Monday, December 15, 2008

SHAPE-SHIFTING RINSPEED





How about a car that changes shape in order to suit circumstances demanded by its owner? Rinspeed, the Swiss-based auto tuner have presented pictures of a concept car they claim will be able to do just that in the future. Slated for presentation at the 2009 Geneva Motor Show, the iChange (how appropriate) starts out as a one-seater sports car. When prompted it changes into a 3-seater people mover.



How it does this is by some “magic” that involves raising the rear of the car to make space for the two extra people. In this configuration it accommodates like a McLaren F1 in that driver sits ahead of the two rear passengers.



The iChange is powered by a 130kW electric motor that has zero emissions, meaning it is adequately powerful yet is harmless on the environment. It is the sports car of the future.

“If we want to preserve our individual mobility in the future, we have to re-think our conception of cars - above all we need to accommodate the ecological aspects,” says Rinspeed CEO Frank Rinderknecht.



The project would be extremely difficult to pull off if other auto makers were interested in pulling off similar production cars in the future. That’s because changing the shape of a car affects everything about that car, including performance and safety.



Even a “small” alteration to the structure of a car, like adding a folding roof to make it a convertible affects its safety levels since you are now messing with its structural integrity, weight as well as aerodynamic abilities. Changing its entire shape should be a mammoth of an engineering challenge.

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