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| The Ubux, made to make next year's young buyers text 'OMG I want one!' |
TOYOTA and a group of students have revealed the uBox at this
week’s Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress and Exposition in
Detroit.
The uBox is a concept car born out of Project Deep Orange, which
dates back to 2014, when graduate students at the International Center for
Automotive Research at Clemson University in South Carolina started working with
Toyota Motor North America to come up with a vehicle for Generation Z, loosely
defined as those born from the mid or late 1990s through the 2010s.
Bear in mind these teens prefer to share a ride than own it and if
they have to have wheels, it must be uniquely different.
The challenge Toyota set the automotive design students was to make
a utility vehicle by 2020 that
GenZ would want to park at their homes.
GenZ would want to park at their homes.
Paul Venhovens, endowed chair for automotive systems integration at
CU-ICAR said this collaboration with Toyota was extremely fruitful. “The Toyota
management team constantly challenged the students with justifying their design
and engineering decisions based on brand essence, real-world customers and what
the students believed the future would embrace. This experience can simply not
be gained from a text book.”
Toyota and the Clemson Deep Orange Team unveiled the uBox on April
12th at the Society of Automotive Engineers World Congress and Exposition at the
Cobo Center in Detroit.
Arjun Narayan, on power train team, said one of the first
challenges was to decide what “utility” meant for young 20 somethings.
“Was it hauling surfboards around, or is it something more/
Mark Benton, DO6 project manager, described Gen Z very product
orientated, they are not brand loyal, but they are brand conscious. So they like
to have product that can customise.
Hence the interior has modular zones, with the dashtrims made with
panels that can be replaced with different shapes and colours.
The roof panels can be glass or metal. The seats slide on rails to
different settings and can turn 180 degrees.
There is no C-pillar, instead the doors open barn-door style to
make a wider space for loading. All the panels are designed to be 3D printed.
The electric powertrain, no details of which are known yet, doubles
as a battery bank for power tools, with 110-volt outlets inside and out.
