I like checking out concept cars and various modes of transportation whenever they are unveiled.
This one is called EN-V. (By GM- China and SAIC). For city driving. Electric. It is networked. Avoids collisions. Five can park where one car fits now. Reduces congestion, parking spaces. Photo credit: AP
Another one switches from being a plane (hobby license required) to a car in 30 seconds. Can fit in your garage. 115 mph for 450 miles. The 2011 model costs $194,000 (Terrafugia, Inc).
A couple of others I saw have solar and turbine features, and one motorcycle looking one, but that you sit inside, is called Volkswagen Bio Runner (which is not unveiled yet other than in image, definitely concept) has something called synthetic muscle based suspension. These look pretty wild.
Many of them are closer to conventional looking but with many interesting features like sonar, car to car communication, advanced cameras/displays, customizable interfaces...
More technologies are converging and at a quicker clip. And so is design. Have you noticed since about 2005, following the lay people drifting onto the Internet first starting in about 1994, that road and store signs and now especially way finder signs and other human interfaces are looking more "browser page like" or iconish, heading into smart phoneishness.... a car more like a smart phone than a traditional car... people are going to be driving into the shopping parking lot and trying to click on the sign to "get to" a store if they momentarily forget they are outside and not "online, for those who don't already mainly shop online. One of the design adoption challenges I've noticed is that "fonts" are a little too small in scale for the "outdoors" application (like store signs), sometimes difficult to read (no, it's not my eye sight). This is one reason why I had to chuckle when someone accused a candidate of using "big fonts." I say, bring it on. Well, at least in some places. This coupled with an aging population's needs. I also hope that digital signs grow more attractive. They have some great features, but they are very ugly in a lot of cases. Like outside of a couple of community colleges and a couple of mega churches. A few months ago I was traveling and saw one outside of a beautiful neogothic church. It didn't do anything for the setting. Pretty odd, and out glared by the daylight.
That reminds me, I have this video where Lady GaGa's "Pokerface" becomes "Nutra Face" (a supposedly newly invented font that some font designers have struggled and toiled to create).
Back to the cars, we may see more changes in "transportation separation" because tiny human transport and large goods transport (double semi trucks, for example) may struggle to share road space safely, at least initially, more even than the case now. I'm not sure technology can overcome adoption time and size differences as rapidly as some desire at first. I was reminded of this when out on the highway a bumper sticker on a semitruck that I was passing said that if you couldn't see a reflection of your car in the truck's side mirrors that meant that the driver couldn't see your car (you). It would have been a good reminder, however, the only way to have read it was to have been very very close as I was, when I was passing in the other lane right beside the truck. That might have been designed like that, but it would have been even safer to be able to read it while in back, six feet or a little more away, before you become invisible to the driver of a double trailer.
I've always had an invention in my mind that gives a message to the car tailgating in literary terms (not the Bronx cheer). Car-to-car communication could be a problem if it got personal however.
"Did you hear what your car just called my car?"
"Yeah, that's just how he is in the morning. He's not a morning car. He always complains if I take him out too early and the solar road isn't warm yet. He whines that his breakfast energy absorbtion from the solar road is freezing his battery off. And he won't even think about turbining before nine."
Wouldn't it be funny if you dressed you car up to match your outfit or a close approximation. More than we do. Like really did it. Aaleyah's car would wear a burka and Ms. Glenn's car would wear a hat, and wouldn't be her car without some dangly pretty ear rings and a pink and animal print pant suit. Ms. Glenn has a beautiful joyful aura about her. No reason why her car can't as well. Right now my phone is still wearing an Ed Hardy "jacket" that was a gift to me. The next one I'm supposed to put on it is a black and pink Hello Kitty. I'm easily controlled by midgets at times.
This one is called EN-V. (By GM- China and SAIC). For city driving. Electric. It is networked. Avoids collisions. Five can park where one car fits now. Reduces congestion, parking spaces. Photo credit: AP
Another one switches from being a plane (hobby license required) to a car in 30 seconds. Can fit in your garage. 115 mph for 450 miles. The 2011 model costs $194,000 (Terrafugia, Inc).
A couple of others I saw have solar and turbine features, and one motorcycle looking one, but that you sit inside, is called Volkswagen Bio Runner (which is not unveiled yet other than in image, definitely concept) has something called synthetic muscle based suspension. These look pretty wild.
Many of them are closer to conventional looking but with many interesting features like sonar, car to car communication, advanced cameras/displays, customizable interfaces...
More technologies are converging and at a quicker clip. And so is design. Have you noticed since about 2005, following the lay people drifting onto the Internet first starting in about 1994, that road and store signs and now especially way finder signs and other human interfaces are looking more "browser page like" or iconish, heading into smart phoneishness.... a car more like a smart phone than a traditional car... people are going to be driving into the shopping parking lot and trying to click on the sign to "get to" a store if they momentarily forget they are outside and not "online, for those who don't already mainly shop online. One of the design adoption challenges I've noticed is that "fonts" are a little too small in scale for the "outdoors" application (like store signs), sometimes difficult to read (no, it's not my eye sight). This is one reason why I had to chuckle when someone accused a candidate of using "big fonts." I say, bring it on. Well, at least in some places. This coupled with an aging population's needs. I also hope that digital signs grow more attractive. They have some great features, but they are very ugly in a lot of cases. Like outside of a couple of community colleges and a couple of mega churches. A few months ago I was traveling and saw one outside of a beautiful neogothic church. It didn't do anything for the setting. Pretty odd, and out glared by the daylight.
That reminds me, I have this video where Lady GaGa's "Pokerface" becomes "Nutra Face" (a supposedly newly invented font that some font designers have struggled and toiled to create).
Back to the cars, we may see more changes in "transportation separation" because tiny human transport and large goods transport (double semi trucks, for example) may struggle to share road space safely, at least initially, more even than the case now. I'm not sure technology can overcome adoption time and size differences as rapidly as some desire at first. I was reminded of this when out on the highway a bumper sticker on a semitruck that I was passing said that if you couldn't see a reflection of your car in the truck's side mirrors that meant that the driver couldn't see your car (you). It would have been a good reminder, however, the only way to have read it was to have been very very close as I was, when I was passing in the other lane right beside the truck. That might have been designed like that, but it would have been even safer to be able to read it while in back, six feet or a little more away, before you become invisible to the driver of a double trailer.
I've always had an invention in my mind that gives a message to the car tailgating in literary terms (not the Bronx cheer). Car-to-car communication could be a problem if it got personal however.
"Did you hear what your car just called my car?"
"Yeah, that's just how he is in the morning. He's not a morning car. He always complains if I take him out too early and the solar road isn't warm yet. He whines that his breakfast energy absorbtion from the solar road is freezing his battery off. And he won't even think about turbining before nine."
Wouldn't it be funny if you dressed you car up to match your outfit or a close approximation. More than we do. Like really did it. Aaleyah's car would wear a burka and Ms. Glenn's car would wear a hat, and wouldn't be her car without some dangly pretty ear rings and a pink and animal print pant suit. Ms. Glenn has a beautiful joyful aura about her. No reason why her car can't as well. Right now my phone is still wearing an Ed Hardy "jacket" that was a gift to me. The next one I'm supposed to put on it is a black and pink Hello Kitty. I'm easily controlled by midgets at times.
