithium-ion battery.

In fact, his ambition was to build a car "that looks really disgusting". As well as having the rickety-looking de-refinery strapped to its roof, the Plastic Car has an uneven paint job, wooden bumpers and Schalkx's website address scrawled on its side.

When it drives, it belches black smoke – not uncommon for an old diesel car but likely heightened by the plastic, even though the oil passes through three filters on the way to the engine.

Clear, undyed plastic produces a "nice, clear oil", Schalkx pointed out, while the oil from blue or black plastic is "really dirty".

"With old diesels, you can put whatever fuel you can find in there and they will run – so sunflower oil, used motor oil – and they did always smoke already," said Schalkx. "But if it drives on plastic, it is a bit worse."

Schalkx has had people get angry with him about his work – about the pollution, about the plastic being burnt rather than recycled. But he takes issue with current ideas about what constitutes "sustainable design", a term he sees being co-opted by companies to sell more products.

Instead, Schalkx focuses on repurposing what's already available and increasing reuse and repair by building up knowledge of how things work.

He also limited himself to using only his own household waste in the project and drove only as far as that would allow him – around 100 kilometres in a month. Compared to someone buying a new car and driving it, he says his environmental footprint was small.

"If you're a designer, you're making things, producing things, but we actually already have a surplus of things," said Schalkx. "So I don't think we can ever be really sustainable."

Another young designer who has aimed to keep old cars on the road is Australian student Alexander Burton, who invented a DIY electric car conversion kit that won a James Dyson Award.

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Car company Tesla has issued a recall of nearly all Cybertrucks sold to date, following reports of its accelerator pad becoming stuck at "full throttle".

The recall applies to 3,878 vehicles produced between 13 November and 4 April, when Tesla started utilising soap as a lubricant to aid assembly in an "unapproved change" to the manufacturing process, according to a report from the US National Highway Traffic Safety Association.

In at least two reported cases, residues of this lubricant caused the accelerator pad to detach from its pedal and become trapped in the car's interior trim, causing unwanted acceleration.

"It held the accelerator down 100 per cent at full throttle," one driver describes in a video that seems to demonstrate the issue.

This can "increase the risk of a collision" according to the NHTSA, although a fallback mechanism built into the car ensures that its break can override the accelerator and bring the car to a stop.

No reported crashes

So far, Tesla says it has not received any reports of accidents, injuries or deaths caused by the issue.

Cybertruck deliveries were temporarily paused at the beginning of April due to the fault but have now resumed with a new accelerator pedal.

Owners of the 3,878 Cybertrucks affected by the recall – which, according to TechCrunch, is nearly all of them sold to date – will have to bring their cars into a service centre for a free repair.

Tesla's Cybertruck has been marred in controversy since the concept was first unveiled in 2019, with critics decrying it as "ridiculous" and "dystopian".

Since deliveries started last December, some owners have also complained of rust and a lack of pinch sensors in the doors, which could lead to injuries.

At the end of last year, Tesla also had to issue a recall on most of its other vehicles due to problems with its Autopilot system, which have since been resolved via a software update.

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The latest edition of our weekly Dezeen Agenda newsletter features Italian brand Lamborghini's first rebrand in 20 years. Subscribe to Dezeen Agenda now.

Italian automaker Lamborghini revealed a rebrand as part of a broader "transformation process," featuring a flat, simplified logo.

The updated logo keeps the bull at the shield's centre, but now it's a simplified silhouette. They have also introduced a broader and thinner typeface.

This week's newsletter also featured the completion date of the Sagrada Familia, a spiral-shaped community centre in India by Mumbai-based architecture studio Sanjay Pur Architects and a residential tower in Seattle by architecture studio Hewitt.

Dezeen Agenda

Dezeen Agenda is a curated newsletter sent every Tuesday containing the most important news highlights from Dezeen. Read the latest edition of Dezeen Agenda or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday and features the hottest reader comments and most-debated stories, Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours and Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design. 

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Italian automaker Lamborghini has unveiled a rebrand featuring a flat, simplified logo as part of a broader "transformation process" aimed at sustainability and decarbonization.

The logo has the same set-up – a bull placed at the centre of a shield, but the detailing has been pared down into a silhouette, while a broader, thinner typeface was introduced.

"The new logo is redefined by a broader Lamborghini typeface than its predecessor and by colors that are minimal yet bold," said the company.

"The restyling is driven by a new strategy that involves adapting the brand's visual expressions to better reflect the 'brave', 'unexpected' and 'authentic' values of its mission."

The logo, which will be applied to future car models, will be displayed in the classic gold and black, but also feature more pared-down black and white schemas.

Along with a "new set of icons", the bull will be used across the company's digital platforms, separated for the first time from its shield.

"The iconic bull in the center of the logo has undergone a major change," said the company. "For the first time, it will exist individually on the company's digital touchpoints, separated from the classic shield to lend it even greater prominence."

A new typeface was also created as part of the rebrand which echoes "the unmistakable lines and angularity of the cars" and will be used across communications.

Images of the typeface show a lean, tall san-serif font with hooked curves.

The new logo and typeface will be used on all the company's official channels, according to the brand and is the first rebrand the company has undertaken in two decades.

It is part of a larger shift towards sustainability and decarbonisation, according to the company, summarized in its Direzione Cor Tauri plan.

The initiative, launched in 2021, outlines a plan to build the first fully electrified Lamborghini model by the "second half of the decade", with hybrid models created along the way.

According to the company, the original logo can be traced back to founder Ferruccio Lamborghini's penchant for bullfighting. The Miura bull, known for its aggressiveness, has been featured on the logo since the company's founding in the 1960s.

The rebrand joins several car companies shifting towards a flat, simplified logo in recent years, including Volvo in 2021 and Audi in 2022.

The images are courtesy Lamborghini.

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Promotion: Bentley's bespoke commissioning division, Mulliner, has unveiled its flagship SUV that aims to combine the performance of a supercar with the comfort of a limousine.

Designed to offer the "ultimate in comfort and space", the Bentayga Mulliner builds on the brand's focus on prestige, presence and personalisation.

The car aims to provide high levels of comfort while giving drivers full off-roading capabilities as well as supercar performance from its 4.0-litre, twin-turbocharged V8 engine.

"The launch of the Bentayga Extended Wheelbase Mulliner defines a new pinnacle for the Bentayga family and indeed the Bentley model range, adding a new level of modern craftsmanship to the already potent combination of supercar performance, go-anywhere ability, driving dynamics and limousine rear cabin of the Bentayga EWB," said Bentley.

Combined with the car's driving and handling performance – it can go from zero to 60 miles per hour in 4.5 seconds and has a top speed of 180 miles per hour – its extended wheelbase creates more internal cabin space than its luxury competitors.

Within the car, Mulliner has added a range of new design features and bespoke enhancements designed to "make every journey an occasion to be savoured".

The cabin interior is defined by a streamlined, high-gloss veneer, quilted upholstery, which envelops the seats and doors, and a diamond-milled, aluminium finish across the centre console.

These luxury finishes are complemented with high-tech additions including illuminated 3D treadplates and LED welcome lamps, which project visuals onto the floor.

The highly customisable interior can be fitted with either four or five seats that each benefit from Bentley's latest postural technology, which offers 22 ways of adjusting the seats to support the comfort and wellbeing of passengers.

The Bentley Airline Seats were informed directly by the experience of high-end flying. In Relax Mode, they can recline to nearly 40 degrees, while Business Mode moves the seat to an upright position that's more suitable for working.

In line with the brand's ethos, the interiors are personalisable with nearly 4,000 colour combinations. Buyers can choose from a selection of eight curated tri-tone colour combinations such as the warm-toned Flare or cool-toned Storm, or specify their own palette using any three colours.

These hues are designed to complement the soft, olive tan leather lines of the car's cabin. The leather is tanned using organic by-products from the olive oil industry, a technique that requires less water than the conventional tanning process. This keeps the leather free of harmful metals, minerals and aldehydes and seeks to encourage a healthier interior environment for users.

All the interior materials were carefully considered, with the cabin's thick, deep pile overmats made from a specially selected wool variety, chosen for its cleanliness and purity of colour, while the cabin carpet is made from 100 per cent recycled nylon.

With roots that can be traced back to 1760, before the birth of the motor car, Mulliner has worked with Bentley since 1923 creating everything from special features and finishes to entirely new coachbuilt vehicles.

The Bentayga Mulliner stands alongside the Flying Spur Mulliner, Continental GT Mulliner, and Continental GTC Mulliner – each the flagship of their respective model lineups.

To learn more about the car, visit Bentley's website.

Partnership content

This article was written by Dezeen as part of a partnership with Bentley. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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Prolific Italian car designer Marcello Gandini, credited with creating the first-ever supercar, has passed away at age 85.

Gandini designed a series of legendary sports cars including the Lancia Stratos, Ferrari GT4 and Lamborghini Countach, during his 14-year tenure at car design company Bertone.

Their distinctive wedge shape would become Gandini's signature and influence many of the experimental car designs of the 1970s and 80s.

His work for Lamborghini is most well-known, with his design for the 1966 Miura widely credited with inventing the sportscar segment.

Gandini was also responsible for creating some of the most seminal mass-market vehicles of the past 50 years, including the Citroën BX, Renault 5 Turbo and VW Polo.

The car designer never stopped working and passed away on Wednesday in Turin – Italy's automotive capital and Gandini's birthplace.

Many of Italy's most prominent car companies shared tributes to Gandini, with Lamborghini honouring the "indelible mark" he left on both car design and Ferrari design director Flavio Manzoni mourning the loss of a "great master".

"Gandini was not just a designer," Bertone wrote on Instagram. "He was a visionary, whose skill and creativity redefined the aesthetic standards of sports and luxury cars, influencing generations of designers and enthusiasts."

"His creations, true works of art on four wheels, have left an indelible mark in history and will continue to inspire and fascinate," he continued. "His unique vision and incomparable talent will forever remain milestones in the industry."

"The 20th-century equivalent of a renaissance artist"

Gandini, the son of an orchestra conductor, was born in Turin in 1938. Although his father encouraged him to become a pianist, Gandini started his career as an interior designer before pivoting to cars.

"Only when he got on board the Lamborghini Miura did he understand that I knew how to make other notes play: those of the engines," Gandini said in a speech at the Polytechnic of Turin shortly before his death.

Gandini joined Bertone in 1965 at age 27 and would remain at the company as chief designer until 1980.

During that time, he worked on a huge variety of designs for different automakers, among them some of the most popular sports cars of the time.

In a tribute on Instagram, car columnist Simon Kidston describes Gandini as "the 20th-century equivalent of a renaissance artist with enough iconic sports car masterpieces to his credit to fill a course on design".

 

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Hugh Pearman paid tribute to his Citroën BX on Instagram

But Gandini is equally remembered for his mass-produced cars such as the Citroën BX, which architecture writer Hugh Pearman describes as "a mass-market triumph".

"I loved my BX, had it for years," he wrote on social media.

After leaving Bertone, Gandini worked as an independent designer for companies including Toyota, Nissan and Toyota.

More recently, the designer dedicated his time to research and innovation, filing and selling a number of patents that aimed at making car manufacturing more efficient.

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Furniture company Cassina has partnered with Lancia to design a homely cabin for the automaker's Ypsilon model featuring "the first-ever table" in a car's cockpit and seats upholstered in lush blue velvet.

The Lancia Ypsilon Edizione Limitata Cassina is being released in a limited number of 1,906 fully electric vehicles as a tribute to the year Lancia was founded.

Its interior was designed to reference domestic spaces, incorporating recycled and recyclable materials in colours that reference Lancia's heritage.

Cassina CEO Luca Fuso told Dezeen the collaboration had been a "stimulating experience" that "allowed Cassina to transfer its expertise from the design to the automotive sector, creating a new approach with Lancia, strongly inspired by the comfort of home".

"Together, we have brought to life a car with an elegant and contemporary look, paying extreme attention to stylistic details, inside and out," he added.

The Ypsilon model incorporates several elements that Lancia and Cassina trialled in their Lancia Pu+Ra HPE concept car, including the unusual tavolino table.

Described by Cassina as "the first-ever table" in a car's cockpit, the small circular table extends out from the dashboard and is made from a bio-based plastic with saddle-leather upholstery.

It provides storage space for small items and incorporates induction technology so users can charge their phone simply by placing it on the surface.

Seats are covered with a soft blue velvet made from recycled yarn that also appears on the floor, door panels and dashboard, creating a cohesive feel within the cabin.

The upholstery features a ribbed "cannelloni" pattern and double stitching intended to evoke Cassina's modern furnishings.

The vehicle also incorporates new technologies to help drivers and passengers feel at home, including a virtual interface and infotainment system called SALA, which means living room in Italian but in this case is an acronym for Sound Air Light Augmentation.

SALA allows users to adapt the car's interior environment and mood by adjusting the audio, climate control and lighting functions at the touch of a button.

According to Lancia CEO Luca Napolitano, the partnership with Cassina brings together two historic Italian companies with a shared vision based on uniting research and innovation with respect for tradition.

"Lancia Ypsilon Edizione Limitata Cassina represents the ultimate expression of onboard comfort and design, featured by category-leading technology and connectivity yet always simple and intuitive, in perfect Lancia style," said Napolitano.

"This result was also achieved thanks to the collaboration with Cassina, that together with our Centro Stile in Turin designed a true living room, inspired by the welcoming Italian homes."

Cassina was founded in Meda, Italy, in 1927 and was added to the national heritage register of Italy's most prestigious manufacturing companies in 2022. Its collection includes furniture designs by Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec, Philippe Starck and Patricia Urquiola.

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American design studio Sized has arranged black cars around furniture for an exhibition in Los Angeles that aims to embody the city's "intrinsic" relationship with automobiles.

Part of a series of mobile exhibitions by Sized called Sized Selects, the show featured a series of cars displayed as "sculptures" in a Hollywood building that was once used as the headquarters of American business magnate Howard Hughes.

It is based around a collaboration between Sized founder Alexander May and American furniture company USM. May told Dezeen that the chrome used in USM's industrial-style modular furniture was the main material prompt for the greater exhibition.

"We wanted to bring the chrome of USM to life through the curation cars," he said.

"We selected black cars so you could just focus on the shape, as well as the chrome components of the car, connecting them with this classic USM element."

USM created a series of chrome-and-glass shelving units displayed in the entryway and collaborated with Canadian designer Willo Perron on a long table in the same style with small, wheeled chairs.

The long table was flanked on either side by more cars, arranged along the walls of a long passageway inside the building, which has been stripped down to its concrete foundations.

"[The exhibition] is a conceptual exploration of the city's intrinsic and storied relationship with motor vehicles and the significance of their sculptural and material interconnectedness," said the Sized team.

"It is a celebration of collaborative culture, automotive ingenuity, and the power of black."

Automobiles in the exhibition were curated in partnership with engineering consultancy Damon Jones, and several dealerships and private individuals were called upon to lend their cars for the show.

At the front of the line of vehicles was a 1993 Vector, a rare vehicle produced in the United States. The low-lying sportscar belonged to Vector chief designer Gerald Wiegert.

Also on show was a 1982 Rolls-Royce Corniche Convertible and a 1993 Mercedes 500SEC AMG commissioned by American basketball player Shaquille O'Neal.

"The black, chrome and glass palette, an intentional extraction of color, allows shape, line, and frame to emerge in sharp relief, elevating form to a value on par with power and precision that defines automotive design excellence," said the Sized team.

May said he wanted to showcase the design alongside the vehicles to show the "sculptural" quality of the cars.

"It's a meditation on the shape and materiality of the vehicles," he said.

The show is an exercise in unifying different aspects of the design world that are not often showcased simultaneously.

"It pushes the boundaries, putting these things in the same room together," said May.

"Because, at the end of the day, people are living with all these things together but not experiencing that in shows."

Sized Selects is a quarterly showcase put on by May, who opened a brick-and-mortar location for his creative studio in 2022.

Other design exhibitions that featured automobiles include a show in Bilbao where British architect Norman Foster showcased several of his own classic cars.

The photography is by Carter Williams unless otherwise stated.

Sized Selects Los Angeles is on show from 27 February to 3 March in Hollywood. For more events, exhibitions and talks in architecture and design visit the Dezeen Events Guide. 

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Designer Job Smeets has collaborated with Firmship – the yacht brand of former Moooi CEO Casper Vissers – to create a limited-edition Land Rover Defender defined by the same stark minimalism and historic references as its ships.

Made in a limited run of 25, the SUV has a stripped-back monochrome look both inside and out.

Its exterior is finished in Firmship's signature colour RAL 7035 – a light grey that was selected for its versatility and timelessness.

According to Firmships, it is the perfect neutral with no cool or warm overtones so it can complement a wide range of colours and materials including wood, metals, concrete and glass.

To emphasise durability, Firmship has sprayed the car with a lacquer that it says is the strongest and toughest metal lacquer available in the world, used in bulldozers and public phone boxes in the US.

"It gives the Defender a tactile surface texture," the company said. "If you touch the Firmship Defender, you feel something strong but silent."

Firmship was founded by Vissers to build luxury vessels that nod to classic boats. Its latest model, the Firmship 55, references the forms and detailing of an archetypal workboat like a fishing boat.

To promote the brand, the company is "firmshipping" products from other brands, which it feels share the same design philosophy.

This involves reimagining the products in the same style as Firmship's boats, starting with the Land Rover Defender.

"The brand stands for longevity and adopts revised iconic archetypes with today's newest technology," said Vissers.

"We are a start-up and new in the business, so to express this philosophy we believe we should connect to other 'firm' brands who have already built an iconic design, like the Defender."

The Dutch entrepreneur defines "firm" brands as ones that outlast trends and says he admires the Defender, which was launched in 1948, as one of the best examples of such an object.

The Jaguar Land Rover brand was not initially involved in the customisation; Vissers' team simply bought a Defender and "firmshipped" it on their own initiative.

But Visser says that Jaguar Landrover BeNeLux CEO Marc Bienemann ended up liking the result and now it can be ordered through participating dealerships.

Aside from the paint finish, Firmship's eye towards the past is reflected in the British Heritage rims of the Land Rover, a revised version of the car's original wheels.

Its interior, meanwhile, was designed to be completely harmonious with the outside, with leather and fabric seats that feature horizontal ribbing in a nod to early Defenders.

Smeets said that while he might not be known for restraint in his more provocative work with Studio Job, minimalism is "simply like using another palette".

"Whether I am working for Hermès, Swarovski or Firmship, I adjust the lens through which I'm looking," said Smeets. "It still has the Job vision on its clever details or bold appearance but this time it's with texture, stark blankness and boldness in its monochrome."

