The end of the car is near(er)

A visual guide to how I predicted car making will change in the next 85 years,
which for those reading this in future makes it 2098.

A GERMAN last week announced a weird car that added a fourth blib to my radar screen monitoring future car designs -- and what a relief that was.

For as 2013 drew to a close, I went and predicted which trends and technologies will change how we make cars. Considering the size of the corporations, nay, dynasties
involved, I put my head on a block by daring to state — in print and on air — that today’s babies won’t buy our cookie cutter cars when they are old enough.

Instead the next generation of 20-somethings will glue, bolt or even velcro “highly individualised transport units” to rollcages, which will ride on modular drivetrains.

While I just predict the end of cars as we know it, Siemens
went further and now calls cars rolling computers.

I said the current assembly line approach is already outdated and instead of giant car factories churning out thousands of exact copies by the hour, the waning numbers of future petrolheads who will want to own cars will order customised rides from tiny companies. But most people will just hail a driverless Google-taxi using an app like Uber. 

I predicted the looks of these indy cars will be “limited only by the driver’s imagination and budget” and the companies that supply these bespoke cars will specialise in niche eras, with economies of scale made possible by serving lots of these little niches around the globe via the internet.

The Wrighspeed Atom, fully electric, fully fast and one of the cars
on which I base my predictions.

Most of these companies will do the fun bits, rendering panels for unique cars either in fibreglass or by 3D-printing before affixing the panels onto locally-welded roll cages.

Fewer will assemble the energy source, be it battery packs like Elon Musk and Panasonic are doing, or milling small turbines to turn on compressed natural gas as Capstone is doing in the U.S.

A very select few will manufacture the complex bits, like hub-motor wheels, first designed by that automotive genius Ferdinand Porsche in 1884 and more recently all but perfected by Protean.

This Chinese-based, American-funded company say their hub wheel contains all the required suspension and the electric motor delivers 1 000 Nm and 75 kW (100 hp) — from each wheel.

My end-of-the-car-as-we-know-it prediction has, however, not seen much movement towards becoming true since Mahindra -- one of those dynasties -- announced its GenZ scooter. 

The Deliver is the modern milk float every little boy wants,
with hub-motor wheels that really motor.  

Sure, the British group Liberty Electric Cars (LEC) last month showed its Deliver in Holland. This is one indy car that was designed with a very big budget, as LEC had Euro Green Car Initiative funding. The Deliver's roll-cage design allowed the designers to lose the B-pillar.
Then Volvo also announced two weeks ago it will build all future models on single platform, (like VW has long been doing with its MQB chassis under the VW Golf and Audi’s TT coupe). 

The 2014 Renovo kicks ass any which way you look at it.

And Renovo showed its coupe at Pebble Beach. This phallic coupe is right now the most rock and roll of evees, and easily competes with ye olde supercars with ICE engins, as it features twin mid-mounted sequential axial-flux motors producing more than 370 kW (500 hp) and 1,356 Nm (1,000 lb-ft).

But my head is still on that block...

But my head is still on that block, for car factories are churning out a cookie-cutter car every few seconds without any signs of letting up despite having to resort to channel stuffing, as The Axe Of Being Totally Wrong glints over my head on that block… 
Hence my relief when eccentric German entrepreneur Charly Bosch last week announced his Loryc Electric Speedster.

An artist's impression of the 2015 Loryc Speedster. There is a pick-up too.

Loryc was a Spanish race car builder and his Speedster was in the 1920s what the Dutch Spyker is today — sought-after, but only by those in the know. Bosch, lives on the island of Mallorca where the Lorycs were built, and has bought one of the few remaining cars in 2013 to reverse-engineer it into two modern models. One looks like the 1922 Loryc racer, the other has a load bin on the back, turning it into a nostalgic golf cart.

On his website, Bosch said the hand-built models will be launched at the “XI Oris Rally Clásico Mallorca” from March 12 to 14.

“For the first time after 95 years, a Loryc Electric Speedster will be seen on the road again,” he said. Pricing and availability will likely be discussed then.

I meanwhile, am eagerly scanning the web for more such unique vehicles, just so I can say: “Told you so!”

Told you so! kaKAAAW! kaKAAAW!