iMove Concept: Apple Macintosh “iCar” City Car For 2020?
Last September I posted a The ‘Book Mystique column on PBCentral entitled Could Gordon Murray’s iStream Automobile Be The Ideal Platform For An Apple iCar?
Gordon Murray Design’s T.25 City Car made its public debut last June, with the company announcing they’re officially ‘on sale’ with T.25 licenses for their revolutionary iStream car manufacturing process.
“Someone like Apple could very easily make a car”, Gordon Murray Designs founder and creator of the iStream concept Gordon Murray had told Pocket-Lint’s Stuart Miles. Murray’s name is most famously associated the phenomenally successful McLaren Formula 1 motor racing team, where he was technical director for a couple of decades until 2006. McLaren’s record of 163 Formula 1 Grand Prix race victories and 12 World Championship drivers’ titles is surpassed only by Ferrari, and in no small measure attributable to Murray’s engineering prowess, including his pioneering development of carbon fiber composite monocoque construction in the revolutionary 1993 McLaren MP4/1 Formula 1 car, and which is also a marquee engineering feature of the new 2012 McLaren MP4-12C sports car.
Murray’s current preoccupation is his T.25 (gasoline-powered) and T-27 (all-electric) iStream city car designs, which were the focus of his Apple car comment. The T-cars are a radically innovative concept for a new type and class of personal transport vehicle that incorporates Formula 1-derived materials philosophy and technology coupled with chassis frame design (‘Direct Load Path’) that provides an immensely strong structure (‘safety cell’) both in ‘end’ and ‘side’ impact scenarios.
Murray’s iStream car manufacturing process massively reduces the capital investment required to produce the vehicle and also the energy required for manufacture, and which the design firm is offering for license. The iStream assembly process amounts to a complete rethink and redesign of traditional automotive manufacturing techniques, and Murray claims it could potentially be the biggest revolution in high volume vehicle manufacture since Henry Ford’s Model T. Development of the process began over 15 years ago and it has already won the prestigious 2008 ‘Idea of the Year’ award from Britain’s Autocar magazine. The simplified assembly process means that the manufacturing plant can 20% of the size of a conventional automobile factory, which could reduce capital investment in the assembly plant by approximately 80%, while the flexibility of this assembly process would allow the same factory to be used to manufacture different variants or even different brands simultaneously. The iStream design process also facilitates a significant reduction in CO2 emissions over the lifecycle of the vehicles produced using it, compared with conventional ones.
The T.2x City Cars are designed around a central driving position dubbed Apple-esque ‘iCentre,’ which offers six 6 internal layouts within the same vehicle, configuration conversions claimed to be easily achieved within 30 seconds.
For more on the Murray T-series City Car as a potential Apple iCar, click here.
However, Murray’s iStream isn’t the only Apple iCar proposal from a European designer. Another is the iMove concept, conceived by its designer to appeal to Mac-users who would embrace driving more than just basic transportation, and be open to the a city car of the future
Twenty-one-year-old Italian transportation design student Liviu Tudoran says the idea behind his iMove concept was to create what he perceives as an Apple Macintosh electric car engineered to break the general idea of conventional vehicles for the year 2020 would be like. “Keeping in mind the main characteristics, design language and culture of the brand,” he explains, taking his inspiration from Apple Macintosh products, and the lifestyles of people who use them.
Image copyright Liviu Tudoran 1989-2011 – Used By Permission
Tudoran notes that the Macintosh is an “exclusivistic” brand with a distinct personality and a specific range of target buyers. He deduces that Mac users are individuals who would also be eager to drive more than just basic transportation, and open to the concept of an electric vehicle designed to be a city car of the future.
Image copyright Liviu Tudoran 1989-2011 – Used By Permission
Most of the iMove’s body skin would be made of transparent materials doing double-duty as solar collector panels, including the roof. The all-electric, zero-emissions iMove, its body shape inspired by Apple’s Macintosh mouse. would carry three passengers and their luggage, with custom interior configurations available to suit the owner’s needs and preferences. The iMove’s luggage compartment would be enclosed by a lid made of “an elastic textile material,” and equipped with retaining straps to secure oversized contents with the lid open.
Image copyright Liviu Tudoran 1989-2011 – Used By Permission
The iMove’s roof would be, as noted, covered with solar cells to passively charge the vehicle’s batteries and electronic dashboard, and openable in fair weather for a “cabriolet effect.” Both the roof and visor-style windshield/canopy will swing upward to facilitate easy ingress and egress to/from the iMove’s interior accommodation.
Exterior trim and color variations would be customizable to suit the user’s personal taste. Inspired by the original, rainbow-hued Apple logo, the iMove would be finished with a photochromic coating material that would enable the user to change the vehicle’s appearance using different preset themes.
For more information and pictures, visit:
http://tudoran.carbonmade.com/projects/2849936#1
and
http://liviutudoran.blogspot.com/
iMove YouTube movie:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uLUWcnExSA4
You can check out more of Liviu Tudoran’s design concepts here:
http://liviutudoran.blogspot.com/
Image copyright Liviu Tudoran 1989-2011 – Used By Permission
Judging from his already impressive body of design work, it’s very conceivable that Liviu Tudoran’s name will one day be included in the roster of great Italian automotive designers like Pininfarina, Giorgietto Giugiaro, Giuseppe Bertone, Pietro Frua, Giacinto Ghia, Felice Bianchi Anderloni & Gaetano Ponzoni (of Touring), Marcello Gandini, and Ugo Zagato.
The notion of an Apple-branded or at least themed “iCar” automobile has been dangled tantalizingly before crossover Apple and automobile aficionados for years. Apple is rumored to have a “secret internal department” at Cupertino specializing in transport-related product development, although it’s unclear whether that means car accessories, car information systems, or a full blown iCar.
Back in 2007, Steve Jobs reportedly met with Volkswagen’s then CEO Dr. Martin Winterkorn in California to discuss possibly integrating the iPod, iPhone, and other Apple products into an automobile — with blogosphere speculation about possibly even an Apple/VW joint venture “iCar” project. Nothing evidently came of the latter. However various configurations of Apple iPod, iPhone, and iPad support is offered on a vast array of vehicle makes and models these days.
Advantages for Apple in officially licensing an Apple-branded iCar would include extension of the iOS ecosystem into the automotive orbit, while the halo association with Apple chic would make such a venture advantageous for an established automaker like VW.
Indeed, Volkswagen’s Bulli/Microbus van concept shown at the Geneva Auto Show earlier this month incorporates infotainment control via Apple’s iPad. A removable iPad docked in the van’s center console serves as a multifunctional touchscreen. Along with Internet-based iPad applications and the media center, it also handles control of such functions as Bluetooth hands-free telephone and a navigation system. Integrated right on the van’s iPad mount are controls for the climate control system and the centrally-located hazard warning switch.
In summary, Apple is sitting on vast cash reserves these days, and the timing for a truly innovative game-changing green, stylish, and affordable car seems right. I don’t know if Apple really has any serious interest in marketing an iCar, but if perchance they do, they should probably be talking with Mssrs. Tudoran and Murray.