"We put a concept together, including a video depicting how it would function," he adds. Jia sent sketches of a levitating car that could be maneuvered easily in a downtown setting, says Simon Loasby, head of design at Volkswagen Group China. Wang Jia, a student and resident of Chengdu in the country's Sichuan province, chose the latter, envisioning a two-person environmentally-friendly hover car. Participants were able to tinker with designs on a Web site that Volkswagen set up for that purpose, or they could upload their own designs.
Submissions will initially be open to the scrutiny of the user community, then subsequently vetted by experts who will award prizes to the most usable ideas.A year ago, Volkswagen in China launched a marketing campaign called The People's Car Project (PCP), which invited Chinese customers to submit ideas for cars of the future. Later this year it will be extended to take suggestions about how best to minimise the impact of China’s fast-growing car fleet on the environment. The company is so pleased with the response it’s extended what was to be a one-year project indefinitely.
#Hover car vw driver
Lastly comes the ‘Smart Key’, a possibly rather sensible idea involving a high-res screen built into a slim key-fob which ‘keeps the driver up to date on the fuel situation, climate conditions and the car’s security via the 3G network.’ It even affords you the opportunity to ‘monitor’ (or admire, or show your friends) your car from a ‘bird’s eye perspective’ through real-time satellite transmission. More than ever, the car thus becomes a means of self-expression and a fashion statement for young drivers.’ Uh-oh… Sure enough: ‘Equipped with organic light emitting diodes, the exterior colour of the vehicle changes with the driver’s choice of music. Next comes the ‘Music Car’ which, says VW, ‘expresses the wish of many Chinese for individual automotive design’. Motor shows are not the place for such trifles. In fact, not surprisingly, they didn’t go into it at all. They didn’t go too far into how civic authorities might realise the road infrastructure. It’s the ‘Hover Car’, described in the press release as ‘an environmentally-friendly two-seater city car which hovers just above the ground’ with the help of electromagnetic road networks. What have they come up with to such ends? Volkswagen used Beijing’s recent Auto China 2012 show to showcase three ideas that have so far gained enough momentum for further development.įirst up comes a concept familiar to anyone who’s read those children’s books of the 1950s and 1960s promising we’d all go to the moon and glide around in wheel-less, magnetically suspended cars with bubble tops (and tail fins…). “The trend is towards safe cars that can easily navigate overcrowded roads and have a personal, emotional and exciting design.”
#Hover car vw drivers
The project has given the company ‘valuable insight’ into what Chinese drivers are after, design boss Volkswagen Simon Loasby added. “We are no longer just building cars for, but also with customers and at the same time initiating a national dialogue which gives us a deep insight into the design preferences, needs and requirements of Chinese customers,” de Meo said. The project heralds the future of automobile design, Luca de Meo, Volkswagen’s passenger car marketing chief, said in a statement. The result, the company says, has been overwhelming, with more than more than 119,000 ideas harvested from more than 33 million visitors. Harnessing the social networking trend that sees corporations inviting customers to ‘join the conversation’, the company set up a website inviting ideas from the people of China for their idea of the people’s car. A year ago, the German giant launched the People’s Car Project (PCP) to help strengthen its attunement to Chinese consumer tastes. Who better to mass-mobilise the socio-economic monolith that is the People’s Republic than the corporate monolith built around the People’s Car?
There’s an elegant logic to Volkwagen’s foray into China. The site has seen a massive influx of ideas, with several of the more interesting ones turning up at the recent Beijing motor show. ‘Use your creative achievements tomorrow the public of the car!’ So goes Google Translate’s take on the header for a website Volkswagen has set up to solicit suggestions from the public on the future of China’s mobility.
0 kommentar(er)