Smeets has been working with Firmship since Vissers commissioned its first boat design, the Firmship 42, for his personal use in 2010. Vissers had intended to commercialise the boat design but said his plans were put on hold by the financial crisis.

To Smeets, "Firmship is really about friendship" because it allowed him to help Vissers "realise a dream".

"Studio Job will always be my biggest creative challenge because it's so complex and it wants to renew constantly," he said. "Studio Job is my art. Firmship feels like cruising along, floating. Enjoying."

Vissers' other projects since Moooi include the furniture and lighting brand Revised.

Studio Job's recent work has included a dystopia window installation for fashion brand Hermès and a lava lamp inspired by actual lava.

The studio also has experience customising Land Rover Defenders, having created a more colourful version in 2013 that was designed to resemble "a Popemobile for an African chief".

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The latest edition of our Dezeen Debate newsletter features the Polestar 4 electric car, which doesn't have a rear window. Subscribe to Dezeen Debate now.

Swedish car manufacturer Polestar has revealed the Polestar 4, the world's first mass-market car without a rear window. The vehicle is a five-door electric SUV coupé that is now available to buy in Europe and Australia, following its release in China last year.

Readers had varied reactions to the vehicle. One joked about its rear-windowless design, saying, "there's no looking back from here," while another praised its "forward-looking design".

Other stories in this week's newsletter that fired up the comments section included the latest Maggie's Centre designed by Studio Libeskind, an infinity pool in Lake Como by Herzog & de Meuron and Zaha Hadid Architects' plans for 100 hydrogen refuelling stations in Italian marinas.

Dezeen Debate

Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday and features a selection of the best reader comments and most talked-about stories. Read the latest edition of Dezeen Debate or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Agenda is sent every Tuesday containing a selection of the most important news highlights from the week, Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours and Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design.

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Swedish automaker Polestar has begun taking orders for the Polestar 4 – the world's first mass-market car to have no rear window.

The Polestar 4 is a five-door electric SUV coupé that has now gone on sale in Europe and Australia following on from its Chinese launch last year.

The omitted rear window is a design feature adapted from the brand's 2020 Polestar Precept concept vehicle and was made possible by technological advances that mean a roof-mounted rear camera now provides a more reliable picture than a rear-view mirror in a coupé.

"Normally, you need to provide for a good rear view with the inner rear-view mirror," said Polestar's head of design Maximilian Missoni.

"We have realised that the technology has reached a point where you can switch out the physical mirror with a digital display and an HD camera."

Eliminating the rear window opened up a number of design opportunities, according to Missoni.

It allowed Polestar to create a particularly smooth roof line on the exterior of the car and stretch the glass roof beyond the occupants' heads while making room for "extremely spacious" reclining rear seats on the interior.

Polestar says this allows for "a new kind of immersive rear occupant experience" where passengers are "cocooned" away from the world and able to take calls, enjoy the entertainment system or bask in ambient lighting with settings inspired by the planets of the solar system.

There is still a rear-view mirror that the driver can use to view the rear passengers, they just need to deactivate the real-time feed from the camera.

Polestar is positioning its fourth vehicle in between the Polestar 2 and Polestar 3 in terms of size and price, and says it is the company's fastest production car, capable of accelerating from 1 to 100 kilometres per hour in 3.8 seconds.

Another feature implemented from the Polestar Precept concept car is the "dual blade" design of the front lights, a new signature for the brand.

In the interior, Polestar has based the design around the theme of "soft tech" and looked to fashion and sportswear as inspiration.

A newly developed 3D knit textile made of recycled PET covers the dashboard, created together with the Swedish School of Textiles and meant to minimise waste. Alternatively, the dashboard can be customised in traced leather.

In other areas of the interior, the company says it has started to implement a mono-material approach to make recycling easier.

The sustainable initiatives are in line with Polestar's efforts to produce a climate-neutral car, which it aims to do by 2030 but has admitted is a "moonshot goal".

The company says the Polestar 4 is its lowest-carbon car to date, with a cradle-to-gate footprint of 19.9 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalent (CO2e) for the single-motor model.

A comparable petrol car would still generate slightly lower emissions up until leaving the factory gate, according to Polestar's own modelling.

But Polestar's production-related emissions are on a downward trend as it has started using low-carbon aluminium from a factory run on hydroelectricity and getting part of its energy from solar panels on the roof of the Geely factory in Hangzhou Bay, where the Polestar 4 is manufactured.

The vehicle is available in two variants: one with a single motor and one with a dual motor. In the latter version, two independent motors control the front and rear wheels for enhanced power and traction.

Both variants have a 100 kilowatt-hour battery, giving a range target of between 580 to 610 kilometres.

Other cars with a camera instead of a rear window include the Aston Martin DBS GT Zagato and Ferrari 812 Competizione, but neither of these is a mass market car.

Production on cars for Europe, the UK and Australia is planned to start in mid-2024 with deliveries being made from August. The first deliveries of Chinese orders were made at the end of 2023.

Polestar is a subsidiary of car brands Volvo and Geely and a competitor to Tesla. Its most recent concept car was the O2 roadster, which comes with its own personal drone.

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As Tesla rolls out deliveries of its controversial Cybertruck, this Dezeen video shares a look inside the electric pickup and showcases some of its unique features, including the hexagonal steering wheel and retractable truck bed cover.

The release of the car has been hotly anticipated since Tesla founder Elon Musk unveiled the concept in 2019, leaving commentators divided about whether its unconventional angular design is "courageous" or "ridiculous".

 

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Dezeen has produced a video showcasing Tesla's new Cybertruck 

Now, the five-seater is finally being delivered to the first buyers, although at a 50 per cent markup from what was originally promised five years ago.

Musk claims the Cybertruck combines a sports car's acceleration with off-road driving skills, making it a "better truck than a truck, while also being a better sports car than a sports car".

A new video produced by Dezeen demonstrates the suspension on the vehicle's all-terrain tyres being raised for cross-country driving, as well as showing its hexagonal steering wheel, reminiscent of that of a racing car.

The car's six-by-four-foot trunk bed is concealed behind an electric tonneau cover and tailgate, which can be seen opening at the touch of a button.

Instead of separate headlights, the Cybertruck features a long "light bar" at the front that can illuminate up to 480 metres ahead.

The car's chunky body is formed from angular panels of stainless steel that were left unpainted, with a panel of panoramic glass for a roof.

Both the body and the glass are reportedly bulletproof against nine-millimetre cartridges leading James McLachlan, editor of Car Design News, to compare it to a "mobile fortress".

"The Cybertruck encapsulates a dystopian future vision where the United States is sliding into lawlessness," he wrote in a recent opinion piece for Dezeen.

Cybertruck provided by VoyageATX, footage and edit by Sonia Singh.

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Former Ferrari-designer Lowie Vermeersch has created a new type of micro vehicle intended to push traditional cars off the road. In this interview, he discusses new start-up Komma and his vision for the future of mobility.

"I always say, moving an 80-kilo person with 2.5 tonnes of material is not something we should consider as the best we can do, especially in an urban environment," said Vermeersch.

The Granstudio founder has previously overseen the design of the Ferrari FF and 458 Italia while design director at Pininfarina and led work on the Maserati Birdcage 75th concept car.

His latest project – Komma, invented together with Punkt founder and CEO Petter Neby – has a much smaller footprint. A covered, electric two-seater vehicle with car-like seats but a narrow width like a motorcycle, it is designed to take up less space on the roads and use less material to manufacture.

"Just making cars electric is not fully answering what is needed," Vermeersch told Dezeen. "We also need to be looking at how we can use less resources."

Neby and Vermeersch intend to do more with Komma than only manufacture vehicles, however; they plan to use the company to advocate for a shift in mobility away from the car and towards other, diverse modes of transport.

They hope that Komma can influence urban design in the 21st century in a similar way to how cars shaped cities in the 20th century, this time not with highways and suburbs but features that promote sustainability and wellbeing.

Startup seeks to "ignite a change in urban mobility"

Komma began life in late 2019, after Neby approached Vermeersch with "a need that he had lived himself, for a type of vehicle that he felt was missing", Vermeersch said.

The design and development were handled by Vermeersch's team at Granstudio, the transport-focused design studio he founded in 2010, while entrepreneur Neby brought experience in minimalist electronics from his company Punkt, whose devices include a dumbphone designed by Jasper Morrison.

The Komma car – which comes in two models, one fully closed and one open at the sides – is designed to carry one or two people as well as a small amount of cargo, such as shopping, on trips around the city or suburbs.

The company claims the vehicle covers 90 per cent of car-use needs while requiring only 30 per cent of the material resources and energy, and that it can bring pleasure back to the daily drive.

The narrow maximum width of 90 centimetres is, says Vermeersch, particularly key to the transformative potential of the vehicle.

"We always looked at: what will be the consequence if you have mass adoption of this kind of vehicle, and is that consequence positive?" said the designer.

"That's why we worked so hard on making a vehicle that is only half of a car width – which is narrower than a motorcycle – because only then can you ignite a change in urban mobility."

"At a certain point, a city could decide to just paint one extra line in the middle of the street that could become dedicated to such kinds of vehicles," he argued. "Whereas most of the microcar offerings, which are wider, do not have that potential because they need to behave like cars and need to move together with cars."

Push for change in mobility about being "true to what in essence cars stood for"

Vermeersch and Neby plan to be active in shaping the future of mobility through Komma. They see vehicle design and urban design as feeding into each other, and believe that if a new, nimble vehicle archetype emerges, it could enable cities to gradually reduce the road space and parking given to cars and allocate more room to pedestrians and community activities.

Vermeersch says the company will try to partner with local governments and infrastructure and mobility companies to develop pilot projects in this space, claiming the Komma is a good fit for car share schemes, taxi services and private ownership alike.

While it may seem like blasphemy for a car-lover to actively pursue a reduction in their manufacture and use, Vermeersch contends that his position is about honouring the idea behind the invention rather than being "stuck to the object" itself.

"If you want to be true to what in essence cars stood for, they stood for a sort of individual freedom of mobility," he said. "And I think everybody would agree that a car being stuck in a traffic jam is not living up to that."

Future vision for transport needs to have "human pleasure at its heart"

Vermeersch insists he is not anti-cars. He believes they will, and should, continue to play a role in the transport ecosystem, albeit a reduced one.

"For me, the future of cars is as part of a more diverse mobility spectrum, whereas until now, the car has been rather dominating the spectrum," he said. "The problems that we have with cars are not so much in the car itself but how we use it and where we use it."

"I think the car will still be in the future the best and most ecological solution for many, many uses," he continued. "And with 'car', I mean a kind of improved future car, so electric is definitely one step of it. I'd also like to see cars developing more lightness."

Vermeersch is also keen to shift the discourse away from being either "for or against" cars, which he sees as feeding into a culture war where freedom is pitched in opposition to over-consumption.

"The search for a better way of living is not helped if we take these absolute positions," said Vermeersch. "It's as if the car is the origin for all the bad things that's going on. That's not true."

Rather, he thinks we should see the move away from cars in cities as a "positive story" of the evolution of mobility.

"For me, in that picture of a more diverse mobility spectrum there's also place for having the cars that you really have fun with," he said. "And maybe it's not the car you own; maybe it's the car that you use on the weekend or share."

"Any scenario that we think about the future, if it will not have human pleasure at its heart, it's destined to fail. I think that's the part that keeps me connected to what people are passionate about with cars."

Designers must "look beyond the archetype of cars"

Komma hopes to release its vehicle by the end of 2025 targeting Europe as well as the USA and Canada as its first markets.

It will have a top speed of 130 kilometres per hour, equivalent to some of Europe's highest road-speed limits, and include car-like active safety features such as anti-lock brakes, airbags and anti-collision controls.

For the battery, there will be the option of either a single 7.5 kilowatt-hour or twin 15 kilowatt-hour module – both much smaller than in a standard-sized electric car but giving an expected range of up to 200 kilometres, similar to an electric Mini Cooper.

Vermeersch says that Granstudio designed the vehicle from the ground up to take advantage of the "geometric freedom" offered by electric drivetrains, which allow the engine to be virtually hidden inside the wheel rather than shaping the layout of the vehicle.

To add the desired element of pleasurability to the driving experience, there is torque vectoring on the wheels for improved grip, and the semi-open version of Komma has been given motorcycle-like handling, with a handlebar for steering and a tilt mechanism on the wheels.

"Knowing so well how cars are made also allows you to see new opportunities when new technologies come," said Vermeersch. "I think what is needed is more people looking into solutions who are, on one hand, broad-minded enough to look beyond the archetype of cars, but on the other hand, have enough knowledge of them to also understand how you can do that."

"There's fantastic things happening within the car business, and there's fantastic ideas about mobility at the broader scale, the urban scale, but they have a hard time overlapping," he continued. "Komma and also Granstudio for me is really about that."

The photography and images are courtesy of Komma.

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Elon Musk's bulletproof Cybertruck represents a dystopian vision of America but exactly who it's intended for remains unclear, writes James McLachlan.

Outside of politics, few figures are as polarising in American life as Elon Musk. A hero to some owing to his perceived willingness to challenge progressive orthodoxies, for others he represents the worst of ego-driven toxic masculinity. Musk's latest venture, the gargantuan electric Cybertruck, is almost as polarising as the man himself.

The Cybertruck has been with us for a while now. When it launched in late 2019, some designers welcomed its stealth-bomber architecture, chiefly because the sharp angles punctured the soft, jelly-mould forms that dominate contemporary automotive design. Others likened it to a rebooted version of Giugiaro's origami form language, minus the depth or sophistication. Nevertheless, Musk, via his designer Franz von Holzhausen, had shaken things up.

The Cybertruck retains its killer-droid aesthetic – grim, impassive mask slashed by a single blade of light

At that point it was a concept car, where designers stretch the boundaries as far as they dare without being burdened by the feasibility of their thought experiments. In that context, the Cybertruck was just another provocation.

But Musk claimed his Pythagorean beast would make it to production. What's more, he claimed 250,000 customers had already signed up for one. All but the most ardent Elon fanboys were sceptical.

Then came the Covid-19 pandemic, which precipitated a global shortage of computer chips. The industry ground to a halt and few believed a production version of the Cybertruck would see the light of day.

But here it is and from a design perspective, remarkably little has changed. From the front, the Cybertruck retains its killer-droid aesthetic – grim, impassive mask slashed by a single blade of light. The windshield is greenhouse levels of big, served by a necessary, but nevertheless comically large single wiper.

The lighting signature repeats itself on a boxy rear that lacks definition. Other angles are more favourable – the folded body panels, unpainted 1.8-millimetre-thick cold-rolled stainless steel, are bent along straight lines rather than elaborate curves, creating dynamic angles. These pieces are simply bolted on to a two-piece subframe created by Tesla's vaunted Giga Press casting machine.

Virtually indestructible, these strong lines have saved Musk a small fortune in manufacturing costs. The truck is retailing at $60,000 for a base model, and though that is 10 grand more than first announced, it is still competitive. This understanding of the importance of design and manufacturing working together is Musk's genius.

But who is the Cybertruck for, exactly? Is it a lifestyle truck aimed at libertarian tech bros? A radical alternative to working vehicles from legacy automakers?

The ethical sheen that came with Tesla ownership has patinated

It is worth charting how we arrived at this point. In making electric cars that actually worked with Tesla, Musk was rewarded by Californian consumers who viewed themselves as more enlightened than those clinging to their gas-guzzling SUVs. Among the first customers was California design royalty Yves Behar, who owned an early Tesla prototype.

Tesla was the green face of car ownership, to the extent that some owners found themselves at the sharp end of a culture war in which climate-sceptic truck drivers would blast black soot all over their shiny paintwork: "rolling coal".

Perhaps these are the consumers that Musk is now courting with his self-declared war on progressive culture. Either way, the ethical sheen that came with Tesla ownership has patinated. Enterprising souls are selling bumper stickers disowning Musk (though not his car) to those who want the world to know they are still the good guys.

When the car world emerged from self-enforced isolation in 2022, it brought with it a hatful of concepts that tapped into ideas of escape. Audi and Lamborghini revealed jacked-up off-roaders, which evoked a desire to flee the cities in search of rural isolation and safety. The Cybertruck goes further, encapsulating a dystopian future vision where the United States is sliding into lawlessness.

For some, the unrest following the murder of George Floyd, which saw city centres across the US incinerated, confirmed Musk's bleak outlook. A mobile fortress complete with bulletproof glass and frightening levels of power was the logical defence.

Musk appeared on the Joe Rogan show, talking up the Cybertruck's "beast" mode. Precisely what this beast mode entailed was unclear, but footage emerged of Rogan firing an arrow at the window like a roided-up Robin Hood.

It could be that Musk has changed the game once again

With PR like this, it is hard to imagine a progressive Californian wanting to own one. But what about the prospect of stealing customers from the legacy brands like Ford and General Motors? Because when it really comes down to it, for truck owners capability is what counts. The most obvious rival is the tradcore Ford F-150 – the best-selling truck in the US and itself a colossus. Or the new Hummer, reinvented as an electric vehicle (EV) for eco-conscious fans of military-derived hardware.

Ford's flagship electric truck has a huge and versatile loading bay, a front trunk where the engine used to be, and can power your house should there be a power cut. So too, does the Cybertruck, but footage of the new pretender, wheels scabbling fruitlessly for traction on earthy terrain, has been shared gleefully across the internet.

Musk has been remarkably good at retaining a dedicated band of haters, so how true a picture this kind of footage paints of the Cybertruck's abilities is hard to say, but reviews from road-testers have been very favourable so far. It could be that Musk has changed the game once again, as he did with Tesla.

And then there is the climate question. The Cybertruck may be an EV, but given the sheer size of the thing it is hard to defend its eco-credentials. A car enthusiast, Joe Biden's vision for a decarbonised America partly focused on wholesale transition to battery power. Tax breaks to EV buyers reflected this, but also rigged the market.

What this mostly means in practice is electrified versions of existing products, which take a heavy toll on the planet. The Ford F-150 battery weighs the same as a Volkswagen Beetle. The Cybertruck is even heavier.

For years, the larger-than-life American boxing promoter Don King had a catchphrase that he rolled out when hyping up his latest show: "Only in America!" he would bellow. King understood better than most that in American society, relentless self-promotion is often enough to carry you through, regardless of substance.

But King also knew his audience better than anyone. We are about to find out how well Musk knows his.

James McLachlan is the editor of Car Design News. He is also a former editor of Icon and writer for Architects' Journal.

