I really wish industrial designers would leave the engineering to, you know, engineers. Nothing irks me than a designer trying his or her hand at conjuring up some magical, black box powerplant for their vehicle design studies. Take Amarpreet Gill for instance, a Leicester-based designer and the brains behind the blandly named Bristol Car Concept.
Using a combination of piezoelectric “threads” as well as photovoltaic paint and glass, the Bristol Car Concept “harvests energy from the surrounding environment, rewarding the consumer with the gift of free energy”.
Excuse me why I snort very loudly at the idea of powering a car by applying mechanical pressure to a piezoelectric material such as quartz. Though there are ultrasonic motors that utilise the piezoelectric effect, the biggest can only power a watch or the shutter lens of a camera.
Moving an object that weighs less than 10 grams is easy compared to moving two tonnes of metal…
Worse still, I’m not sure I’m even too enamoured with the design of the car itself. It’s like a Bristol 603 by way of Bertone’s B99 Jaguar Concept. The front is too anonymous and the rear and window-line just seem underdone, to me. At least the idea of fine-tuning the car’s piezoelectric threads like piano wire introduces a little life into an otherwise boring-looking design study.
Check out our gallery below and tell me if you agree or disagree.
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