Edwin Conan on Car Design News

Yes! My portfolio made it into the “Featured Portfolios” Section on Car Design News website: here.

Flaming Auto Daydream

Burning Freedom Concept Car by Bora Kim » Yanko Design

Bora Kim uses my favorite first step to create this automobile from the heavens: sketching. Take a look below to see Kim’s amazing illustration skills. This auto is inspired by the light that enters a room through an open door. From Kim’s mind: “darkness and desire, eternal sunshine, the road to realization, and collision of senses.” What kind of mystical nightride could this possibly be?

Behold the “Burning Freedom.” The outer shell is made of transparent and semi-transparent pieces. Each piece is plain white while at rest, a plethora of colors when utilized or shined upon by passing lights.

Kim’s motto is “true freedom comes from within.”

Designer: Bora Kim

Wow, at the first glance, that does not look like a car at all, but it is. That really is something fresh for automotive design, designed by a girl designer, she took a rather different and female perspective and pursuit the automotive design in a more artistic and crafty form.

Form, Target buyers and Package

Form

I have a personal style that I have been developing for two years. I like to hide subtle curves in the extrusions and use these extrusions to form the body of the car and interior as well. Examples are GM Roll up and HSV Encore.

I admire Italian Design and have used my understanding and research into Italian Design as a base to develop my style from. In my view the key spirit of Italian Design are:

• Design is the production of art
• Design orientated more than user orientated
• Design is a combination of traditional craftsmanship, modern thing, personal character, nature material and new material
• Being an individual, having my own style is important
• Designer design the desire and dream
• Design should have an emotional function apart from physical function
• Aesthetics first, practicality second. Looking good is everything, everything has to look good. Proportions, light interact and details are very important

Target Audience

The project will focus of the fun of driving, so the target audience will be those high income people in the future who have an active and dynamic lifestyle, appreciate engineering and driving pleasure, enjoy the unique experience offered by the car and the sense of being an individual, can afford a car as a reward for their hard work and use it for recreational purpose in weekend and holidays.

Such group of people is currently in their 20s. They are the first digital generation who grow up with video games and computer games. They like digital gadgets and driving in the virtual world. In the future they will most willing to try the same fun driving experience in the real world.

The Package

• Seats: 3 seats (1+2 layout)
• Wheels: 4 wheels (4 wheel drive, can be switched to rear wheel drive)
• Power: Hydrogen Fuel Cell and Plug-in Electric

Hydrogen stored as liquid or compressed in a tank behind the seats

• Hub mounted electric motors in each wheel
• Control: Drive by wire
• Enough luggage space for a weekend trip

• Materials: Carbon Fiber or environmental friendly composite materials. Monocoque structure provides lightweight and stiffness. Also act as impact absorb for safety
• Low production volume

At the beginning, it was a Mercedes, now, it is still a Mercedes

Mercedes F-CELL Roadster on the historic route of Bertha Benz – Worldcarfans

Mercedes F-CELL Roadster on the historic route of Bertha Benz

Bertha Benz, wife of automobile inventor Karl Benz, was the first to
take a car on the road for a long distance. With her two kids in tow. Wanting to prove to Karl that his invention was worthwhile, she drove
over a hundred kilometers in the Benz Motorwagen back in 1888, leaving
Mannheim, Germany, early in the morning, and reaching her mother’s
house in Pforzheim that evening.

Mercedes-Benz drove their F-Cell Roadster along that very same route

Fashion on Wheels

F for Fashion, Fashion on Wheels « Edwin Conan

Many people choose cars base on the shape of the cars. In other words, they buy the car because it looks good. Just like people buy the clothes because they are beautiful. Fashion designers design dresses, hats, trousers, t-shirts, skirts, coats for the body. The design of car bodywork and interior can be regarded as another kind of fashion design and the designer are thought to be the fashion designer of cars. The cars are dressed up by them. Car design has its own fashion, I call it the fashion on wheels.

What Alfa Romeo is all about? It’s an Alfa.

Alfa Romeo is by far away my favourite car brand, whitout Alfa, there will be no Ferrari, no Lambourghini. If Enzo Ferrari did not become a racing driver for Alfa Romeo, he would not build Ferrari car as we know today, and Mr lambourghini would not by Ferrari cars and hated it and set off to turn his tractor factory into supercar factory. Alfa is where the italian passion and style in car design starts. Alfa is the genesis. The first Ad is for the Alfa Brera, the car that is widely considered as the most beautiful car on sale today, also the most beautiful car that normal people can afford, designed by Giorgetto Giugiaro. It is so gorgeous that even a blind person can feel the beauty, and although without any word discription in the Ad, the commercial tells a lot about Alfa. Alfa is more than a car, it is a feeling, when an Alfa drive by, people can feel it, the beauty, the passion the style and pedigree. People who buy an Alfa are those who understand cars, not as a tool to move them around, but as an art piece, they made the purchase dicision not because its practicality, but because its aesthetics, it is not a financial activity, but a love affair. Which brings me neatly to the second Ad, people buy an Alfa not for it’s lastest technology and safety featurers, but because it’s an Alfa.

Audi Intelligent Emotion Design Project

Student designers tapped for Audi ‘Intelligent Emotion’ project – [Audi Intelligent Emotion Design Project] – MotorAuthority – Car news, reviews, spy shots

The future of automotive mobility is a question that has always captivated the mind of the carmaker and the driver alike. Today Audi takes its turn to give us a glimpse into what they think the future may hold, seen through the eyes of design students at the Munich University of Applied Sciences and their “Intelligent Emotion” project concepts.