The photo is courtesy of Tesla Inc.

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Next in our review of 2023 we round up 10 eye-catching car designs featured on Dezeen this year, including Tesla's Cybertruck, a muscular SUV by Rezvani Motors and David Beckham's designs for a pair of Maserati cars.

Electric vehicles and designs integrating digital technology dominate this year's list, which also saw BMW reveal their prototype for a colour-changing sedan and an Australian student invent an affordable kit to convert vehicles to hybrid electric powertrains.

Here are Dezeen's top 10 car designs of 2023:

David Beckham sports cars for Maserati

While perhaps not the most groundbreaking car design of the year, this celebrity-brand collaboration was one of the most popular vehicle-related stories on Dezeen in 2023.

British ex-footballer David Beckham designed a pair of luxury sports cars for Italian brand Maserati to promote their customisation program Fuoriserie Essentials, which will allow customers to personalise their Maserati vehicles.

According to the brand, the cars were informed by Beckham's own "Savile Row sartorial wardrobe" and historic Maserati designs, including the 1986 Maserati Quattroporte Royale and 1967 Maserati Ghibli coupé.

Find out more about David Beckham's Maserati designs ›

Vengeance by Rezvani Motors

California automotive company Rezvani Motors launched a muscular SUV designed by video games designer Milen Ivanov, aiming to put a car informed by science fiction onto people's driveways.

Dubbed the "world's most aggressive SUV" at 6,200 pounds (2,812-kilograms), the eight-passenger car integrates security features such as pepper-spray-emitting wing mirrors, electrified door handles and electromagnetic-pulse protection.

Find out more about Rezvani Motors' Vengeance ›

Electric-car conversion kit by Alexander Burton 

An Australian design student developed a prototype kit to convert petrol and diesel cars to hybrid electric, aiming to create a more affordable and user-friendly alternative to current conversion services.

The REVR (Rapid Electric Vehicle Retrofits kit) uses a compact axial flux motor, battery and controller system to circumvent the usual conversion process of removing the combustion engine. Melbourne-based student Alexander Burton won the James Dyson Award for his invention.

Find out more about REVR ›

Cybertruck by Tesla

Tesla's much-anticipated Cybertruck was officially launched at the end of November following its first reveal in 2019 and subsequent delays in production.

The polarising bulletproof electric car was designed to combine the handling of a sports car with the utility of a pickup truck, and is defined by a distinctly angular, stainless-steel panelled exterior.

Find out more about Cybertruck ›

Iris van Herpen's Rolls-Royce Phantom Syntopia

In collaboration with Dutch designer Iris van Herpen, British company Rolls-Royce revealed its Phantom Syntopia, a shimmering car modelled on the brand's customisable line of Phantom vehicles.

According to Rolls-Royce, the car is the most technically complex Phantom ever produced and integrates shapes and patterns found in nature, informed by Van Herpen's interest in biomimicry.

Find out more about Phantom Syntopia ›

i Vision Dee concept car by BMW

BMW revealed an updated version of its colour-changing technology with the i Vision Dee concept car, which is capable of complete colour and pattern customisation across the vehicle's exterior.

Designed to enhance the bond between vehicle and user through digitisation, the i Vision Dee's shell is finished with an e-ink film that can produce 32 on-demand colours across 240 unique and controllable segments.

Find out more about i Vision Dee ›

Sony's electric-car prototype

Electronics company Sony and carmaker Honda launched an entertainment-focused electric car prototype under their joint car-brand venture, Afeela.

Projected to go on sale in 2025, the all-wheel drive sedan prioritises interaction with a "media bar" display screen, customisable surround sound and interfaces by Epic Games fitted to the interior and exterior of the car.

Find out more about the Afeela prototype ›

Armada Model Zero by Alef Aeronautics

The Armada Model Zero is a prototype flying electric car by California-based company Alef Aeronautics that was awarded an airworthiness certificate by the US Federal Aviation Administration this year and is expected to begin production and delivery at the end of 2025.

The mesh exterior was designed to hide a system of eight rotors, which allow the vehicle to take off and land vertically like a drone.

Find out more about Armada Model Zero ›

Luvly O flat-pack electric car by Luvly

Stockholm-based startup Luvly revealed its Luvly O electric car designed by Joachim Nordwall, aiming to trigger a shift away from oversized vehicles in urban spaces.

Weighing just under 400 kilograms, Luvly set out to create a modular vehicle that can be shipped flat-pack to discrete assembly locations, and offers a more energy efficient, cheaper-to-run alternative to other electric cars through its lightweight configuration.

Find out more about Luvly O ›

Telo electric pickup truck by Yves Behar

Swiss designer Yves Behar designed a prototype electric pickup truck, Telo, with a full-size cargo bed and passenger cabin that fits within the size of a small city car.

Working with his design studio Fuseproject, Behar took advantage of the space that electric technology allows for in vehicle design to create a flexible layout for urban and suburban adventures.

Find out more about Telo ›

2023 review

This article is part of Dezeen's roundup of the biggest and best news and projects in architecture, design, interior design and technology from 2023.

The post Dezeen's top 10 car designs of 2023 appeared first on Dezeen.

Tesla's long-awaited Cybertruck has been officially unveiled and is now appearing in showrooms across the USA, including being spotted in the Miami Design District during Miami art week.

Officially launched at a delivery event at the end of last month, deliveries of the Cybertruck began last week and it is now appearing in Tesla showrooms.

Dezeen editor Tom Ravenscroft spotted the bulletproof electric car in Tesla's Miami showroom during a tour of the Miami Design District as part of Miami art week.

First revealed back in 2019, the Cybertruck has gained global attention due to its distinctive, angular shape and cold-rolled stainless-steel exterior.

The electric car was initially planned to go into production in 2022, but after being delayed several times, it has now been officially launched.

Designed to combine the speed and handling of a sports car with the utility of a pickup truck, the top-spec version of the Cybertruck has a range of 320 miles, can accelerate from 0-60 miles per hour in 2.6 seconds and has a top speed of 130 miles per hour. The car, which weighs 3,104 kilograms, can carry loads up to 2,500 kilograms and has a 4,990-kilogram towing capacity.

Tesla has now revealed the car's full specifications, along with details of two lower-spec versions of the car that will be released in 2024 and 2025.

Another all-wheel drive model will have a slightly higher range of 340 miles, but a reduced top speed of 112 miles per hour and acceleration of 0-60 miles per hour in 4.1 seconds.

A rear-wheel drive option, set to be launched in 2025, will have a range of 250 miles and acceleration of 0-60 miles per hour in 6.5 seconds.

All three versions of the Cybertruck will be wrapped in the car's distinctive exterior, which was designed to be bulletproof. Along with the stainless-steel panels, the car has shatter-resistant amour glass. It also features an all-glass roof.

A lightbar stretches across the front of the car, as well as on the tailgate.

Tesla also revealed several add-ons for the vehicle, including a range extender that can be fitted to give the car a range of 470 miles and a pop-up inflatable tent that fits onto the truck bed.

Since the car was first released, the Cybertruck has divided opinion, with some people calling it "courageous" and others "ridiculous". In an opinion piece for Dezeen, Elizabeth Bisley said that the car "represents a highly conservative continuation of the status quo".

The photography is by Tom Ravenscroft.

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Chinese car manufacturer Nio has launched Blue Sky Lab, its own sustainable fashion brand, which has been shortlisted for a 2023 Dezeen Award.

Blue Sky Lab creates garments and accessories using materials left over from the car manufacturing process including seat belts, airbags and other car-grade fabrics to demonstrate how waste can be "creatively repurposed".

Nio claims the label is "the world's first sustainable fashion brand launched by an automotive company and brought to mass production".

Blue Sky Lab made its debut in 2021 at the Shanghai Auto Show and has since reused nearly 55,000 metres of waste fabric.

These car-grade surplus materials can help to create new high-performance products, according to the brand.

"Blue Sky Lab enjoys an innate advantage by adopting auto-grade materials in its fashion products as these materials outperform their consumer-grade counterparts to a large extent," the brand said.

"We think more about improving our products rather than blindly catering to the external environment. For example, the recycled materials from the airbags are light and durable with high strength, a perfect fit for lightweight fashion items."

The materials are simply sterilised and repurposed into a variety of products in line with the brand's minimal futuristic aesthetic.

"Regarding environmental protection, most visual communication tends to adopt nature and green elements," the company said.

"However, rather than being confined by such a monotonous style, we have chosen to find inspirations from our DNA and business areas including innovative technologies, manufacturing and industrialization, and lifestyle in carrying out product design."

"Blue Sky Lab has joined with global design talent including Nio's designers, Japanese architect Shuhei Aoyama, French leather goods designer Vincent du SARTEL, Finnish designer Rolf Ekroth, NIO user designers and designers from Parsons School of Design, Li-Ning and Allbirds," the brand added.

The brand told Dezeen it has mass-produced over a hundred different fashion items since its inception alongside tables, stools and lighting fixtures.

The brand also partnered with an independent product testing and certification agency to calculate the carbon footprint of its bestselling products.

"Compared with their counterparts made of traditional raw materials, their footprint per unit is 18 to 58 per cent less," the brand said.

Blue Sky Lab has been shortlisted in the sustainable consumer design category of this year's Dezeen Awards.

Here, the brand is competing against the world's "first refillable" edge styler and soap-in-a-can brand Kankan.

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The electrification of vehicles is changing the philosophy of how cars are designed, according to a panel of automotive industry experts during a talk hosted by Dezeen and Bentley.

The talk brought together a panel of designers and experts specialising in transport and vehicle design to discuss the future of mobility and the expansion of electric vehicles.

The panellists discussed how consumers should be aware of the political narratives at play when it comes to electrification and sustainability.

"We live in an era where so much of the focus in public discourse is on the negative," Swiss designer Yves Béhar said during the talk. "You have to seep through this sort of clickbait mentality out there to really see what the possibilities are."

Kirsty Dias, managing director at PriestmanGoode, explained her belief that the design industry should assure consumers that electric vehicles are a safe and responsible option in order to encourage its widespread adoption.

"[Anti-EV rhetoric] shouldn't be used as a vote winner for a populist vote, because the climate issue is bigger than an electoral term," Dias said.

"We really need to work as an industry beyond politics and ensure that we're working together to convince people that it is safe and responsible."

The talk, which was titled Towards a New Future of Mobility, explored the modernisation of public transport and how people will be impacted by rapid developments in the transport sector.

Other topics touched on include the uptake of shared and micro mobility, along with the developments in autonomous vehicles.

"I think the third generation EVs [electric vehicles] are truly going to take advantage of what technology can do from a design standpoint, from a user standpoint and from a practicality standpoint," Béhar said.

"It's an actual changing philosophy of how to design cars," added Robin Page, design director at Bentley Motors.

The panellists also discussed how technology such as virtual reality (VR) could be used to improve the accessibility of automobile design.

"I think one of the biggest transformations is the consideration of human factors when it comes to transport", explained Karla Jakeman, head of automated transport at TRL.

"One of the really interesting uses of VR is for people, for example, with neurodiversity issues, to anticipate and plan journeys so that they feel much more comfortable and confident when they're embarking on a journey," Dias said.

"Using the tools we have as designers, you can create these experiences so that you can actually go into someone else's viewpoint and look at things," continued Page. "And then we can come up with solutions to tackle those issues."

If someone has ASD, autism, for example, some of the challenges for one person will be very different to another. We're understanding more and more, so as our understanding builds, then more and more guidance will be provided" added Jakeman.

"Understanding the needs of all of those users is really important. It opens up this box of design opportunities to challenge the industry and move things forward," Page concluded.

The talk was the second in the Lighthouse series of panel discussions hosted by Dezeen and Bentley exploring the future of luxury. It was held at The Lavery Room in Cromwell Place during London Design Festival 2023.

The talk was moderated by Dezeen's editorial director Max Fraser and featured a panel of transport and vehicle designers including Yves Béhar from Fuseproject, Kirsty Dias from Priestman Goode, Robin Page from Bentley Motors and Karla Jakeman from TRL.

Partnership content

This video was produced by Dezeen as part of a partnership with Bentley. Find out more about Dezeen partnership content here.

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Australian design student Alexander Burton has developed a prototype kit for cheaply converting petrol or diesel cars to hybrid electric, winning the country's national James Dyson Award in the process.

Titled REVR (Rapid Electric Vehicle Retrofits), the kit is meant to provide a cheaper, easier alternative to current electric car conversion services, which Burton estimates cost AU$50,000 (£26,400) on average and so are often reserved for valuable, classic vehicles.

Usually, the process would involve removing the internal combustion engine and all its associated hardware, like the gearbox and hydraulic brakes, to replace them with batteries and electric motors.

With REVR, those components are left untouched. Instead, a flat, compact, power-dense axial flux motor would be mounted between the car's rear wheels and disc brakes, and a battery and controller system placed in the spare wheel well or boot.

Some additional off-the-shelf systems – brake and steering boosters, as well as e-heating and air conditioning – would also be added under the hood.

By taking this approach, Burton believes he'll be able to offer the product for around AU$5,000 (£2,640) and make it compatible with virtually any car.

Burton is a bachelor's student in industrial design and sustainable systems engineering at RMIT University in Melbourne but has worked on REVR largely outside of his course.

The spark for the project came a few years ago when he and his dad started thinking about converting the family car, a 2001 Toyota that Burton describes as well-built and reliable.

"But it's just not really something you can do get done," he told Dezeen. "It's super expensive and it's not really accessible."

Burton wanted to find an affordable solution for others in his position while helping to reduce the emissions associated with burning petrol as well as manufacturing new electric vehicles, which are estimated to be even higher than for traditional cars.

With REVR, people should be able to get several more years of life out of their existing cars.

The kit would transform the vehicle into a hybrid rather than a fully electric vehicle, with a small battery giving the car 100 kilometres of electric range before the driver has to switch to the internal combustion engine.

However, in Burton's view, this is where people can get "the most bang for their buck" with few changes to the car but major emissions reductions.

"You can't fit a huge battery in a wheel well but we wager you won't need one," said Burton. "While people drive a lot, especially here in Australia, on average they drive 35 kilometres a day and it's mostly commuting."

"This distance would require only a five-kilowatt-hour battery, and we can put three times that in the wheel well."

Burton used the motor modelling packages FEMM and MOTORXP to develop the design of his motor, which sees the spinning part, called the rotor, placed between a vehicle's disc brakes.

The stationary part, or stator, is fixed to existing mounting points on the brake hub.

Borrowing a trick from existing hybrid vehicles, the kit uses a sensor to detect the position of the accelerator pedal to control both acceleration and braking.

That means no changes have to be made to the car's hydraulic braking system, which Burton says "you don't want to have to interrupt".

While the design is in its early stages, the concept was advanced enough for the jury of the James Dyson Award for exceptional student design to pick the project as the national winner in Australia.

The international prize winner from the 30 included countries will be announced on October 18.

Burton plans to use the AU$8,800 winnings from the national award to buy a small CNC machine and the specialist materials that are required to build a working prototype, building on a previous non-working prototype made in RMIT's workshop.

He says he has "a stretch goal" of converting a million cars with REVR and is interested in working with partners in the automotive industry. But he is also critical of its lack of investment in retrofitting to date.

"It's like with repairability, industry is so against that," Burton told Dezeen. "They love the whole planned obsolescence thing."

"Ultimately, to retrofit goes against their profit margin because it extends the usefulness and the lifetime of their products. I think that's why there's retrofitting companies out there but they're still largely reserved to classic cars. It's just so expensive to do."

Previous winners of the James Dyson Award include an infection-sensing wound dressing created by students from the Warsaw University of Technology and a fish-waste bioplastic by British designer Lucy Hughes.

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Designer Andu Masebo took great care to avoid making anything "naff or kitsch" when transforming a scrapped car into eight furniture pieces, currently on display at the V&A for London Design Festival.

As part of the museum's emerging designer commission, the Part Exchange project saw Masebo purchase a tired Alfa Romeo on Ebay before dissecting and scavenging it for parts.

The parts were then turned into a small family of furniture and homeware, guided by the car's distinct visual language and the stories of its past owners.

"I had this idea of looking at a car in terms of what it meant to people and that emotional connection you make to a car," Masebo told Dezeen. "So if I could find a car that was coming up to the end of its life and I could somehow find out what its life was like – the people it came into contact with, the places it went, the things it's seen – then I could actually bring to life those stories."

Two of the furniture pieces – a boxy coffee table and matching shelving unit – were designed solely as an exploration of the car and what could be done with its distinctive silhouette.

The former combines sections of the Alfa Romeo's bright red bodywork, including one of the door handles and the lock, into a seamless-looking cube.

For the freestanding storage unit, Masebo repurposed sections of the doors and window casings plus one of the wing mirrors to form four asymmetrical shelves.

His approach was a balancing act between adapting the car parts just enough to disguise their original function – and avoid looking hackneyed – but not so much as to change them beyond recognition.

"It's quite easy to make really naff or kitsch objects out of cars," Madebo said. "Just think of the Top Gear coffee table."

In collaboration with reclaimed textile studio Greater Goods, the designer reworked the vehicle's logo-patterned upholstery into a patchwork fabric and applied it to a low day bed.

The piece was designed to represent the story of an avid Alfa Romeo collector, who helped Masebo take apart the car.

"He met his now-wife when he was at university and they were both in relationships with other people," the designer explained. "They used to go take drives together in his car as a kind of platonic way to spend time together and get to know each other."

"So I wanted to make an object that was somewhere you can be intimate with someone but also not necessarily break any rules," he continued.

The remaining five pieces correspond to each of the car's former owners, whom Masebo tracked down with the help of the car's service history and interviewed over the course of six months.

To represent what the car meant to its first owner – Jean from Yorkshire who bought the Alfa Romeo in 1998 – he created a night light out of the engine block, sawed into thin cross-sections and combined to form a peekaboo shade.

The light was designed as a physical embodiment of third-man syndrome – a phenomenon wherein people in traumatic situations will sometimes report feeling a comforting presence despite being alone.

The owner told Masebo she experienced such a feeling after her husband died, much like explorer Ernest Shackleton did during one of his Antarctic expeditions, which Jean later retraced.

"That story of Shackleton mirrored her feeling when she'd lost her husband, so I wanted to make an object that could comfort you in times of literal darkness," Masebo explained.

Other objects in the collection reflect more of the mundane, everyday associations people had with the car.

There is a hallway shelf, designed to hold all the essential items for popping to the shop and made from a piece of the passenger seat's backrest, combined with the rearview mirror, cigarette holder and a small hook.

