Car designers offer futuristic visions

Event organisers hope to marry environmental concerns with cars that actually appeal. Picture / Reuters

In California, the car has always been more than just a mode of transportation. It has been a vehicle to dream - of freedom, of a more perfect version of ourselves, of the future.

So it seems only appropriate that the world's leading car designers - almost all of whom are concentrated around LA - should be invited to realise their fantasies and imagine what will turn drivers on decades from now.

The Los Angeles Auto Show is sponsoring a special design challenge featuring the innovative ideas of 10 leading car studios.

The winners won't be announced until the show itself, which takes place in January. But the competing designs have just been unveiled and they are, if nothing else, a whole lot of fun.

Honda has come up with something called a Running Bus - a people carrier which derives its energy from people, jogging up and down on side-by-side treadmills. If the notion is reminiscent of slave-powered galley ships in ancient Roman times, it's not meant to be; the exercise, in this case, is intended to be entirely voluntary.

Think of it instead as the jogging path, only with metal sides and a roof. Keeps you fit, gets you places and preserves the environment - the ultimate Californian fantasy.

Audi has come up with the sleek and Judge Dredd-like Nero, and is touting it as the "ultimate nightclubbing vehicle". Audi isn't saying whether Sean "P Diddy" Combs was consulted, but you have to figure he's got to be a prime candidate to snap up the first roadworthy prototype.

Maybach, meanwhile, is promoting its California Gourmet Tourer, a three-wheeler that looks like some strange hybrid of a motorcycle and a super-sophisticated golf cart, complete with Star Wars-style top-hinged doors.

This is not intended to be a land speed record-breaker, just a handy way of trundling along from winery to winery in the Napa Valley. The Tourer drives itself, with the help of Global Positioning System technology, which means its occupants can drink themselves as silly as they like without having to worry about road safety.

The seating is distinctly laid-back, and arranged around a kitchen-style table. A coffee-maker, fridge and small wine cabinet are all within reach.

And so the list goes on. Some of the designs are aimed at the luxury end of the market, while others have a much more modest demographic in mind. GMC's vehicle, the PAD, doubles as a mobile living space for those who can't afford California's ever escalating housing prices.

Designer Steve Anderson said he "wanted to create something that would look at home in Dwell magazine, a place you could bring a date to without embarrassment."

It's kitted out, we are told, with satellite television and stainless steel kitchen appliances, as well as a hybrid diesel-electric engine.

The design contest is heartening in more ways than one. Back in the real world, many public policy analysts and urban planners would argue that not nearly enough has been done move away from a reliance on oil-based fuels.

California has made perhaps more strides than most. It is the number one market in the US for petrol-electric hybrid cars and Los Angeles officials are at the forefront of hydrogen fuel-cell technology; there's a dedicated hydrogen fuel station not far from City Hall.

The challenge, of course, is how to offer car manufacturers the incentive to produce affordable versions and, in turn, building a whole new infrastructure of hydrogen fuelling stations across the country. That thinking is not so much in its infancy as in vitro.

The design challenge is nevertheless an important piece of the puzzle, and plays a crucial psychological role in broadening the debate from environmentalists to car enthusiasts. Last year's joint winners were a vehicle called the Dodge Superbee, a glorified motorbike with four wheels touted as the ideal weekend getaway roadster, and the Volkswagen Mobile Lounge, an environmentally rational reworking of the stretch limo.

- INDEPENDENT