Motoring
The 10 most innovative forms of transport
Check out this revolutionary vehicles that take us straight to the future.
Carmakers often claim that they are on the verge of the next revolution when it comes to transport. But here are 10 vehicles that are properly out there…
Walk Car
Japanese firm Cocoa Motors has come up with the ‘Walk Car’ – which some may say is basically a tea tray on wheels, but the vehicle’s creator, Kuniaki Sato, describes it as “a new concept in personal mobility”. Despite the fact that it’s small enough to fit in a laptop bag, the Walk Car has fully independent suspension and a top speed of 16kph. With small wheels and a tiny pavement footprint, it’s designed to go places where ‘conventional’ machines such as the Segway and assorted hoverboards can’t. It’s been tested and developed on the equivalent of the Nurburgring for personal walking devices: Tokyo’s Shibuya district in Japan. “Things like hoverboards are for fun – this is for daily users,” says its proud inventor.
Ox Truck
Think of it as the bizarre love child of Ikea and a Ford Transit. Then add a bit of Formula 1 technology as well. The unlikely Frankenstein that results is called the Ox: a flat-packed truck, using much of the running gear from the Ford Transit, which is designed to go anywhere after being assembled on the spot in developing countries. To meet the engineering challenge, Ox creator Sir Torquil Norman (an ex-fighter pilot, as the name surely suggests) engaged the services of Gordon Murray, better known for creating the iconic McLaren F1. Nonetheless, Murray says that he’s more proud of the Ox than any other vehicle that he has designed. It’s simple and cheap – and might just prove to be the lifeline that changes the world in places that have been cut off from vital supplies up to now.
Toyota Prius
Millions of taxi drivers over the world can’t be wrong: one Prius in the United States has racked up 600,000 miles on its original engine and transmission. The Toyota Prius wasn’t the first or even the best hybrid, but it was the one that suddenly put eco cars into the mainstream: gaining celebrity endorsements from Hollywood stars like Leonardo di Caprio. Even Miley Cyrus received a black Prius from her dad as a 16th birthday present. Now Toyota has taken the next step and produced a Prius racing car for the Japanese Super GT championship. True, the 1.8-litre four-cylinder engine has been swapped for a 3.4-litre V8. But there are still some hybrid bits attached…
Gibbs Aquada
The New Zealand car industry is about as prolific as the Icelandic bikini-manufacturing scene, but there’s one New Zealand car company that came out with a vehicle that was truly innovative. Like so many great ideas, it didn’t take off. The Gibbs Aquada was designed from the ground up as an amphibious car, even though it looked for all the world like a Mazda MX5, with which it shared a few parts. But unlike most amphibious cars it didn’t leak, plus it was fast, reliable and even looked vaguely respectable on the public highway. Powered by a Rover V8, this hand-made Riva of the road boasted jet-ski like handling and was also designed for first responders – with the mission of enabling emergency services to get wherever they were needed fast, even if there was a small lake or river in the way. Definitely the best attempt at an amphibious car yet.
Edison VLC
It looks a little bit like a helicopter that has lost its rotor and found some wheels, but the Edison VLC has some sound basic principles behind its approach to innovation and economy: lightness (VLC stands for ‘Very Light Car’) and aerodynamics. The result is unprecedented levels of economy and the lowest drag coefficient that has ever been recorded for a multi-passenger car, which only weighs around 450 kilograms. Interestingly, although the company also builds electric cars, Edison found that the batteries needed for hybrids went against its save-weight- at-all-costs philosophy. So the company’s powerplant of choice is a one-cylinder 250cc engine powered by E85 Flex Fuel.
Riversimple Rasa
This isn't going to win any beauty contests, with the design seemingly inspired by a duck-billed platypus, but it’s already a working prototype of a compact hydrogen fuel cell city car, which should be on sale by 2018. The headline figures are these: a carbon composite chassis that keeps weight down to 580 kilograms, and fuel economy that is the equivalent of 250mpg. It works by using a hydrogen fuel cell to send power to four electric motors in each wheel (yes, it’s also 4WD). So where does this technological marvel hail from? Silicon Valley? Or maybe some advanced research facility in Japan? Not exactly. It’s made in Llandrindod Wells, Wales.
Morgan EV3
Here’s a world first: a retro electric car, which is more meta than any other future car we can think of. Curiously, it actually makes some sort of sense when you consider that the world’s very first car was actually electric – built by Thomas Parker in London in 1884. Morgan’s three-wheeler was originally designed back in the 1930s with the same virtues in mind that alternative energy cars still need now – lightness, efficiency and simplicity. As a result, the new incarnation of electric Moggy weighs less than 500 kilograms and has a range of 150 miles.
Nio EP9
This is more like it. Chinese firm Next EV – which races in the Formula E championship – has produced an all-singing, all-dancing electric hypercar. It produces 1MW of power (the equivalent of about 1341 horsepower), which means that it can go from 0-100kph in 2.7 seconds and on to a top speed of more than 305 kph. That’s considerably quicker than a Formula E car. Unsurprisingly, it holds the lap record for an electric car around the Nurburgring: seven minutes and five seconds, which you can watch here:
The only thing we weren’t told is how long a full charge lasts. We’re guessing around seven minutes and six seconds…
Tata Airpod
Tata Airpod
© Tata
The Holy Grail of green transportation would be a car that runs on air, but up to now that’s been the sort of fantasy right up there with calorie-free ice cream. Indian giant Tata though claims to have achieved this. The Airpod has three wheels, it’s powered by compressed air, and steered via a joystick. The theory is simple: compressed air is kept in a tank and powers pistons, which create movement. Prices are going to be kept low: purchase price in the region of 7000 Euros and running costs of about 50 cents per 100 kilometres. Top speed will be 80kph, with a range of up to 200 kilometres. There are still a few hurdles to overcome, which is why the car hasn’t yet seen the light of day – principally the fact that there aren’t huge tanks of compressed air hanging around in most places. But why let a small problem like that get in the way of a great idea?
Airbike Aero X
This might be the coolest thing that we have seen for quite a while – and it’s actually for sale from early next year. The Airbike Aero X is essentially a hovercraft that you ride like a motorbike, dispensing with the need for roads entirely. It reaches top speeds of 72kph up to 10 metres off the ground, thanks to a three-rotor rotary engine powering two carbon fibre fans. Optional extras include flotation pontoons for water operations, meaning that you can quite literally go anywhere. There’s only one catch, which is the price: $85,000 US dollars plus tax. Expensive for a motorbike, but verycheap for a plane – so it might just be the bargain of the century.