For one previous owner, who said he bought the car as a young man to drive fast and impress his friends, Masebo made a shelf with hidden compartments from the wing of the car.

"When you're 20 and you want to hide things from your parents, that's the kind of object that might be handy," the designer explained.

Reflecting another owner's observation that the car "becomes one of the family", Masebo made an elaborate coat rack using two metal bars that once secured the seatbelts, where each member of the family can metaphorically hang their hat.

Masebo also cut up the Alfa Romeo's distinctive circular spokes and stacked them on top of each other to form a wine rack, nodding to the fact that the car's last owner bought it as an investment much like an ancient bottle of Bordeaux.

The project does not argue for a "nose to tail" philosophy of using every part of a car, as large parts including the chassis and framework were ultimately still scrapped.

Instead, Masebo hopes to explore how we can hold onto a sense of respect and responsibility for the things we once owned.

"Ultimately, the project isn't advocating that everyone goes out and takes apart their car and turns it into furniture," he said. "It's actually quite an inefficient way to make objects."

"It's more about how we can change how we feel about the objects that we live with," he added.

"It's not always about recycling and reusing. Sometimes it's about culture, so what's the culture around newness and history?"

Previous projects have seen the designer form a chair from stainless steel car exhaust pipes for the Atelier100 project by IKEA and H&M, and craft a series of locally made products based around the route of London's number 12 bus.

Elsewhere at this year's London Design Festival, Zaha Hadid Design has launched an undulating modular display system while designers Natsai Audrey Chieza and Christina Agapakis have started what they describe as the "first biodesign lifestyle brand".

Images are courtesy of Andu Masebo and the V&A unless otherwise stated.

Part Exchange is on show at the V&A as part of London Design Festival 2023 from 16-24 September 2023. See our London Design Festival 2023 guide on Dezeen Events Guide for information about the many other exhibitions, installations and talks taking place throughout the week.

The post Andu Masebo crafts furniture from remains of a single car at LDF appeared first on Dezeen.

Discarded iPhones, vapes, a fly swatter and a 1950s radio form Recover-E, a replica racing car built entirely out of electronic waste by Manchester design studio Lazerian.

Commissioned by Formula E team Envision Racing to highlight the growing issue of e-waste, Recover-E uses a modified drivetrain taken from a beach buggy to enable it to drive at slow speeds.

Everyday objects are dotted all over the car, such as the driver halo made from Nintendo Wii controllers, a Sony VR headset and an electric fly swatter.

A pricing gun operates as the brake light, while a 1950s radio forms the radar antenna on top of the car.

"You can show people how much waste we all go through, but when you take it and turn it into something else it becomes this vehicle to start to trigger people's minds and actually make them think about this stuff," Lazerian founder and owner Liam Hopkins told Dezeen.

"For me it was a beautiful project to be able to create something that will get to a huge amount of people, to bring this issue to them in a way that's not forcing it down the throat."

The world's annual output of e-waste is projected to reach 75 million tonnes by 2030, with the World Health Organisation sounding the alarm over the implications for children's health.

Items for the Recover-E project were sourced entirely from donations from Manchester schoolchildren and locally based tech trade-in company Music Magpie, which considered them unrepairable.

After the e-waste had been collected, Hopkins separated it into different materials, textures and colours to help decide where to use each item in the vehicle.

"I really wanted to encourage people to take things apart," explained Hopkins. "The way things are designed we've been taught not to mess – it's not encouraged for people to take stuff apart and try and repair it, we've literally turned into a throwaway society."

"Whereas we can all learn so much from taking something apart," he continued. "We see how things are made, what materials, how one thing connects to another, can we make something else from it, repair it."

The car was designed to give the impression of gradually disintegrating from front to back.

"I wanted to have this narrative behind it where it's basically uncovering the insides of the waste," he said.

The nose and front spoilers of the car are dominated by phones in relatively good condition with their outer casing visible, with a string of LEDs running underneath that when lit make the devices appear switched on.

"As we then start to move back, it's like it's kind of starting to shed its layers," said Hopkins.

"So as we move along, it becomes the underside of the phones, the underside of the MacBooks and the laptops – the middle of the car is all these circuit boards," he continued.

"And then as we get to the back, it's literally down to components. We've got the induction charges from phones, we've got the wires, we've got screens. So I wanted it to convey that message of these things being taken apart."

Disposable vapes, some of which were used just two or three weeks before the car was built, also make up part of the car's components. An estimated 1.3 million of the electric nicotine products are thrown away every week in the UK alone.

Hopkins believes that single-use vapes, with their rechargeable lithium batteries that do not get recharged, are a prime example of society's problematic relationship with electronic goods.

"We have an issue now where it's so easy to buy stuff so cheap, and there's no value in it," he argued. "You use it for five minutes, an hour, and then it's chucked away when there's still so much more life in these things."

"There was some nice symbolism behind having this fast-moving vehicle and the fast-paced society that we're all in, and hopefully as much as it's a beautiful thing to look at, it's also a scary thing to think about," he continued.

Hopkins' projects have often explored re-use of waste materials, including an earlier collaboration with Envision Racing to build a non-drivable replica Formula E car from plastic waste, but Recover-E is his first focused on e-waste.

The car was unveiled on the eve of the London e-prix at the ExCel centre in late July and will be exhibited at a series of events, including global climate summit COP28, before it is disassembled for recycling.

Electric-car racing championship Formula E has been declared the first net-zero global sport based on an assessment by sustainability consultancy Quantis.

Other projects previously featured on Dezeen that seek to draw attention to the issue of e-waste include a chair made from discarded laptops, furniture created from e-scooters dumped in a canal network and tiles produced from recycled oven glass.

The photography is courtesy of Envision Racing.

The post Lazerian builds racing car entirely from electronic waste appeared first on Dezeen.

Italian sports carmaker Lamborghini has shared its Lanzador concept car – a look ahead at the company's first all-electric vehicle, which is set to go into production from 2028.

Revealed at Monterey Car Week, the concept car is a grand tourer with an electric motor on each axle, providing a peak power of over one megawatt or around 1,341 mechanical horsepower.

Drivers will also be able to adjust the car's driving dynamics, aerodynamics and suspension via controls integrated into the steering wheel, which according to Lamborghini will make for an improved driving experience compared to a combustion engine car.

"For us, electrification does not mean a restriction, but an intelligent opportunity to develop more performance and drivability," said the company's chief technical officer Rouven Mohr.

"With the newly-developed and highly-integrated driving modes, including active controls, Lamborghini increases driving pleasure and performance, and enhances safety and feedback to the pilot," he added.

"The combination of these systems raises the driving behaviour of the concept car to a new level compared to a super sports car with a combustion engine."

The Lanzador has a low-slung body similar to a traditional grand tourer with a roof height of around 1.5 metres, but is set on chunky 23-inch wheels reminiscent of an SUV.

Removing the chunky motors created an "unexpectedly roomy interior" for a sports car, with adjustable seats and a variable luggage compartment in the rear and a trunk concealed under the steeply sloping front bonnet.

This allows the car to be used as an everyday vehicle as well as a sports car, according to Lamborghini, with drivers able to tailor the driving experience depending on the setting via the controls integrated into the wheel.

This includes a newly developed driving dynamics control system called Lamborghini Dinamica Veicolo Integrata (LDVI), powered by an expanded range of sensors and actuators, including new radar sensors behind the windscreen, which will also be rolled out to other future electric models.

"Lamborghini will define and differentiate itself in the future through a strategy of all active-control systems," Mohr explained.

"We are taking Lamborghini integrated driving dynamics control to a whole new level, which has not been possible for production sports cars before and offers our customers a completely new driving experience."

Drivers will also be able to adjust the car's suspension via its active chassis as well as its aerodynamics to improve performance and increase its range per charge.

On top of the Aerodinamica Lamborghini Attiva system (ALA), used across some of the company's previous models, this will include new front air shutter with a movable splitter, which can be used to tailor the airflow to the cooling systems and breaks.

This can be used to improve efficiency in Urban mode and downforce in Performance mode, meaning higher cornering speeds and the lowest possible air resistance.

Lamborghini has kept details about the EV's range under wraps, but has hinted that the car will be powered by a "new generation high-performance battery".

The company has also made attempts to lower the embodied carbon footprint of the concept car by integrating natural and recycled materials including Merino wool upholstery, regenerated carbon fibre panels and leather tanned with wastewater from local olive oil production.

The Lanzador follows in the footsteps of the Sián, Lamborghini's first hybrid supercar to go into production in 2019, which has a combined thermal and electric power of 819 horsepower.

Lamborghini has promised to turn its entire existing fleet into hybrid vehicles by the end of 2024 as part of the goal to reduce its overall emissions by 50 per cent come 2025.

However, the company has made no promises to go fully electric, lagging behind other luxury carmakers including Rolls-Royce and Maserati, which are transitioning to offering only electric cars by 2030.

The post Lamborghini unveils concept for first all-electric car appeared first on Dezeen.

UK studio Most Architecture has converted an industrial shed in west London into an all-black-and-white showroom and production facility for electric car start-up Charge Cars.

Created to manufacture Charge Cars' first vehicle the '67 – an all-electric version of the 1960s Ford Mustang Fastback built using components from electric vehicle brand Arrival – the facility also acts as an office and showroom.

"Charge designs and makes its unique cars in a single facility," said Most Architecture founder Olga McMurdo. "Like an open-kitchen restaurant, everything is on display to the staff and customers."

"So we created an environment that allows immediate access to every aspect of the process from design through to production," she told Dezeen. "The factory, and all of its contents, are at once an agile design and manufacturing centre, a customer showroom, and a design statement."

The facility in Stockley Close, west London, was designed around the idea of promoting a connection between Charge Cars' clients and the engineers building and customising the cars.

At its centre is a large open workshop where the cars are built and customised, which is overlooked by various offices and meeting spaces.

"Our client came to us with an ambition to re-define a classic design icon using cutting-edge electric vehicle technology and to create a customer experience that engenders a visceral response to the product, and the process of creating it," said McMurdo.

"Their space had to accommodate both the manufacturing and the design process, facilitating teamwork and recreation, testing, a showroom, and areas for customer engagement," she continued.

"All that had to happen within one architectural volume, and so the primary challenge was to facilitate all of these activities simultaneously and symbiotically, whilst projecting a clear and coherent design statement reflecting the client's philosophy."

Unlike the majority of car factories, the Charge Cars facility was designed so that its customers can visit at any time to observe how the vehicle is designed and assembled.

"Charge wanted the customer journey to be mapped out by the design of the building," said McMurdo.

"The customer's access to, and experience of, the factory is an integral part of the product," she continued.

"They have a personal relationship with the engineers that are making their car, and are able to see the car as it is being constructed."

Most Architecture designed the spaces with a stripped-back aesthetic united by a largely white and black colour palette, including a black light fixture above the building's entrance.

"The white and the black amplify each other by contrast, representing the fusion of a laboratory and a garage, and the constant dynamic between research and production," explained McMurdo.

"Using this pallet we also wanted to make an impactful design statement on entry to the building. The result was a large anamorphic light fixture, which coalesces into a Feynman diagram from a single vantage point, becoming a composition of independent pieces."

Other recent electric car factories featured on Dezeen include a black steel and glass facility designed by Snøhetta for car brand Polestar in Chengdu, China. In Sweden, Danish architecture studio Cobe is designing a development centre for Chinese car manufacturer Geely, which it describes as a "chamber of secrets".

The photography is by Paul Riddle.

Project credits:

Client: Charge Cars
Lead architect: Most Architecture
Interior concepts: Evgeniy Bulatnikov
Mechanical engineer: Airon
Electrical engineer: Smart Techno Systems
Structural engineer: HLS Structural
Lighting: Gaismas Magija
Building control: The Building Inspectors
Wind consultant: Buro Happold
Fire engineer: QFSM
CDM advisor: Andrew Goddard Associates
Main contractor: Hansa Group
Steel mezzanine contractor: System Store Solutions
Lighting manufacturer: Esse-Ci

The post Most Architecture creates micro factory with "everything on display" for Charge Cars appeared first on Dezeen.

Texas studios Smitharc Architecture + Interiors and Erin Sander Design have completed a family home with limestone cladding, a Zen garden and a gallery-like space for the clients' Ferraris.

Situated on a leafy street, the home is named after the suburban Dallas neighbourhood where it is located, Greenway Parks.

The residence was built for a family of five – a husband, wife and three kids – and is meant to balance durability with a "lightness of detail".

The team was tasked with creating a home that respected its neighbours and included space for the client's "prized Ferrari collection", along with his-and-her work areas with aesthetic appeal.

"Our clients are both serial entrepreneurs involved in creative and often philanthropic sectors," said Dallas-based Smitharc Architecture + Interiors, who collaborated with local studio Erin Sander Design on the interiors.

"Their work-from-home lifestyle results in frequent video conference calls with staff and investors, so they each wanted a Zoom backdrop that was both beautiful and representative of their respective personalities."

The team conceived a two-storey, courtyard-style home that consists of rectilinear volumes arranged around a Zen garden.

The home's front portion was kept low to the ground in deference to neighbouring mid-century modern homes and a bungalow that once stood on the property.

Exterior walls are clad in a mix of honed grey limestone and bleached cypress, with the latter material adding visual warmth. Along the front elevation, a bronze gate offers privacy and limits access to the residence.

Within the 6,800-square-foot (632-square-metre) home, ample glazing ushers in daylight and provides views through the residence.

Partial walls and built-in furniture help divide the space while maintaining a sense of fluidity. Earthy finishes such as limestone walls and rift-sawn white oak flooring are paired with splashes of colour and carefully curated decor.

The ground level holds the public zone, envisioned as a series of "cozy vignettes". Sliding glass doors create a smooth connection to the rear yard, where the team placed a patio and swimming pool.

The ground level also contains a bedroom suite, a garage and a "purpose-built auto lounge", where the clients' Ferraris are on display. The auto lounge doubles as a study for the husband.

The upper level – reached by stairs or an elevator – encompasses the sleeping areas, a den and an office for the wife.

The office, which has floor-to-ceiling glass, looks upon treetops and a lighting sculpture by Romanian artist Andreea Braescue that hangs in the home's entry hall.

The primary bedroom suite includes a gym, a "glam room", a walk-in closet and a private roof deck.

The interior design includes a number of distinctive elements.

Stretching over the public zone is a blue, polished plaster ceiling that unifies the different spaces and adds visual interest.

In the kitchen, one finds blue lacquer-fronted cabinetry and an L-shaped island with a marble top and built-in banquette.

In the main bathroom, there is a floating brass vanity and custom mirrors. The adjacent "glam room" is fitted with pale pink furnishings, scalloped marble floor tiles and walls covered in laser-cut brass pieces that were installed by hand.

Other homes in Dallas include a residence by Specht Architects that consists of corrugated concrete volumes informed by brutalist architecture, and a slender, vanilla-white home by Wernerfield that was designed for a young couple.

The photography is by Nathan Schroder.

Project credits:

Architect: Smitharc Architecture + Interiors
Architecture team: Jason Erik Smith, Signe Smith
Interiors: Erin Sander Design
Landscape: Garden Design Studio
Construction: Kienast Homes

The post Greenway Parks Residence in Dallas features "auto lounge" for Ferraris appeared first on Dezeen.

The latest edition of our weekly Dezeen Agenda newsletter features a prototype electric version of Renault's Twingo model created by designer Sabine Marcelis. Subscribe to Dezeen Agenda now.

Marcelis created the visionary electric version of Renault's Twingo model in honour of its 30th anniversary.

She incorporated her trademark colour palette of translucent pastel hues, adding a semi-transparent peach steering wheel inside the vehicle and covering its exterior in a matte white hue.

This week's newsletter also included a copper-toned family house in Spain by Balzar Arquitectos, the refurbishment of the Young V&A children's museum in London and MVRDV's reveal of a housing complex in San Francisco.

Dezeen Agenda

Dezeen Agenda is a curated newsletter sent every Tuesday containing the most important news highlights from Dezeen. Read the latest edition of Dezeen Agenda or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday and features the hottest reader comments and most-debated stories, Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours and Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design. 

The post Dezeen Agenda features Sabine Marcelis' "inside-out" car appeared first on Dezeen.

The US Federal Aviation Administration has awarded a special airworthiness certificate to Armada Model Zero, a prototype electric car that can go from driving to flying by launching straight up into the air like a drone.

The electrical vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) vehicle by California company Alef Aeronautics, which has four wheels and eight rotors integrated into its frame, can now be tested in public flight demonstrations for the first time.

Alef Aeronautics claims this makes it the "world's first real flying car" to be FAA-certified to fly since similar models that have received approval in recent years can fly, but not fit on regular roads or in parking spaces.

"This is one small step for planes, one giant step for cars," said the company's CEO Jim Dukhovny.

"We're excited to receive this certification from the FAA. It allows us to move closer to bringing people an environmentally friendly and faster commute, saving individuals and companies hours each week."

Called Armada Model Zero, the vehicle is a precursor to the Model A prototype that Alef Aeronautics unveiled in October 2022.

At first glance, it resembles a regular car. But hidden underneath its mesh exterior are eight rotors – four in the rear and four in the front where the engine would normally be.

These allow the vehicle to take off and land vertically, much like a drone or a helicopter, without the need for a lengthy runway.

Suspended in the centre of the carbon fibre frame is the passenger cabin, which can fit up to two people and is set on a pivoting platform known as a gimbal.

Once in the air, the vehicle's entire frame rotates sideways by 90 degrees so that what was once the front and back of the car become two wings on either side of the cabin for maximum speed.

Meanwhile, the cabin itself automatically swivels on its axis so it always faces forward.

Alef Aeronautics says the company's Model A vehicle will ultimately have a driving range of 200 miles and a flight range of 110 miles.

However, it is technically considered a "low-speed vehicle", meaning it won't be able to drive faster than about 25 miles per hour, and it would still require approval from the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration to be tested on public roads.

Alef Aeronautics says it expects to begin production and deliveries of its Model A at the end of 2025, with preorders starting at $300,000.

Other contenders vying to be the first flying car that is actually approved for public use include Volkswagen's prototype Flying Tiger and the AirCar by Klein Vision, which was granted an airworthiness certificate in Slovakia last year.

Hyundai Motor Europe president Michael Cole previously said that he believed flying cars would be in our cities by 2030.

The post Electric flying car receives approval for test flights in the US appeared first on Dezeen.

Designer Sabine Marcelis has created her first car – a conceptual electric version of French car brand Renault's Twingo model, designed to celebrate its 30th anniversary.

