Concept Car : Drool Over Green Car

WIRED collected the winners of the Royal College of Art�s Green Concept Car competition. As they say:

Practicality is the last thing anyone considers when designing concept cars. A car made of glass? Windows like gun slits? �But practicality isn�t the point. Concept cars are flights of fantasy carrying auto design into the future. Since our future will be a place where a gallon of gas costs more than a gallon of Scotch, the students at Royal College of Art designed their cars that run on things like electricity and algal fuel.�

These are some of the most imaginitive and forward-thinking designs we�ve ever seen. Lots of people try to do advanced concepts, but some of these are off the moon. The above car was designed by Paul Howse � its a �luxury� car called the Enigma, and its electric motors would be solar-powered. Oh, and the passenger compartment uses �magnetic levitation� to lift and separate it from the rest of the car.

Holy crap, it makes that Minority Report Lexus look like an AMC Gremlin.

Check the link to see them all; they�re all worth a gander. Some are made of cloth, others have living room-inspired interiors that have high levels of IKEA-like customization possible. Beautiful.

Below is the winner of the Best Design Interpretation Award at the Pilkington Automotive Vehicle Design Awards. Frenchie Pierre Sabas� Airflow has wheel-mounted electric motors and is made entirely of glass.

The Phoenix by Sergio Loureiro Da Silva of Spain�

ELETTRICA GREEN CAR

A damp July Sunday in 2007 may well go down in history as the day the practical electric car finally came of age. From a start point just South of Clapham Common, London, an Elettrica two-seater made the 50 mile-odd run all the way to Brighton sea front on a single charge, with battery capacity to spare.

�Range has always been the electric car�s equivalent of the Red Flag act. Like the Red Flag act, with recent developments in lithium-cobalt battery technology, it has now become more of a psychological rather than a practical limitation�, says Vaughan Richmond, partner at Elettrica�s UK agents� Travelelectric.

Organised by the Battery Vehicle Society, the 22nd of July�s London to Brighton EV Run event has become an annual gathering that attracts both amateur enthusiasts for this mode of transport, as well as commercial entries from the UK�s growing clutch of electric car and light van manufacturers.

Retracing the route taken by those early internal combustion motor pioneers, one of the company�s Elettrica vehicles took in the climb over the Ditchling Beacon � proving that today�s EVs need no longer be restricted to central London flood-plains or the flat-lands of Cambridgeshire. As Richmond is at pains to make clear: �You have to remember that this is not a prototype, or a vehicle using technology that is 10 years in the future. What we achieved that Sunday, can be repeated day in day out, with two adults, and all from a car that has sufficient in reserve to cope with the cut and thrust of urban dual-carriageways�.

Travelelectric, based in Ringwood, Hampshire was established to develop the Italian-built Elettrica into a form more suitable for this country. The vehicle now features a range of 60 miles from a single 5 hour charge, and a top speed of 40 MPH, using British-designed control technology and aircraft-grade lithium-cobalt batteries. Deliveries to customers are currently scheduled to commence during September of 2007.