2011, Industrial Design
Conceptual design in 2011 for Jaguar, highlighting what at that time was the very latest developments in technology and manufacturing capability.
‘Bio polymer solid state suspension that forms the chassis, with flexing aerofoils to cool hot swappable inductive/cable charged batteries, charged when in use by a hydrogen fuel cell, fueled by an on board radiowave salt water burning core, the heat from which is used to charge the 12v system (lights, VCU etc.) The upper chassis is formed from a singular draped composite polycarbonate canopy, that surrounds the user, covered in scratch resistant, partially ‘light reactive’ film, and supported by a network of branches that give it the required stiffness in crashes, but also with the capacity to condense down to reduce drag at high speed.’
Most of the technologies to make such a vehicle were actually available in 2010, and this highlights the fundamental problems with the Automotive industry that prevent tangible innovation. Even though we could build this now, cars will almost certainly be largely driven by petrol in 2020. This will happen because every specialist, engineer and designer in the industry is working on small aspects of vehicle design, or highly specialised problems.
In order for car design to progress at the rate of technological change, there must be designers and engineers working from a position to look at every aspect of the vehicle and make radical changes. This makes economic sense, but there is the additional problem of production-line specialisation makes change difficult and expensive. As such, the design of cars tends to evolve very gradually, and even in the modern era, one can argue that the design of cars has remained almost unchanged since 1950.
The ironic thing is that the Automotive industry is populus with incredible talent and capability, and could easily produce economically viable vehicles that go far beyond even this in their scope within a decade. But the expense and loss which this would incur means that a manufacturer will only do this if another manufacturer does it first. A little bit like a nuclear arms race where profit is at stake and not the population.