Marcelis designed the concept model of the Twingo, which was originally released in 1993, using her signature colour palette of translucent pastel hues.

The electric car's exterior is coloured in a semi-transparent matte white hue, while the interior features a translucent steering wheel in a nod to the designer's work in resin.

Marcelis's prototype reprises some of the Twingo's "most recognisable" features, Renault said.

These include the car's single-volume silhouette, characteristic "frog-eye" headlights and modular interior.

"My challenge was to elevate them without losing their unique identity," Marcelis said.  "To bring all elements into a more luxurious realm, activated by light and materiality."

Her redesign also aims to draw attention to the car's details.

"It's a bit like an inside-out car, where the exterior is stripped of colour so that just the different translucencies of the PMMA [plexiglass] could be experienced," the designer told Dezeen.

"It allows you to see structural details when viewed from certain angles. It's being very honest to the way the car is produced – celebrating all details instead of hiding them."

Marcelis looked at the "interplay between colours and materials" when designing the Twingo, which has a completely white chassis and all-white wheels.

Inside, a warm raspberry hue was used for the dashboard and headliner, with seats and other soft parts of the car clad in a red fabric shot through with purple threads.

"The interior is very saturated in colour and stripped to the essentials, simplifying many elements into singular objects – like the sunshade and rearview mirror which are combined into a single element and the front seats are also merged into a single bench," Marcelis said.

"The choice of burgundy is an elevated use of the original Twingo red."

"The colour also evokes a cosy feeling – making the experience of being inside the car one of comfort and luxury," the designer added.

"The tactile experience of the interior is very important to the concept. Each material used inside has a different tactility and surface texture."

The translucent peach-coloured steering wheel was designed to be both aesthetically pleasing and still functional.

Marcelis described it as "a single disk with all the functionings of a steering wheel, whose shape reveals itself further when light catches the edges."

"By keeping the body thin but the edges a bit thicker, a nice grip for the hand is created and the saturation of colour intensifies towards the outer edges where it is thicker," she added.

The reimagined Twingo, which was unveiled at the Centre Pompidou in Paris, was retrofitted with an electric motor to symbolise Renault's "commitment to electric cars", with the company aiming to make all of its cars across Europe electric by 2030.

Renault has previously created a concept car with French designer Matthieu Lehanneur that saw him turn the Renault 4L into a nomadic hotel suite. This model was also retrofitted with an electric motor.

A recent Dezeen feature looked at how cars will begin to look "dramatically different" as electric vehicles become the norm.

The photography and video are by Studio Kleiner.

The post Sabine Marcelis reimagines Twingo as "inside-out car" with translucent steering wheel appeared first on Dezeen.

In this week's comments update, readers are discussing a pair of Maseratis designed by David Beckham, which were exclusively revealed on Dezeen.

Informed by his "passion for classic cars" and tailoring, former footballer Beckham customised the vehicles as the first edition in Maserati's Fuoriserie Essentials collection.

According to the brand, each of the cars was informed by a historic Maserati and designed as an extension to Beckham's "Savile Row sartorial wardrobe".

"Bless his cotton socks"

Beckham's billing as designer of the cars raised a few eyebrows among commenters.

"Pretty loose interpretation of 'designed'," wrote Tim, in a comment that was upvoted 10 times.

"How does Beckham design a car?" quipped Igor Pismensky. "He tells the designer or engineer 'I like green and not pink. I like fast over slow. I like vegan leather over vinyl.' Done!"

BT76 offered a similar critique: "Picking colours to paint existing cars is apparently now the same as designing cars. By this standard, every homeowner painting their bathroom is an architect."

Other commenters couldn't pass up the opportunity for irony. As to the question of whether Beckham designed the cars himself, Whateverandeveramen wrote, "Of course he did. Bless his cotton socks."

While Orlandoa1 drolly wondered, "is there no end to David Beckham's talents?"

Do you think it's a car crash collaboration? Join the discussion ›

"Perfect for holding my microscopic wallet"

Also providing plenty of fodder for commenters this week was a microscopic Louis Vuitton handbag designed by art collective MSCHF as a comment on the luxury fashion industry and the functionality of small bags.

Made from neon-green photopolymer resin, the microscopic handbag was 3D printed using technology normally used for making biotech structures.

George Panagos called it a "perfect expression of the usefulness of overpriced luxury items", before adding: "I've always enjoyed MSCHF's ironic social commentary."

"Perfect for holding my microscopic wallet," joked Kem Roolhaas, while SalamOOn thought it was cheap at the price: "only for $2,740!"

Other commenters weren't so keen. "Why? How is this of any value to our culture? Is it even worth publication?" asked Philly Citizen.

Marius, meanwhile, wondered whether the bag was more of a commentary on getting older than luxury fashion.

"At the threshold of middle age, we notice the evident conspiracy of all printing businesses and eyewear manufacturers," they wrote. "Fonts get smaller and we have to get reading glasses. Now Louis Vuitton joins the racket."

What are your thoughts on the microscopic handbag? Join the discussion ›

"What's not to like?"

A "very well done" courtyard home near Chennai, India, caught readers' attention this week.

Designed by local practice Rain Studio and defined by raw, tactile materials including clay tiles and compressed earth bricks, the house was created as a weekend retreat for its clients on a coastal site surrounded by fields that lead directly onto a nearby beach.

"[The] deep red brick and [the] Mangalore tiles are my favourite in this house," wrote Ryan, while Rob Brearley admired the "nice use of material".

George Panagos agreed, admiring the "warm and inviting use of reclaimed materials, unfettered by pretentious fuss. A courtyard surrounded by a peaceful veranda. What's not to like? Great project."

"Very well done," added Frankie. "Reminds me of David Hertz's own house in Venice Beach."

Are you equally charmed by the courtyard house in Chennai? Join the discussion ›

"I would hope that this discussion takes into account 80 years of research and development"

Readers also reacted to the launch of our AItopia editorial series, which will explore AI's impact on design, architecture and humanity.

"AI is one of the foremost threats facing our jobs as architects," wrote Archill. "But then, it also serves its purpose (look at what Schumacher said ZHA is doing). Hoping Dezeen will cover all sides of this debate!"

Henri Achten has similar hopes for the series: "I would hope that this discussion takes into account 80 years of research and development done by thousands of people and not just a few alarmist end-users that discovered ChatGPT and Midjourney a few weeks ago."

For Franc Lea, AItopia prompted a philosophical question: "If not all utopias end in dystopia and not all dystopias are failed utopias, what judgment call are we making on the AItopia?"

What's your judgement call? Join the discussion ›

Comments update

Dezeen is the world's most commented architecture and design magazine, receiving thousands of comments each month from readers. Keep up to date on the latest discussions on our comments page and subscribe to our weekly Debate newsletter, where we feature the best reader comments from stories in the last seven days.

The post "Is there no end to David Beckham's talents?" says commenter appeared first on Dezeen.

The latest edition of our weekly Dezeen Agenda newsletter features David Beckham's designs for a pair of Maseratis. Subscribe to Dezeen Agenda now.

Italian brand Maserati has unveiled a pair of sports cars designed by former footballer Beckham. The design of each car was informed by a historic Maserati and created using the brand's customisation program.

This week's newsletter also included the death of RIBA Royal Gold Medal-winning architect Michael Hopkins, an industrial Venice Beach house by architect Matthew Royce and Zaha Hadid Architects' plans for a luxury condominium in Miami.

Dezeen Agenda

Dezeen Agenda is a curated newsletter sent every Tuesday containing the most important news highlights from Dezeen. Read the latest edition of Dezeen Agenda or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday and features the hottest reader comments and most-debated stories, Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours and Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design. 

The post Dezeen Agenda features David Beckham's designs for a pair of Maseratis appeared first on Dezeen.

Former footballer David Beckham has designed a pair of sports cars for Italian brand Maserati, which were informed by classic cars and tailoring and are exclusively revealed here.

Created as the first edition in Maserati's Fuoriserie Essentials collection, the two cars were designed using the brand's customisation program and will be available for customers to purchase.

"I have always loved cars, so to be part of designing and creating my own Fuoriserie collection has been an amazing experience," said Beckham.

"It has been incredible to collaborate with the skilled Maserati team once again to create these designs, inspired by my passion for classic cars and my appreciation for personal detail."

According to the brand, each of the cars was informed by a historic Maserati and designed as an extension to Beckham's "Savile Row sartorial wardrobe".

The first car was informed by the 1986 Maserati Quattroporte Royale, of which there were only 51 produced. For Beckham's homage, he choose a dark green-hued exterior described by Maserati as Verde Royale, with warm-toned brown leather upholstery.

Beckham's second design was informed by the 1967 Maserati Ghibli coupé. For this design, his exterior is Night Interaction blue with tan-coloured internal leather.

Both of the designs will be available on all vehicles in Maserati's range.

The release aims to demonstrate the capabilities of Maserati's customisation program.

It is the first Fuoriserie Essentials collection, which will see taste makers designing vehicles using Maserati's customisation program, which will be made available to customers.

"Fuoriserie means 'custom-built' in Italian, and our Trident's customisation program is conceived to create singular experiences for our clients," said Maserati head of design Klaus Busse.

"Our wish here is for them to express their personality and passion by creating their very own Maserati. Just like David, everyone can choose from a wide range of personalisation features from our Fuoriserie Corse collection, inspired by Maserati's glorious racing heritage, and from our Fuoriserie Futura collection, dedicated to lovers of technology and new materials."

Maserati recently presented a customised version of it first fully-electric car, the GranTurismo Folgore, at Milan design week. Speaking to Dezeen, Maserati's CEO Davide Grasso explained how the brand believes that its electric vehicles will be as fun to drive as its combustion engine-powered cars.

"If the majority of the electric cars are dull – I'm not saying that, but it's what I'm hearing from you – then this is an opportunity for us," he said.

The post David Beckham designs pair of Maseratis informed by his "passion for classic cars" appeared first on Dezeen.

Swiss designer Yves Behar has created an electric vehicle called Telo, which fits the passenger and cargo capacity of a pickup truck within the length of a small city car.

Telo, which is the first vehicle being developed by a US company of the same name, has a four-door, five-seater cabin and a 60-inch (1.5-metre) truck bed in a vehicle that's just 152 inches (3.8 metres) long – the same length as a two-door Mini Cooper SE hatchback.

"Most EV [electric vehicle] cars out there are basically configured in the same way that gasoline-engine cars have been," Behar told Dezeen.

"And so the opportunity there was to say: 'Okay, how do we deliver a fully functional EV pickup truck with a full-size truck bed, with a large passenger cabin, but utilise a layout that will make it much more practical and much smaller in the urban environment?'"

Behar and his design studio Fuseproject achieved this by taking advantage of the space efficiencies that electric technology offers.

With two small electric motors powering the car instead of a large combustion engine in the front, the truck features a significantly shorter front end, with the driver and passengers sitting much further forward than in a traditional pickup truck.

"When you don't have a front engine, you're given all this extra space," said Behar.

"The size of it is extraordinary. We get these specs, which are basically the same interior space and truck-bed size as a Toyota Tacoma, but in the size, front-to-back, of a Mini."

Telo, which is derived from the word for "purpose" in Ancient Greek, is the first product by a start-up co-founded by Jason Marks and Forrest North, a former Tesla engineer. Behar is head of design and is also an investor in the company.

The brand is aimed at what Behar calls "urban adventures", people who want a car that's practical to drive in the city where they live and work but can also be taken to the beach or into the country at weekends.

"It's very practical in urban and suburban environments – very functional there – but it's also a great truck to take on weekend adventures," Behar said.

The car, which Behar describes as "a workhorse", has been designed to be as flexible as possible for a variety of work and leisure uses.

The partition that separates the cabin from the truck bed can be folded down to expand the truck bed so that it can fit 4-foot by 8-foot (2.44-metre by 1.22-metre) sheets of plywood or a 9-foot (2.74-metre) surfboard with the tailgate up, something much larger vehicles would struggle to achieve.

A lockable roll-up tonneau cover ensures that items stored in the truck bed can be secured.

Alternatively, Telo can be specified with a cap to extend the cabin, turning the vehicle into a small minivan or camper van, with the truck bed replaced with either a third row of seats or space for sleeping.

The lack of a central driveshaft allows for a storage compartment behind the back seat that runs the full width of the vehicle and can be used to stow suitcases and other mid-sized items.

This flexibility is achieved "without compromising performance", according to Behar.

The two electric motors will produce 500 brake horsepower (bhp), enabling Telo to hit 60 miles an hour in four seconds and reach a top speed of 125 miles an hour.

The truck will be powered by a newly developed 106  kilowatt hour (kwh) battery pack, which the company claims will be able to deliver up to 350 miles of range while taking up less space than current batteries on the market. This enabled Behar to maximise the cabin space.

"The battery system is much more compact in height, which gives us the ability to have headroom in the vehicle that is quite generous," he said.

Cooling for the batteries is provided by a single vent on the front of the car, with additional air intake coming from the wheel wells, which exits through side vents on the doors.

According to Behar, the short nose of the car was a challenge to design, providing a much larger surface when viewed face-on than a traditional car with a longer, more gently sloping hood.

To create character, he added six slanted vertical headlights with a slim pill-shaped form, a motif that is repeated throughout the vehicle, including the door handles and air vents on the side of the car.

"The shortening of the front end was a big design constraint but also an opportunity to create a larger face with more identity," Behar said.

"The front signature was very important and I spent quite a bit of time sketching that. I think the six headlights are quite different, quite unique."

Overall, Behar strived to achieve a design that would appeal to a wider demographic than traditional pickup trucks.

"Clearly, the look of pickup trucks has traditionally been aggressive, oversized, with a very large front grille," he said. "A number of articles have come out about how dangerous that is, but it also really only speaks to one type of customer."

Telo is already taking reservations for the new car. It unveiled a full-size visual prototype this week, plans to have a driving prototype ready later this year and aims to have the truck on the road within three years.

The company plans to achieve this quick turnaround by using contract manufacturers. This has only recently become possible in the automotive space, partly due to technological developments and partly due to the relative mechanical simplicity of electric powertrains and the third-party components that they use. Behar believes it is a game-changer.

"The Telo truck will be contract manufactured in the US, so it will be built locally, and this is the big change in car manufacturing," he said.

"In the past, it would have cost between $2 and $3 billion dollars to build a car factory from the ground up. But now we have contract manufacturers that allow smaller EV companies to launch and build their cars much faster."

"What this means is that, like we saw with consumer products over the last 30 years, we will hopefully see more new concepts, new types of vehicles, which don't require the very large and very expensive infrastructure of the past."

Telo will initially launch in the US, where pickup trucks are an extremely popular vehicle choice. But Behar hopes to expand into the European market too, which is less fond of the traditionally bulky vehicles.

"Pickup trucks are the best-selling vehicle type in the United States and they would probably be better selling in Europe if they were designed differently," Behar said.

"If you're in a city like London or Lisbon, or really anywhere in Europe, anywhere in an older city, large vehicles are really a terrible burden," he added.

"So the ability to do so much in such a small size means that we see a lot of opportunity to launch it in Europe as well."

The post Yves Behar designs electric pickup truck that's "the size of a Mini" appeared first on Dezeen.

This month's Dezeen In Depth newsletter looks at how electric vehicle technology is changing car design and features an exclusive interview with 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale curator Lesley Lokko. Subscribe to Dezeen In Depth now.

Cars could start to look dramatically different as electric vehicles become the norm but battery technology must first improve, designers tell Dezeen.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are set to dominate our roads in the coming decades, with many countries intending to ban the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by 2035 including the UK, China, Japan and most of Europe, as well as several US states.

Already demand for plug-in cars is surging. The International Energy Agency expects 14 million to be sold worldwide this year, representing 18 per cent of the overall car market – up from just four per cent in 2020.

Read the full feature ›

May's Dezeen in Depth also features an opinion piece from Rob Bevan on the cultural and political implications of King Charles III's love for traditional architecture and an exclusive interview with 2023 Venice Architecture Biennale curator Lesley Lokko.

Dezeen In Depth

Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design. Each edition includes an original feature article on a key topic or trend, an interview with a prominent industry figure and an opinion piece from a leading critic. Read the latest edition of Dezeen In Depth or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Agenda is sent every Tuesday containing a selection of the most important news highlights from the week, Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday featuring a selection of the best reader comments and most talked-about stories and Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours on Dezeen.

The post Dezeen In Depth explores how electric vehicle technology is changing car design appeared first on Dezeen.

Cars will start to look dramatically different as electric vehicles become the norm but battery technology must first improve, designers tell Dezeen.

Electric vehicles (EVs) are set to dominate our roads in the coming decades, with many countries intending to ban the sale of new internal combustion engine (ICE) cars by 2035 including the UK, China, Japan and most of Europe, as well as several US states.

Already demand for plug-in cars is surging. The International Energy Agency expects 14 million to be sold worldwide this year, representing 18 per cent of the overall car market – up from just 4 per cent in 2020.

"Skateboard" could lead to more variety

This shift has the potential to deliver a sea-change in the way cars look as automakers race to release electrified models. Fossil-fuel-powered cars depend on a host of engineering components that has literally shaped them: the engine, the fuel tank, the radiator, the transmission, the exhaust pipe, etcetera.

With electric cars all that is generally replaced by what is often referred to as the "skateboard" – a unified, flat floor containing the battery pack and motors.

In theory, this skateboard could be topped by any number of forms that go well beyond conventional car design.

"It is different than the last 100 years where you have a motor, whether front, rear or centre, in a drive shaft and steering column and all these things," explained Giovanny Arroba, design director at Nissan's Global Design Center.

"So there's a lot more variability on how we lay out the people and the storage and the motors on this skateboard platform," he told Dezeen.

However, many of the electric cars currently hitting the market look highly familiar. Maserati's first electric car, recently launched at Milan design week, is a near-identical-looking electrified version of its GranTurismo.

MINI took the same approach with the Cooper SE, as did Ford with the F-150 Lightning – the EV version of the most popular vehicle in the US.

Similarly, nothing apart from additional streamlining sets the electric Rolls-Royce Spectre markedly apart from the luxury brand's ICE coupes.

Kirsty Dias, managing director at transport-specialising design agency PriestmanGoode, believes this cautious approach to design is a function of manufacturers attempting to encourage the car-driving public to switch to EVs.

"The car industry is not demanding too much of the customer," she told Dezeen. "They're trying to convince people, 'it's the same, so just make the transition because it's better."

"Once there is greater adoption then the next step, I guess, might be to be more experimental with the form."

"Car company chief executives are very conservative people," added University of Bath professor and car industry expert Andrew Graves. "They're quick to say: 'customers won't buy that.'"