The project’s goal was to envision the ways that alternative forms and fuels might be employed in the future, while balancing that with the long-standing needs of individual mobility. Audi isn’t just looking into the issue for purely philosophical reasons, however.

“The next generation of employees is our future,” says Wolfgang Egger, Head of Audi Group Design. “That’s why sponsoring design students is one of our high priorities. …The students have addressed the subject of mobility in the future with very well-conceived and lucidly presented approaches. Each concept, each model, contains at least one idea or feature that we could certainly conceive of as being included in a future production vehicle.”

It’s not all engineering and science, however, as the “Intelligent Emotion” moniker suggests – it is engineering tempered with passion. “Emotion as a driving force must go hand in hand with responsibility as regulator. The students’ assignment was to develop aesthetic approaches that reflect the new ecological, technical and social issues while also portraying an Audi as an attractive, sporty automobile. The results are of very high creative quality and provide plenty of substance for intensive discussions.”

A book with the concepts and the commentary of Audi’s chief designers has been made from the project, entitled “Audi Design Projekt” and available in stores from €29.90.

Audi Student Design Projects

Audi Student Design Project: *Intelligent Emotion* – Future Mobility – Worldcarfans

Design students at the Munich University of Applied Sciences in Germany were part of a project supported by Audi to design Audi-branded human mobility solutions of the future. “Intelligent Emotion” was the theme of the project whereby students were required to present transport modules that comply with perceived environmental, technical and social issues of tomorrow.

Audi officials involved were Wolfgang Egger, Head of Audi Design and Stefan Sielaff, Head of Audi Group Design. The head of the project was by Dr. Othmar Wickenheiser, Professor of Transportation Design at the university.

“The results are impressive,” said Egger. “The students have addressed the subject of mobility in the future with very well-conceived and lucidly presented approaches.” Sielaff went on to remark, “Each concept, each model, contains at least one idea or feature that we could certainly conceive of as being included in a future production vehicle.” Such concepts included lightweight solutions for body construction and advanced propulsion systems.

The project has been published as a book called Audi Design Projekt which is available for sale at €29.90. Its aim was to present Audi as a sporting premium brand that also leads in both technology and design.

Peugeot Competition 2008 Winner’s Full Scale Model: The Peugeot RD

Peugeot RD Concept Car Full Scale Model Revealed in Shanghai – Worldcarfans

The Peugeot RD concept design of 27 year old Carlos Arturo Torres Tovar is now on exhibition as a full-size model at the 2009 Auto Shanghai in China. The Colombian has just graduated from the National University of Colombia where he studied Industrial Design.

His concept car was the winning project in Peugeot’s 5th Annual Design Competition which saw prospects from 95 different nationalities submit over 2,500 projects. The theme for the contest was “Imagine the Peugeot of the Worldwide Megalopolis of tomorrow” which in essence asked them to picture the transportation needs of future megacities and design a vehicle to satisfy them.

What sold the RD concept for Peugeot and the selected jury was its high road-holding ability with ease of use in congested traffic, the environmentally friendly electric motor and the 3-wheeler’s driving sensation of a sedan. It also features panoramic all-around visibility and head-up display. Peugeot has been building this show unit since October 2008.

On top of seeing his design come to life in a 1:1 scale, the winner also takes home a cheque for 10,000 euros and an Xbox 360 game console. Twenty nine short-listed entries also received certain prizes.

Now I understand that the whole point of a concept car is to come up with something completely different and strange, not the prettiest, the coolest or the most practical. And the whole point of designing a concept car for a car design competition is to completely ignore the brief and just design something you want. This Peugeot RD Concept proved my point of view perfectly.

The brief for the Peugeot contest was “Imagine the Peugeot of the wouldwide megalopolis of tomorrow”, and the winner is an electric single seater the size of a family saloon with three enormous washing machine drums. I can only imagine the traffic issue of the worldwide megalopolis of tomorrow getting worse if many of us have one of this.

Hydrogen racer wows shoppers

RMIT – Hydrogen racer wows shoppers

RMIT University’s clean and green racing car was the main attraction for shoppers in the eastern suburbs during a special event at Westfield Doncaster.

Australia’s first hydrogen-powered racer was on display during the Easter school holidays, with RMIT students on hand to explain the cutting-edge automotive engineering technology behind it.

Professor Aleksandar Subic, Head of the School of Aerospace, Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, said RMIT students involved in the pioneering Formula Hydrogen project had developed knowledge and skills that would help them become future leaders of the automotive engineering industry.

“This project was about more than theory – the students actually had the chance to research, design, build and test a hydrogen-powered racing car using the latest sustainable automotive technology,” Professor Subic said.

“The work they have done in building this demonstration vehicle for the future will have benefits for all cars and could even lead some day to a completely clean and green Grand Prix.”

RMIT students helped design, engineer and manufacture the car last year as part of their Bachelor of Engineering (Mechanical Engineering) and Bachelor of Engineering (Automotive Engineering) programs.

Powered by an internal combustion motorcycle engine modified to run on hydrogen, the racing car showcases the possibilities of this clean, efficient and renewable alternative fuel.

The car will be bidding for the title of world’s fastest hydrogen-powered racer when it attempts to break the Guinness World Records mark for speed by a vehicle of its class later this year.

The Formula Hydrogen project is a collaboration between RMIT and the Fachhochshule Ingolstadt, University of Applied Sciences, in Germany.