Some brands have sought to embrace a new design language as part of their journey to electrification.

An early example was the Nissan Leaf, which was the world's first mainstream all-electric family car when introduced in 2010.

Its bulbous features were much maligned and the model underwent a complete redesign for the 2017 second generation.

"We clearly wanted to make a statement, so they pushed the envelope quite a bit to do something completely new and different, and definitely it was," said Arroba.

"But looking back, maybe it was trying too hard to be different. When we wanted people to adopt electric, it could have been too polarising."

The more recent Ariya, Arroba explained, "was a time to start clean".

"Our philosophy was to reflect the clean power within," he continued. "So it was to go minimal and pure, with clean, powerful forms reflecting the clean, powerful energy."

Sense of "danger" has disappeared 

Other carmakers have also sought to make their EVs stand out from their ICE models with stylistic hints at their electron-powered drivetrains.

A good example is Hyundai, whose Ioniq series of electric cars bear distinctive pixelated LED headlights. And like the Ariya, Tesla cars and models from Chinese EV makers like Nio and BYD bear sleek designs.

"As we move forward, you do see that there's quite a few automakers that have gone clean and pure and minimal," remarked Arroba.

Polestar head of design Maximilian Missoni has a theory to explain the trend.

"The whole idea of combusting fossil fuel and then exhausting a very hot and very dangerous gas makes the car – I wouldn't say a weapon, but it's close," he told Dezeen.

"So that idea of the driver taming the beast was very much reflected in design in the past, and it became part of car culture. It's something that we as designers used very well in translating it into a design language," he continued.

"But now with electrification, that big component of danger in the powertrain itself has disappeared."

Front grilles resembling bared teeth make way for a smoother face, especially since the battery requires much less cooling than an ICE.

Inside, electric car dashboards often light up like spaceships as part of a bid to communicate intelligence rather than aggression.

Meanwhile, the roar of the engine is replaced by carefully synthesised soundscapes – with BMW even procuring the services of Oscar-winning composer Hans Zimmer for the iX.

Beyond just having design similarities to one another, even the more adventurous EVs on the market do not stray far from the appearance of conventional cars.

Part of that is down to safety regulations, which mandate certain features, but aerodynamics is another major factor.

EV battery technology remains fairly rudimentary, meaning the cars' aesthetics are still heavily at the mercy of the wind tunnel.

"Right now we're trying to squeeze as much range out of those battery packs through efficiency of aerodynamics, so you start to see a lot of the cars have a similar silhouette," said Arroba. "What I predict is that you'll see a lot more diversity as the technology progresses."

"What I do see in the future, and I can't wait, is that when battery technology reaches a point where the ranges are just fine and we can scale them down again I think we will see more variety in body styles again, with less focus on aerodynamics," echoed Missoni.

At present, an increasingly large proportion of electric cars are SUVs or SUV crossovers, including the Nissan Aria and the Tesla Model Y (top). Manufacturers claim that high-riders work well with the thick battery skateboards, though Graves has another explanation.

"It's very difficult to make profit from electric cars so they all get to SUVs because they make a shedload of money off them with much smaller volume," he said.

This tendency towards larger models compounds a major issue for EVs: weight. Many of the most popular models clock in at well over two tonnes.

"The batteries rely a lot on large quantities of heavy metals like lithium and cobalt so are incredibly heavy, which is the last thing we need," said Graves.

"Inherited idea" of car design

Heavy cars are popular but have several significant downsides. They are a threat to pedestrians, particularly since electric cars can often go from standing to 100 kilometres per hour in just three seconds.

Bulkiness is also bad for energy and resource efficiency, with the American Council for an Energy-Efficient Economy (ACEEE) ranking the largest EVs as worse for the environment than smaller gas cars.

And it poses problems for infrastructure, causing more damage to road surfaces, while warnings recently surfaced that ageing car parks could collapse under the weight of EVs.

Against that backdrop, some argue that electrification should trigger a complete rethink of the way cars are designed.

Among them is Håkan Lutz, the chief executive of Swedish company Luvly, which this year will launch a mini electric car weighing less than 400 kilograms.

To achieve such lightness, it replaces the skateboard with a tub wrapped in a thermoplastic shell, propelled by a pair of removable 15-kilogram batteries.

"We've inherited an idea of what a car should be," Lutz told Dezeen. "There is no way that we can continue with such wasteful consumption of transport."

"Nowadays, cars transport 1.2 people 36 kilometres within the city – that's what they do. What we've done is just taken this as a fact and built a vehicle that is optimised for that use case," he continued.

In any case, by the time EVs become the norm, another form of technology – artificial intelligence-powered self-driving – could deliver a fundamental revolution of the car.

"When you start to be in that realm, then you can talk more about changing what is possible in the car," said Dias.

PriestmanGoode is working on a project to deliver an autonomous vehicle for Dromos that would operate as part of a fleet on a dedicated, fixed-loop network.

It believes these kinds of systems are not far off, and the boxy appearance of the Dromos car is notably similar to other visions of autonomous cars from Cruise and Jaguar Land Rover.

Meanwhile, car manufacturers frequently predict that driverless cars will become moving entertainment spaces – with Sony signalling a move into the industry.

"Autonomy is going to change the game," said Arroba.

Dezeen in Depth
If you enjoy reading Dezeen's interviews, opinions and features, subscribe to Dezeen In Depth. Sent on the last Friday of each month, this newsletter provides a single place to read about the design and architecture stories behind the headlines.

The post How electric-vehicle technology is changing car design appeared first on Dezeen.

The latest edition of our Dezeen Debate newsletter features a flat-pack mini electric car by Stockholm tech company Luvly. Subscribe to Dezeen Debate now.

Tech company Luvly has designed a flat-pack mini electric car named Luvly O that it thinks may revolutionise urban transport.

The car, which is in the final stages of development, is set to be released in the second half of 2023.

Commenters discussed the project, with one arguing that "the future of urban transport is better public transit," while another described it as "a nice-looking car".

Other stories in this week's newsletter that fired up the comments section included an angular timber viewing tower by Snøhetta, a 3D-printed wave-energy collector by WAVR and an opinion piece by Robert Bevan on the implications of Charles III's love for traditional architecture.

Dezeen Debate

Dezeen Debate is sent every Thursday and features a selection of the best reader comments and most talked-about stories. Read the latest edition of Dezeen Debate or subscribe here.

You can also subscribe to our other newsletters; Dezeen Agenda is sent every Tuesday containing a selection of the most important news highlights from the week, Dezeen Daily is our daily bulletin that contains every story published in the preceding 24 hours and Dezeen In Depth is sent on the last Friday of every month and delves deeper into the major stories shaping architecture and design.

The post Dezeen Debate features "nice-looking" flat-pack mini electric car appeared first on Dezeen.

Stockholm tech company Luvly is set to launch Luvly O, a flat-pack mini electric car that it claims could be the future of urban transport.

At just under 400 kilograms, the Luvly O weighs around a quarter of a typical electric vehicle (EV) and is "significantly more energy efficient and cheaper to buy and run than almost all ICE and electric cars," according to the brand.

"The light weight of the Luvly O means that it is immensely more efficient in-use, with energy consumption on the order of 60Wh/km (96Wh/mi), about two to four times better than 'full-size' electric cars," Luvly told Dezeen.

Designed by Joachim Nordwall, formerly of Swedish hypercar brand Koenigsegg, the vehicle is currently in the final stages of development and is set to launch in the second half of 2023.

Luvly CEO Håkan Lutz, who co-founded the company in 2015, believes that light urban vehicles (LUVs) such as Luvly could revolutionise mobility in cities and trigger a shift away from oversized cars.

"The average European uses a car for 33 kilometres a day, carrying one to two people, in a city, at slow speeds," he told Dezeen.

"For this, the average car is obviously too big. Superfluous cars produce more pollution, are louder, take up more space and are more dangerous to pedestrians."

The four-seater Luvly O has a range of 100 kilometres and a top speed of 90 kilometres per hour, delivered by two removable batteries weighing only 15 kilograms each.

It is 2.7 metres long, 1.53 metres wide and 1.44 metres tall. In comparison, the Tesla Model Y, Europe's best-selling electric vehicle, is 4.75 metres long and weighs more than 1,900 kilograms.

To meet an acceptable level of safety without piling on weight, the Luvly O borrows from the design of formula racing cars with energy-absorbers positioned around the chassis and passengers enveloped in a "sandwich-composite safety cell".

"Ultimately, consumers need to abandon the notion that bigger is better," added Lutz. "Reducing the size of cars in our cities will result in a plethora of environmental and societal benefits, lowering emissions and meaning that city councils can focus on redesigning our streets for people, not cars."

Luvly claims that energy consumption from the production, shipping, and distribution of LUVs such as Luvly is up to 80 per cent lower compared with electric cars.

The parts for Luvly will be shipped flat-pack to "micro-factories" near major markets where they will be assembled through a largely snap-together process before being delivered to customers.

All the parts required for 20 LUVs can be transported in a single shipping container. Nearly all the components are recyclable, according to Luvly.

Luvly also sells licenses to its patented technical platform, allowing organisations to manufacture their own versions of the Luvly O.

Cars have been consistently growing in size for decades, but Lutz argues that people are ready for something different.

"Amongst city-dwellers, there is growing frustration over the polluted air, congestion and cost incurred by cars," he said.

"If you want any proof that there is an appetite for mini-mobility vehicles, just look at how popular E-scooters have become in every major European city."

In a recent interview with Dezeen, Peugeot's head of concepts Philippe Emmanuel-Jean agreed that electrification could see city cars get smaller, while Maserati's CEO said it is designing electric cars to be as fun to drive as those with combustion engines.

The images are courtesy of Luvly.

The post Luvly develops flat-pack mini EV to be "significantly more energy-efficient" appeared first on Dezeen.

Maserati CEO Davide Grasso explains how the Italian luxury car brand is seeking to ensure its electric vehicles are just as fun to drive as those with combustion engines in a conversation with Dezeen.

Speaking at a roundtable event in London, Grasso responded to a question from Dezeen about the common perception that electric cars are boring compared to combustion engine cars.

"It's about driving experience, who says they have to be dull?" he said.

"If the majority of the electric cars are dull – I'm not saying that, but it's what I'm hearing from you – then this is an opportunity for us."

"We don't sell engines, we sell luxury driving experiences"

Grasso claimed that Maserati, which just unveiled its first fully electric vehicle at Milan design week, believes that its electric cars will have just as much charisma as the petrol-powered sports cars that made the marque its name.

He argued that although the combustion engine was a key component of past models, the joy of driving could still be retained when replacing it with an electric drivetrain.

"We don't sell engines, we sell luxury driving experiences," said Grasso, who became CEO of the brand in 2019.

"If you take out one piece of the puzzle which is much appreciated, you have to make sure you replace it with something that is at that level, if not superior."

"Our goal is to provide the same benchmark level experience using a state-of-the-art system of electric motors versus a state-of-the-art combustion engine," he continued.

"We need to take the Maserati DNA into the future"

Maserati aims to replicate the feeling of driving its combustion-engine sports cars in electric versions through strategic positioning of the motors, Grasso explained.

"'What makes a Maserati special' is the first question that we asked ourselves – and how do we put in an engine which is different from what we used to have?" he said.

"Maserati cars have a unique type of drivability due to the fact that they have a long nose as the non-electric engine used to be on the axis, and that gives it a completely different handling than any other car," he continued.

"To keep the drivability of it you change the way you put batteries compared to what anybody else does – everybody else puts it towards the bottom, we put it in a T, because that keeps the central gravity low. Everybody's got one engine or two engines, we have three, because we have engines on both the rear wheels."

Grasso believes that these changes will mean Maserati's electric cars retain the distinct feeling of its previous cars.

"These are all things that have to be consistent, because we need to take the Maserati DNA into the future, respecting the brand," he explained.

"It's the same driving experience... but if you go and X-ray the cars they are really different."

Maserati has also focused on creating a sound for their electric vehicles intended to reflect the brand's ethos. Developed over 18 months, the sound is based on the noise generated by the electric motors.

"An electric car, just because it doesn't make much noise, doesn't mean that it is dull," he said.

"It took us 18 months to develop the sound, because the sound is an essential element of the driving experience. And the sound for the electric engine is very different."

Tipping point for electrification "is behind us"

Maserati's GranTurismo Folgore, which will go on sale this summer, is the brand's first fully-electric vehicle created as part of its plan to transition to only offering electric cars by 2030.

However, Grasso believes that due to the rapid speed of electric adoption, the manufacturer may phase out combustion engine cars before its self-imposed deadline.

"The speed of the movement towards electrification is increasing – the tipping point is behind us," he said.

"So the horizon that we have towards 2030, to be fully electric for Maserati, may happen a little earlier."

Although Maserati currently plans to build internal combustion engine (ICE) versions of its sports cars for the next seven years, Grasso said the brand was committed to electric.

He described these remaining fossil-fuel vehicles as a "last dance", suggesting that people still committed to combustion engines were "dinosaurs".

"It's moving and accelerating, but right now we're giving people freedom to choose and to stay with the ICE, knowing that the ICE will be a celebratory moment of the last dance," he said.

"I remember, because I worked with with Apple at that time, there were names to identify those in 2010 or '11 holding onto their Blackberry – you know, they were calling them the dinosaurs."

Maserati is among a group of brands including Bentley, Buick, Fiat, Volvo and Mercedes-Benz that are set to be all-electric by 2030.

Other brands to recently unveil their first electric cars include Rolls-Royce and Sony, which revealed a "moving entertainment space".

The post "If the majority of electric cars are dull, this is an opportunity" says Maserati CEO appeared first on Dezeen.

Italian sports car brand Maserati has presented a customised version of it first fully-electric car, the GranTurismo Folgore, during Milan design week.

Named Folgore, which means lightning in Italian, the all-electric version of the GranTurismo is the Italian brand's first fully-electric car.

"The new GranTurismo Folgore is the first car in Maserati history to adopt a 100 per cent electric battery-based powertrain," Maserati's head of design Klaus Busse told Dezeen.

"As the first Italian luxury automotive brand to offer such a product, it was important for us to showcase, at Milan design week, an artistic expression of the Trident's innovative future."

Set to be available later this year, the GranTurismo Folgore will be launched alongside a petrol version of the car as the start of the company's transition to be an all-electric brand by 2030.

The limited-edition version of the car, named One Off Luce, was described as a "chromatic mirrored monolith, engraved with a dynamic laser-etched pattern". It was presented at Maserati's Milan retail store as part of a celebration of the GranTurismo range.

"The GranTurismo One Off Luce is a statement of innovation and sustainability, featuring a full-electric Folgore engine, literally reflects Maserati's experimentation and constant research," said Busse.

"I believe 'design' in general is a great vessel for creativity and inspiration and the global buzz of Milan design week – that has become one of the hottest stages for brands to show up – confirms this," he explained. "Within design, cars can be a great tool to showcase contemporary culture, creativity... and a great story!"

"This year, with the return of the Maserati's most iconic creation – the GranTurismo available for the first time also in its full-electric Folgore version – we decided to create some artistic GT One-Offs showcasing the Trident's precious heritage and our forward-thinking attitude and innovation," he continued.

The GranTurismo Folgore will have the same chassis as the V8 version but will be powered by three 300 kilowatt motors – two at the rear and one at the front.

According to Maserati, the car can go from 0 to 100 kilometres per hour in just 2.7 seconds and can reach a top speed of 325 kilometres per hour. It can travel up to 450 kilometres on a full charge.

Maserati is the latest brand to unveil its first electric car. Earlier this year Sony unveiled its first electric vehicle, which was designed as a "moving entertainment space", while Rolls-Royce revealed its first all-electric car in October.

Last year Lightyear launched the "world's first production-ready" solar-powered car.

The images are courtesy of Maserati.

The post Maserati showcases first electric car at Milan design week appeared first on Dezeen.

Pins on our electric cars board are some of the most popular on Dezeen's Pinterest. Here we round up eight of the most innovative electric cars.

With the continued transition to electric cars, concept designs and newly-unveiled models are often trending on Pinterest.

Along with car companies they are being designed by designers like Heatherwick Studio, electronics brand Sony and late fashion design Virgil Abloh.

Scroll down to see eight innovative projects pinned on Dezeen's Pinterest and browse our popular electric cars board to see more.

Project Maybach by Mercedes-Benz and Virgil Abloh

German brand Mercedes Benz showcased a solar-cell-powered electric car at Miami Art Week 2021 which the brand designed in collaboration with the late fashion designer Virgil Abloh.

Named Project Maybach, the concept car featured a transparent front bonnet, which contains solar cells that charge its battery.

Find out more about Project Maybach ›

Polestar O2 by Polestar

Electric carmaker Polestar designed the Polestar 02 with the aim of combining the attributes of a sports car with the brand's sustainability values.

A cinematic drone is stored behind the rear seat of the convertible and can be used to follow, and film, the car at speeds of up to 90 kilometres per hour.

Find out more about Polestar O2 ›

The Spectre coupe by Rolls-Royce

The Spectre coupe is the luxury brand's first all-electric car. The car has a drag coefficient of 0.25cd making it Rolls-Royce's most aerodynamic car.

The Spectre features a front grill that glows in the dark and can be controlled by a digital dashboard called Spirit. An app called Whispers also makes it possible for owners to interact with it remotely.

Find out more about the Spectre coupe ›

Afeela EV by Sony and Honda

The Afeela EV is an electric sedan prototype created by electronics brand Sony and car manufacturer Honda. It uses 45 different sensors and cameras to all it to drive autonomously.

The interior interface, along with screens for watching movies and playing games, was developed by gaming company Epic Games.

Find out more about Afeela EV ›

The Aptera car by Aptera

Powered by solar and electric energy, the Aptera car has 180 solar cells integrated into its body that allow it to be charged using solar energy from the sun.

On a full charge, which can also be done using a cord a charging station, it can have a range of up to 1,000 miles.

Find out more about the Aptera ›

Arrival by Arrival

Designed for ride-sharing company Uber, the Arrival Car was described by the company as "super minimal".

It was created for built-up areas where ride-hailing is the most popular mode of travel and has a large, touchscreen digital dashboard that can be used to control navigation, bluetooth phone connection and temperature settings.

Find out more about Arrival ›

 i Vision Circular by BMW

German brand BMW's i Vision Circular concept car was made from recycled and recyclable materials and has detachable connections so its parts can be separated and reused.

Instead of using paint, the brand coated and tempered the car's exterior in shimmering shades of copper and blue. Inside the car, upholstery and carpet were made from old BMW seat covers.

Find out more about i Vision Circular ›

Airo by Heatherwick Studio

The Airo electric car concept by UK studio Heatherwick Studio was designed for Chinese brand IM Motors. It was designed to be equipped with a high-efficiency particulate air-filtering system that will allow the car to clean the air as it drives.

The car was designed as a multifunction room with car seats that face each other and are rotatable. It can also be used as a bedroom as the seats fully recline to create a double bed.

Find out more about Airo ›

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The "global footprint of the automotive in big cities" could shrink thanks to advances in car technology, Peugeot's Philippe-Emmanuel Jean told Dezeen at the European unveiling of the brand's Inception Concept EV.

Swapping the conventional internal combustion engine (ICE) for batteries, which are reducing in size, means car manufacturers will be able to produce spacious interiors in smaller vehicles, the Peugeot head of concept cars and brand planning said.

"The footprint on ICE cars is not that good because the engine takes up a lot of space, so at the end you have a big footprint and a space for people which is not that big," Jean said.

"For electric platforms the footprint is much better because in the same space you can have a bigger space for people – that's what helps us to create this living-room effect we want in our cars," he added.

"Especially in front of the car you free more space, and that's something which is great for people but also in terms of footprint, because in a compact car you can have a space for people which is as big as a space in maybe a bigger car when you look at ICE cars."

Asked if this could lead to family-sized cars becoming smaller, Jean responded: "Clearly."

"It's also interesting for big cities because you can have more space in more compact cars, and at the end, the global footprint of the automotive in big cities is also less important – which, I think, is the direction that is important for the future," he said.

Jean spoke to Dezeen at an event in Paris where European media were given a glimpse of Peugeot's new Inception Concept electric vehicle (EV) for the first time.

One of the concept car's defining features is a sweeping windscreen that extends down within a foot of the front, made possible by the battery sitting on the floor of the vehicle instead of under the bonnet.

Described by Jean as a design "manifesto", the five-metre-long Inception Concept has a dramatic, angular form that was partly informed by brutalist architecture.

The concept vehicle is said to forecast the direction of Peugeot's production cars from around 2025, with the French automaker aiming to move upmarket and place a greater emphasis on the "driving experience".

Among the features in the Inception Concept expected to shortly be rolled out more widely by Peugeot is the Hypersquare, which replaces the steering wheel.

This is part of Peugeot's plan to introduce electronic steering – also known as steer-by-wire – by 2025, which will be more sensitive than conventional analogue steering.

The Hypersquare, which was informed by video games, is a rectilinear device with circular holes in each of its corners that mimic the feel of a steering wheel and also features a tablet-type touchscreen.

It replaces mechanical links with digital electric controls and is controlled by movements similar to how we use a smartphone.

In a nod to self-driving technology, at the touch of a button the Hypersquare and a cylindrical dashboard unit fold away to be replaced by a screen nearly the full width of the car.

The car is dominated by a glass roof with dichroic Narema glazing that reflects warmer colours externally, but more blues on the inside.

Peugeot's design team took cues from the François-Mitterrand Library and Institut Français de la Mode in Paris when selecting the glass.

Other motifs expected to make it to mass-market Peugeot cars include chunky air vents and triple-strip headlights with a starry-sky effect panel.

The Inception Concept also has oversized wheels with tubeless tyres, with a colour-changing marque that stays upright as the wheels turn.

The wheel hubs are made from a carbon-fibre-like material produced from textile offcuts leftover in the Peugeot design studio from a previous concept car project. The same material also forms the chassis.

It is one of several examples of experiments with materials used in the vehicle.

The matte finish uses less varnish than typical car paint, giving it a smaller carbon footprint while also accentuating the shine of the glass.

Inside, brushed steel is left exposed alongside matching silvery velvet. The seats have been designed to leave parts of their materials exposed in a technique Peugeot calls "air quilting", which it claims assists recycling.

The floor is made of 3D-printed resin bumps laid over velvet. This same process was used by Emeric Tchatchoua of fashion brand 3 Paradis to produce a Peugeot-branded jacket that accompanied the Inception Concept launch.

The lower parts of the car body are also 3D printed, producing a perforated effect.

Many aspects of the Inception Concept's design, such as the amount of glass at the front and the heavily reclining seats, would not pass safety checks.

But Jean said the two-year project had enabled Peugeot's design team to try new things that would otherwise not have been possible.

"You have to think about a concept car like a laboratory for our designers," he said.

"It's really pushing the boundaries of creativity with a concept car, testing solutions in terms of design, in terms of technology, and then in parallel, adapting it for the next generation of production cars."

"So a concept car has really a great role to play in the future of Peugeot and yes, it's a lot of time, it's a lot of energy for the whole team, but it's really important if you want to really push the boundaries and design attractive products for the future," he added.

On the subject of using recycled materials in mainstream cars, he indicated that fully circular design remains a long way off.

"The car industry is a world of constraints so clearly it's a long process," said Jean. "What's interesting for us is to test solutions with concept cars and then work with the engineers to bring the solutions into production, but of course it also takes a lot of time."

"But it's definitely something important to us," he continued. "Today it's a matter of responsibility and it's clearly something that Peugeot wants to push forward for the future."

Peugeot, which is part of the transnational car conglomerate Stellantis Group, has made a commitment to be carbon net-zero by 2038 with all its cars sold in Europe to be electric by 2030.

Other concept cars featured on Dezeen include the colour-changing BMW i Vision Dee, the Polestar O2, which has a built-in drone, and Hyundai's electrified remake of its 1980s Grandeur saloon.

The photography is courtesy of Peugeot.

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British automotive company Rolls-Royce has unveiled Phantom Syntopia, a shimmering car with a starry-light interior made in collaboration with designer Iris van Herpen.

Named Phantom Syntopia after Van Herpen's collection of Phantom dresses, the vehicle is modelled on Rolls-Royce's Phantom – its line of highly customisable cars.

The new Phantom comes with bespoke features more commonly found in haute couture fashion including a starry headliner, three-dimensional textile sculptures, silken seating and a plush quilt fabric lining.

"For this special collaboration, I was inspired by the concept of 'Weaving Water' and transformed the sense of being in movement into an immersive experience of fluidity inside the Phantom," Van Herpen said.

"I wanted this to become a state-of-the-art experience being overwhelmed by the forces of nature," she added.

"The powerful movement of the Phantom is woven into the shifting three-dimensional waves inside the car to embody the ingenuity of nature."

Known for her ability to marry cutting-edge technology such as 3D printing with biomimicry – a discipline that looks to nature to find solutions to human needs – Van Herpen often uses water as her inspiration, and the Phantom Syntopia was no exception.

"Phantom Syntopia takes its name from Iris van Herpen's landmark 2018 collection, designed on the principles of biomimicry in which art is inspired by patterns and shapes found in nature," Rolls-Royce explained.

"Like the collection, which comprises a series of highly sculptural garments brought to life through movement, Phantom Syntopia seeks to represent the elusive, ethereal beauty of fluid motion in solid materials through its 'Weaving Water' theme," the brand continued.

In addition to its aesthetic qualities, Rolls-Royce says the vehicle the "most technically complex Bespoke Phantom ever produced", citing its headliner – the material that covers the ceiling – as one of the most challenging aspects.

Designed to look like a 3D object, the headliner is made from a single sheet of leather. It has been decorated with 162 glass organza flower petals and 995 sparkling fibre-optic star lights, many of which were applied by hand.

Other technical innovations include an iridescent paint developed just for the car called Liquid Noir that has been applied to its exterior.

Made from a combination of purple, blue, magenta and gold shades, the paint was applied using a special technique to create a mirror-like effect.

Inside, the front seats are upholstered in grey leather, while the three rear seats are clad in a silk-blend fabric. All of the seats have been created using a traditional rug-making tufting technique.

A cedarwood scent is released through a specially-developed mechanism in the headrests.

According to the car brand, Phantom Syntopia took four years to develop and is meant for private collection. As well as the car itself, Van Herpen will design a one-off garment to compliment the Phantom Syntopia.

The Phantom Syntopia was produced between the Rolls-Royce manufacturing facility and headquarters in Goodwood, England, and Van Herpen's studio in Amsterdam.

Van Herpen is the latest in a string of designers to turn their hands to car design. The late American designer Virgil Abloh collaborated with German car brand Mercedes Benz on Maybach, a black-and-sand coloured limited-edition vehicle.

Meanwhile, fashion brand Moncler partnered with Mercedes-Benz to create Project Mondo G, a puffer jacket-informed car.

The photos are courtesy of Rolls-Royce.

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German car brand Mercedes-Benz has created the Project Mondo G puffer jacket-informed car as its contribution to Moncler's Genius collection, which was unveiled at London Fashion Week.

Designed as an "eye-catching sculptural object", the car is a version of the Mercedes-Benz G-Class with a reflective silver roof and wheels that resemble a puffer jacket. It was unveiled at an event last night in Olympia as part of London Fashion Week.

"Project Mondo G is an art piece that reimagines our iconic G-Class merged with the distinctive design codes of Moncler," Mercedes-Benz chief design officer Gorden Wagener told Dezeen.

"Like our show cars, the basic idea was to create an iconic look – a sculpture on wheels that perfectly accentuates the character of the vehicle."

With the design, Mercedes-Benz aimed to contrast the curved forms of Moncler's quilted puffer jackets with the angular form of the G-Class car.

"The luxurious Moncler puffer jacket plays to the visual contrast of the art piece, set against the angular structure of the G-Class," said Wagener.

"Project Mondo G is an interplay of contrasts, the result is an eye-catching sculptural object, the first of its kind and one-of-a-kind," he added.

Although created as an art piece, the designers aimed to express the functionality, design ethos and versatility of both Moncler's jackets and Mercedes-Benz's vehicles.

"It's an art piece, it has caricature-like features such as a huge zipper, which is a practical reference to the versatility and variability of both objects – the jacket and vehicle," said Wagener.

"Like with other design sectors, we want to generate storytelling through our designs. In this case, it's about the metamorphosis of a purely utility-oriented product into a luxury product."

The project forms part of the fifth edition of Moncler's Genius initiative, which invites creatives to reimagine the brand's signature puffer jacket. In the past Kei Ninomiya has created an all-black collection for the initiative, while Craig Green designed "wearable habitats".

This year's edition sees Moncler move away from collaborating with fashion designers in the favour of brands including Mercedes-Benz and Adidas, along with musicians including Jay Z, Alicia Keys and Pharrell Williams – who was recently announced as creative director of menswear at Louis Vuitton.

The design is the latest collaboration between Mercedes-Benz and a fashion designer. In the past the brand worked with Virgil Abloh to create a conceptual version of its G-Class car called Project Geländewagen and a solar-powered car with transparent front hood.

"Mercedes-Benz set the benchmark in fashion x automotive collaborations, leading with our first co-operation with Virgil Abloh in 2020," explained Wagener.

"Our creative co-operations provide us with new perspectives and ideas that are important to the further development of our brand and our design language. They are the perfect tool for us to showcase our distinctive image and attitude."

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Although the year has just begun, 2023 has seen sideways-driving, colour-changing and pepper-spray-emitting cars unveiled. Here are five of the most unusual cars of 2023 so far.

Ioniq 5 by Hyundai 

Unveiled at this year's CES convention in Las Vegas by car manufacturer Hyundai, this Ioniq 5's unique feature is wheels that rotate 90 degrees, allowing the car to move sideways.

According to the brand, the technology will allow the car to change direction quicker and make parallel parking easier.

"It allows 90-degree rotation of the wheel when needed, for example, parking and enables crab – sideways – driving and zero-turn, which means rotation without moving forward or backwards," said the brand.

BMW i Vision Dee by BMW

German automobile brand BMW also unveiled its i Vision Dee concept car at the CES convention. The car features colour-changing technology that allows the exterior to be covered in customised, digitally controlled patterns featuring 32 colours.

To achieve this feat, the entire exterior of the car was covered in e-ink film and divided into 240 segments that can each be individually controlled.

Rezvani Vengeance by Rezvani Motors

Car brand Rezvani Motors revealed a car that it believes is the "world's most aggressive SUV".

Named the Rezvani Vengeance, the car is equipped with numerous security features that are more commonly found in video games or on military vehicles. Features include electrified door handles, pepper-spray-emitting wing mirrors, bulletproof glass and electromagnetic pulse protection.

Kicks 327 by Nissan and New Balance

Created as a collaboration between automotive brand Nissan and sportswear company New Balance, the Kicks 327 car was designed to resemble a trainer.

Made as a promotion for the car band's Kicks SUV, the vehicle was created as a mobile version of New Balance's 327 trainer as the car's name is slang for trainers.

"The car name Kicks means sneaker in English slang," explained Nissan. "This became the origin of the idea and led to the realisation of a tie-up with sneakers."

Afeela EV by Sony and Honda

While not as attention-grabbing as some others unveiled in 2023, the Afeela EV marks Sony's first ever car.

Designed as a "moving entertainment space", the vehicle prioritises entertainment and interaction with numerous screens for movies, games and "infotainment" both inside and on the exterior of the car.

"We want to think out of the box to revisit the underlying philosophy of vehicle design," said CEO of Sony Honda Mobility Yasuhide Mizuno.

"In addition to movies, games and music, we envision a new in-cabin experience using our expertise of UX and UI technologies."

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Automotive brand Nissan has collaborated with sportswear company New Balance to create the Kicks 327 – a car that resembles a trainer.

Created to promote Nissan's electric Kicks SUV, the collaboration is a play on the car's name, which is slang for trainers.

"The car name Kicks means sneaker in English slang," explained Nissan. "This became the origin of the idea and led to the realisation of a tie-up with sneakers."

The SUV was adorned with a body wrap to give it the appearance of a grey New Balance 327 trainer.

The shoe's suede upper was replicated with a graphic print above the wheel arches, while laces were emblazoned on the vehicle's bonnet and the collar, tongue and eyestay were replicated on the roof.

According to Nissan, the 327 trainer was picked for the collaboration because its appearance matches that of the SUV.

"The 327 has a stylish SUV-like appearance and is light and sticks to the ground," the brand explained.

"We thought it would match the concept of the Nissan Kicks e-Power 4WD, which allows you to enjoy driving in any situation, whether on the street or off-road."

Footwear brand New Balance also emphasised that the trainer's ethos matches that of the SUV.

"327 is a model born from the design inspiration of New Balance's road, trail and race running shoes in the 70s," said New Balance Japan marketing director Ken Suzuki.

"The stylish design and the sole design of the trail running model have been sublimated as fashion, making it a shoe that shines in the city," he continued.

"When I heard about the Kicks concept from Nissan, I immediately thought that it would match the 327."

The Kicks 327 will be on display at various locations in Tokyo throughout February and will also be driven around the city.

It is one of several unusual cars already unveiled in 2023, with Rezvani Motors launching the "world's most aggressive SUV", Hyundai debuting a car that can drive sideways and BMW unveiling its colour-changing i Vision Dee concept.

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The widespread adoption of self-driving cars will create a major bump in carbon emissions without changes to their design, a study from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology has found.

The study found that with a mass global takeup of autonomous vehicles, the powerful onboard computers needed to run them could generate as many greenhouse gas emissions as all the data centres in operation today.

These data centres currently produce around 0.14 gigatonnes of greenhouse gas emissions per year, equivalent to the entire output of Argentina or around 0.3 per cent of global emissions, according to the researchers.

A similar amount would be generated by one billion autonomous vehicles – fewer than the number of cars in the world today – each driving one hour per day with a computer consuming 840 watts of power.

With growing adoption, these emissions could spiral unless computing power is made more efficient at a significantly faster pace, determined the study, which used statistical modelling to test several possible future scenarios and found this to be true in over 90 per cent of cases.

Emissions from self-driving cars could become "enormous problem"

"If we just keep the business-as-usual trends in decarbonisation and the current rate of hardware efficiency improvements, it doesn't seem like it is going to be enough to constrain the emissions from computing onboard autonomous vehicles," said Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) graduate student Soumya Sudhakar, who co-authored the study.

"This has the potential to become an enormous problem. But if we get ahead of it, we could design more efficient autonomous vehicles that have a smaller carbon footprint from the start."

The researchers built their model around four variables: the number of vehicles in the global fleet, the power of each computer on each vehicle, the hours driven by each vehicle and the amount of greenhouse gases emitted per unit of electricity produced.

Sudhakar conducted the study with her co-advisors, associate professors Vivienne Sze and Sertac Karaman, with their findings published in the peer-reviewed journal IEEE Micro.

Emissions come from cars using "20 eyes at the same time"

The high emissions are the result of the huge computing workload placed on each self-driving vehicle. The researchers' modelling assumes that the vehicles use a similar algorithm to what is popular today – a multi-task learning deep neural network, so called because it can perform many tasks at once.

These neural networks have to process an onslaught of data, simultaneously analysing the inputs provided by several onboard cameras with high frame rates to allow the car to drive on its own.

The study gives the example of an autonomous vehicle with 10 deep neural networks processing images from 10 cameras. If it drove for one hour a day, that vehicle would make 21.6 million daily inferences, in which the algorithm applies logical rules to analyse new information.

One billion vehicles would make 21,600 trillion inferences. To put that into perspective, the researchers say all of Facebook's data centres worldwide currently make a few trillion inferences each day.

"These vehicles could actually be using a ton of computer power," said Karaman. "They have a 360-degree view of the world, so while we have two eyes they may have 20 eyes, looking all over the place and trying to understand all the things that are happening at the same time."

More specialised hardware could be route forward

To avoid carbon emissions from escalating in line with the growing adoption of self-driving cars, the researchers argue that we will need to improve the efficiency of computer processors more quickly than we currently are so that they consume less energy for the same tasks.

In a scenario where 95 per cent of global vehicles are autonomous in 2050, the study suggests that the technology's efficiency must double about every 1.1 years, such that each autonomous vehicle is consuming less than 1.2 kilowatts of energy for computing.

This could be done by creating more specialised hardware for driving-related tasks and algorithms. Alternatively, the algorithms themselves could be made more efficient so they use less computing power, although this might mean they are less accurate.

Autonomous vehicles have been touted as the future for moving both people and goods, although their rollout has not come as quickly as some have predicted and several carmakers have recently scaled back their plans for the technology.

Architecture studio BIG is still working with the technology, developing a hyperloop-capable autonomous vehicle as part of its masterplan for the US city of Telosa.

The image is courtesy of Christine Daniloff, MIT.

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Automotive company Rezvani Motors has launched a car with security features including electrified door handles and pepper spray-emitting wing mirrors that are more commonly found on military vehicles or in video games.

"The Rezvani Vengeance is the world's most aggressive and most capable three-row SUVs," said the Californian brand.

The 6,200-pound (2,812-kilogram) SUV has a chunky body with a "muscular" back end mounted on 35-inch pick-up style tyres suited to off-road driving.

It was designed by video games designer Milen Ivanov, who was tasked with creating a car that wouldn't look out of place in a science fiction video game.

"The concept behind Vengeance is to make a car that has a badass design, an element of security, and a car comes out of the world of dreams to be driven on the road every day," Rezvani Motors president Cynthia Karimi told Dezeen.

"In a world of SUVs, you look at the Rezvani Vengeance and you see all the muscular proportions and definitely feel this is a confident and very aggressive design," Karimi told Dezeen.

"The goal was to put a science fiction video game concept car in people's driveways," added Rezvani Motors chief executive officer Ferris Rezvani.

Buyers can choose from twenty additional security features from the company's Bulletproof Military Package. Among the more unique aspects are electrified door handles and wing mirrors that can shoot pepper spray.

Meanwhile, electromagnetic pulse protection allows the car to automatically steer away from perceived danger and bulletproof glass is designed to protect it from explosions.

Owners will be able to purchase bulletproof vests, helmets and gas masks along with the car.

A 360-degree camera and a rearview camera mirror replace the car's rear window and offer blind-spot monitoring and collision alerts that interpret the proximity and likeliness of collisions, and automatically engage the brakes when required.

Inside, it has enough space for up to eight passengers. The options for customers include a three-seat bench upholstered with leather and an intercom system.

Although Rezvani Motors believes that the car will make its occupants feel safe, research has shown that SUVs are can cause severe injury to cyclists and pedestrians in crashes.

Karimi claims that the model is popular among "accomplished people" who require a secure car.

"Our audience is people who want to possess something, unique, love design, and want to drive a car that gives them peace of mind if they should ever need it," she said.

"Our client base currently consists of accomplished people, celebrities and people who need a security vehicle," Karimi continued.

Demand for SUVs and sports activity vehicles has risen rapidly in recent years. There were less than 50 million SUVs in 2010 and that figure has now risen to 280 million. SUVs accounted for a third of new cars in the EU in 2019.

The increase has not come without its problems. SUVs are a large contributor to the increase in global carbon emissions over the past decade.

Last year, the fuel saved by the rise of electric vehicles around the world was cancelled out by the use of SUVs, according to the International Energy Agency.

The mid-size SUV is the company's third SUV, following the Tank and the Hercules 6x6.

The release of the Rezvani Vengeance was met with criticism including The Guardian newspaper's architecture and design critic Oliver Wainwright who described it as a "weaponised SUV set to terrify America's streets".

Rezvani Motors is not the only company to release an SUV with an aggressive appearance. Others include Tesla's Model Y, an electric car designed to feel like a sportscar and Chinese startup Byton's concept car, a self-driving SUV that it describes as the "next generation smart device".

The images are courtesy of Rezvani Motors.

The post Rezvani Motors unveils "world's most aggressive SUV" appeared first on Dezeen.

In this week's comments update, readers are discussing an opinion piece by Phineas Harper that argues "cities should not just build green transport but actively dismantle car infrastructure".

Harper suggests that instead of desperately trying to reduce road congestion in the short term, politicians should be using traffic as a tool for making urban transport more sustainable.

Many readers agreed but several took to the comments to explore how cars could be incorporated into cities, rather than designed out.

"Private cars create more problems than they solve"

Becks commented: "Maybe the discussion should be about making the car part of public transport in cities and not about private ownership."

"The much-vilified car has huge value in that it's the only mode that is ready when you want to go and goes from where you are, all the way to where you want to go – and it's yours," contested Peter Samuel.

"Cities that phase out cars will die," they continued. "People and economic activity will abandon such cities for places that do cater to cars. Cars are not the villain."

On the other side of the debate, Gytis Bickus thought that private cars will become "an outdated thing of the past".

"They are inefficient, expensive, and create more problems than they solve," they said. "Kind of like smoking was once fine, until people realised it only damages your health and everyone around you."

What do you think the future of cars is? Join the discussion ›

"Form above function"

Dutch architecture studio MVRDV has unveiled designs for a 140,000 square metre library in Wuhan with a sweeping form that takes cues from the topography of its surroundings.

While impressed, Bob Patiño worried about the functionality. "It is quite an impressive interior space, but books near the huge glass facade will discolour," he said. "The ceiling-high shelves and their contents look like a mere adornment – form above function."

JZ, however, was purely impressed by the form. "Seems like an excellent selection of dramatic shapes to strike grand gestures," they commented. "Baroque Modernism."

Other commenters discussed the friction between form and function. Leo said: "I like the shapes, but there is way too much glass for my liking."

Eugene Ely was more optimistic. "Public libraries today are not the hermetic spaces of the past," they said. "People barely read anymore anyway, it needs to be a centre of energy and interest to get people into the building in the first place. Whether it succeeds at that is a different issue."

Do you think form and function are balanced in these library plans? Join the discussion ›

"If you actually rode an electric motorcycle you’d be grinning ear to ear"

In an interview with Dezeen Harley-Davidson CEO Jochen Zeitz explained how the company is transitioning to become an all-electric brand in a process that will take decades.

The news prompted debate in the comments section with Gene commenting: "Haters hate. Leaders move forward and build a new future every day."

Sean Marshall Palmer said: "Electric motorcycles do seem anticlimactic to me but, as a Harley owner, I applaud their efforts to try to stay relevant and competitive."

Jack Jones argued that even if "the electric thing is turning you off, if you actually rode a Harley-Davidson LiveWire [which is an electric motorcycle], you'd be grinning ear to ear."

Eric Mallory commented: "Harley has finally realized that 85 per cent of their customers are headed for the nursing home. Time to get some fresh blood."

Do you think electric-only models make sense for Harley-Davidson's future? Join the discussion ›

"I could live there, no problem"

Readers are discussing Sparano + Mooney's cedar-clad home, cantilevered over a canyon in Utah.

"Beautiful setting," said Apsco Radiales. "I could live there, no problem." However, they were not convinced about the black colour of the siding. "Why not white or left as is?"

Scot M thought the project was perfect. "Love the simplest of thought in the design of this home", they said.

But IDracula felt differently, calling it "another unliveable, boring house by an architect for a boring client".

Boring or beautiful, what do you think? Join the discussion ›

Comments update

Dezeen is the world's most commented architecture and design magazine, receiving thousands of comments each month from readers. Keep up to date on the latest discussions on our comments page and subscribe to our weekly Debate newsletter, where we feature the best reader comments from stories in the last seven days.

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Car manufacturer Hyundai has revealed an Ioniq 5 car with wheels that can rotate up to 90 degrees so that it can "crab" drive sideways at this year's Consumer Electronics Show.

Developed by Hyundai Motor Group's car parts producer arm Hyundai Mobis, the technology was showcased on a real vehicle for the first time on the electric Ioniq 5 car, which was on display at Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2023.

Hyundai Mobis has integrated sideways driving into an Ioniq 5

The concept, which was first unveiled at CES 2018, enables vehicles to move forwards and backwards like a traditional vehicle or sideways and diagonally.

It works by integrating a mobility system that the brand has dubbed an "e-Corner module" or "e-Corner system" which allows the car to be driven sideways when the wheels are turned 90 degrees.

"The e-Corner module is a technology that combines steering, braking, suspension and drive systems into a wheel," Hyundai Mobis told Dezeen.

Each wheel has its own independent electric motor and is connected to a new suspension system, which allows the driver to steer each wheel independently.

In a video released by Hyundai Mobis, the Ioniq 5 car can be seen completing manoeuvres such as moving diagonally and spinning in one direction on the spot while the front two wheels remain in the same position.

The technology was also shown on a concept model vehicle unveiled by Hyundai Mobis at this year's CES.

Hyundai Mobis claims that the technology will allow cars to parallel park easily and change direction more swiftly, which could be beneficial in crowded areas.

"It [the e-Corner system] allows 90-degree rotation of the wheel when needed, for example, parking and enables crab – sideways – driving and zero-turn, which means rotation without moving forward or backwards," the brand said.

"It is also expected to increase the agility of a vehicle running through the narrow streets of the city and accordingly improve the urban driving environment."

Hyundai Mobis said it expected the e-Corner module to be integrated into commercial car production as early as 2025.

Other automotive giants that took their car technology for a spin at the 2023 Consumer Electronics Show include German auto manufacturer BMW and electronics company Sony.

BMW unveiled an updated version of its colour-changing car technology with a concept car that can change from black and white into 32 colours.

Meanwhile, Sony and carmaker Honda showcased an electric car prototype that will function as a "moving entertainment space".

CES 2023 took place in Las Vegas from 5 to 8 January 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

The images are courtesy of Hyundai Mobis.

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The latest edition of our weekly Dezeen Debate newsletter features BMW's i Vision Dee colour-changing concept car. Subscribe to Dezeen Debate now.

BMW revealed the updated version of its colour-changing car technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, expanding the concept from black and white to a full colour palette.

Developed with technology company E Ink, the exterior of the colour-changing car is divided up into 240 segments that can be individually controlled.

Commenters weren't completely sold on the project, though one called it a "Great getaway car!"

"This is probably an indication that automobiles are at the end of their cultural significance when automakers only have novelty left as a marketing approach," wrote another.

"Earlier [BMW] models were excellent. New ones? Less so," said a third.

Other stories in this week's newsletter include a public playground in Melbourne that encourages "risk play", MVRDV's design for a library in Wuhan, China and a biophilia-informed meeting facility with "first class" detailing.

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Instead of desperately trying to reduce road congestion in the short term, politicians should be using traffic as a tool for making urban transport more sustainable, writes Phineas Harper.

New research claims London's roads are the most congested in the world. But rather than wasting money and emissions building new roads in self-defeating attempts to reduce the time that Londoners who drive spend in traffic jams, politicians should be doing the exact opposite. Managed strategically, congestion is critical in supporting the transition to safe, sustainable transport.

Car horns, as every wannabe driver learns (then instantly forgets), can only be legally used in the UK "to warn other road users". "Never sound your horn aggressively" declares the British Highway Code, yet the bleating of horns punched by frustrated drivers venting fury at learners hesitating, cyclists existing, or some other minor inconvenience is a frequent feature in the soundtrack of city life.

Managed strategically, congestion is critical in supporting the transition to safe, sustainable transport

New census data has revealed that just 20 per cent of Londoners commute by car and 41 per cent of London households have no car at all. Yet despite this relatively low level of car ownership, the city is disproportionately designed to incentivise driving. At nearly 20,000 hectares, 12.4 per cent of land in the capital is taken up by roads – significantly more than the just 8.8 per cent of London currently used for housing.

For some boroughs the imbalance is even more extreme. In Tower Hamlets, for example, though 66 per cent of households don't own a car or van, an enormous 17.1 per cent of land is used for roads while only 7.5 per cent is reserved for housing. This dramatic over-provision of road space means that though many Londoners don't drive, the ones who do push the average number of car or van trips per person per year up to 240. London is addicted to cars.

One symptom of this addiction is Jill, a 1,800-tonne tunnelling machine currently burrowing under the Thames. Nicknamed after the first female London bus driver, Jill the drill is scooping out 600,000 tonnes of earth from below the riverbed to make way for a new underground dual carriageway – the Silvertown Tunnel. Inaccessible to walkers and cyclists, and opposed by both the boroughs it will connect, the tunnel will cost more than a billion pounds and lead to a dramatic increase in East End traffic.

Despite its backers' claims that the new tunnel will eliminate "chronic congestion", it is likely to have the obverse effect. Locals, who might otherwise have taken sustainable transport, will be encouraged to drive by the massive new stretch of tarmac. Significantly more cars and HGVs will be drawn to the neighbourhood, creating bottlenecks on both sides of the river.

No amount of new roads will ever eliminate congestion

No amount of new roads will ever eliminate congestion because the more roads get built, the more people drive. This truism of traffic management is called "induced demand" and has, as professor Petter Naess observes in the European Journal of Transport and Infrastructure Research, "been understood theoretically for at least one-and-a-half centuries and demonstrated empirically in several studies over the latest eight decades".

Most obvious in places like Los Angeles, where even colossal 12-lane freeways are regularly clogged as traffic simply increases every time the city adds a lane, induced demand affects London too. In the run up to the 2012 Olympic Games, for example, billions of pounds were spent widening the M25 orbital motorway in the hope of reducing its notorious congestion.

However, a 2021 study led by the former chief scientist of the UK Department for Transport David Metz found that the additional lane had delivered no long-term increase in the speed of travel. Instead, the wider road simply encouraged more Londoners to drive, leading to a 23 per cent increase in traffic, predominantly comprised of locals making short trips.

Cutting car use is not just about reducing exhaust fumes. Electric cars may produce less local pollution than petrol ones but still require enormous quantities of energy and carbon emissions to make and run. They rely on rare metals such as lithium, which the International Energy Agency is already predicting will be in short supply by 2025.

Moreover, car-based urbanism, electric or not, is inherently unsustainable, creating low-density, inefficient and dangerous cities. A grieving parent will find little comfort in learning their child was run over by a Tesla Cybertruck rather than a diesel 4x4.

Ultimately, new roads like the Silvertown Tunnel are entirely antithetical to making the urgent transition to sustainable urbanism. Instead of increasing the amount of land supplied for roads in a self-defeating, short-term effort to relieve congestion, city planners should instead do the exact opposite – strategically removing land from the road network to decrease car use in the long term.

Car-based urbanism, electric or not, is inherently unsustainable

Though shrinking road space may initially appear to drive up congestion, Paris Metropolitan Region senior urban planner Paul Lecroart reports that research spanning 60 cities shows removing lanes from inner city highways quickly reduces traffic by 14 per cent without "deterioration in traffic conditions". Congestion, though impossible to alleviate by building new roads, can, if controlled strategically, be a powerful tool for reducing car use.

Some sustainable travel activists imagine that drivers can be coaxed into breaking their car addictions through investment in public transport and cycle alone. Their hope is that, as green transport options improve, more drivers will organically make the switch and car use and congestion will simply dwindle away without requiring politically-contentious alterations to the road network. Unfortunately this specious fantasy is critically flawed.

The knock-on implication of any fall in car use created by new sustainable transport options is that roads become clearer. But due to induced demand, quieter roads, just like new roads, simply encourage more people to drive again. In short, unless the overall provision of space for cars is reduced, sustainable transport initiatives make cars more seductive just as fast as they provide alternatives in a vicious circle.

To break this cycle, cities should not just build green transport systems but actively dismantle the old car infrastructure at the same time; narrowing roads, replacing car lanes with bus and bike routes, removing car parking spaces from streets, implementing Low Traffic Neighbourhoods, and continuously reducing the amount of land dedicated to cars wherever congestion is too low.

Such measures could be deployed in tandem with driving taxes like Singapore's Electronic Road Pricing, but toll-based solutions disproportionately impact the least well-off and can be easily repealed by future governments. Long-term physical reductions in the percentage of land reserved for cars, on the other hand, permanently reconfigure cities for sustainable transport.

A strategic reduction in road space means completely reframing the narrative around congestion. Congestion cannot be abated with ill-conceived new tunnels and bypasses, but it can play a key role in concert with effective sustainable transport systems in the fight against car addiction. Scrap the Silvertown Tunnel – and build bike lanes instead!

Phineas Harper is director of Open City and formerly deputy director of the Architecture Foundation. He is author of the Architecture Sketchbook (2015) and People's History of Woodcraft Folk (2016).

The photography is by Anouk Fotografeert via Unsplash.

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BMW has unveiled an updated version of its colour-changing car technology at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, expanding the concept from black and white to a full colour palette.

The German auto brand presented the technology as part of its latest concept car, the BMW i Vision Dee, which is on display at CES 2023.

Like its concept from last year, the iX Flow, i Vision Dee features an exterior made from an e-ink film, similar to the material used for a book reader.

But where the iX Flow could only change between black and white, the i Vision Dee boasts up to 32 colours, and its design allows for the creation of completely customised, digitally controlled patterns on demand.

BMW included the colour-changing exterior as part of a suite of features that it said are intended to create a stronger bond between people and their cars. The "Dee" in the name stands for Digital Emotional Experience.

"With the BMW i Vision Dee, we are showcasing what is possible when hardware and software merge," said BMW Group chairman Oliver Zipse.

"In this way, we are able to exploit the full potential of digitalisation to transform the car into an intelligent companion."

Developed with technology company E Ink, the exterior of the car is divided up into 240 segments that can be individually controlled.

The team had to adapt E Ink's technology for curved surfaces and develop new electronic controls and laser cutting processes to create the exterior.

The concept for the i Vision Dee also incorporates other features that are meant to blend the digital and physical worlds and embody a vision for the future of car design.

One is called the Mixed Reality Slider — a five-step slider on the dashboard that introduces immersive digital elements to the interior as you move your finger further along on it.

At step one of the slider, the dash appears analogue, with digital switches and displays hidden until they are needed. In the steps above, driving-related information is displayed on the windscreen display, with step four including augmented-reality projections that could, for example, highlight a cyclist or pedestrian crossing on the road ahead.

Going to the extreme end of the slider would entail entering a fully virtual world, with a digital landscape projected on the dash replacing that of the physical world.

"With BMW i Vision Dee, we are showing how the car can be seamlessly integrated into your digital life and become a trusty companion," said BMW Group design head Adrian van Hooydonk. "The vehicle itself becomes your portal to the digital world – with the driver always in control."

"Implemented the right way, technology will create worthwhile experiences, make you a better driver and simply bring humans and machines closer together."

BMW's windscreen display, which it calls the Head-Up Display, also gets an update with the i Vision Dee. Now extending across the full width of the windscreen, it is one element of the i Vision Dee that is set to be implemented in BMW's production cars. The company said it will be available in its Neue Klasse models from 2025 onwards.

To complete the personalised experience, the concept car offers voice interaction, speaking to the user in a natural language. It also produces "facial expressions" such as winking with its digitally enhanced headlights and grille.

BMW first showed off the colour-changing e-ink technology with last year's black-and-white iX Flow, which imagined it being used to match the driver's mood and conserve energy.

The brand had earlier explored these ideas with the MINI Vision Next 100 concept, where colour-changing made the car adaptable to multiple users.

Photography is courtesy of BMW.

The Consumer Electronics Show is taking place in Las Vegas from 5 to 8 January 2023. See Dezeen Events Guide for an up-to-date list of architecture and design events taking place around the world.

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