News + Trends

Carmakers are not very creative people. For more than 100 years the basics haven't changed much: four wheels bolted to a suspension and brake assembly and driven by a combustion engine. How boring. Strangely enough, it's a tyre manufacturer who, by reinventing the wheel, might change the way we build cars. Michelin's Active Wheel is a unit that houses a 30-Kilowatt electric motor, brake disc and calliper and an electric suspension all integrated into a wheel rim with a low-profile tyre. Just bolt it to a frame, plug in a battery and off you go. Suddenly, building a car is a easy as attaching pushchair wheel to a soapbox. The possibilities are mind boggling. Sadly enough, the design of the Heuliez WILL car, one of the first cars with the new Active Wheel, is rather classic to say the least. Seems that it's time to reinvent the car now.

*well heeled = rich, well equipped There are two sources for this expression: At cockfights the cocks with large and sharp heels or spurs were most likely to win. On the other hand, people with money could afford good-quality shoes with heels.

One way to overcome the car manufacturer's crisis is to create fascinating products. Lotus has always excelled in this discipline, but with the CIV they have outdone themselves. The Concept Ice Vehicle looks like it's straight out of an old James Bond movie but is in fact a real vehicle especially designed for the Moon-Regan Trans Antarctic Expedition. The three-legged snowmobile is driven by a rear mounted propeller. The engine is a supercharged BMW motorcycle engine which has been adapted to run on bio ethanol. Among the many features added by Q, who seems to be working at Lotus after his retirement from the series, are a spiked foot for emergency breaking, GPS and an ice-penetrating radar system to warn of dangers on and below the surface, such as hidden crevasses.

It seems that China isn't the only country copying the Transrapid. New Zealand is closing in, too. But being a sportive and outdoor-loving nation, the Kiwi's answer to the German monorail is much smaller, much lighter and, above all, much more fun. The Shweeb - even the name is a German rip-off - is a human-powered monorail and part of the Agroventures fun-park near Rotorua, NZ. Enclosed in a perspex cabin hanging from a monorail riders can race around the 200-metre long round course against time or each other. The pedalpowered vehicles have seven gears and reach speeds of up to 50 kilometres per hour. Although currently nothing more than a gimmick at a fun fair, designer Geoffrey Barnett envisions his system as a public transport in the cities of the future.

Rotating restaurants on top of radio towers or skyscrapers are so yesterday. The latest trend in mobile architecture is David Fisher's Dynamic Tower. Each floor of the Dynamic Tower rotates independently to create a building that constantly changes its shape and appearance, resulting in a unique and ever evolving architectural landmark. The Dynamic Tower is environmentally friendly and the first building designed to be completely self-powered, with wind turbines positioned horizontally between each floor, and photovoltaic cells placed on the roof of each rotating floor to produce solar energy. The Dynamic Tower will also be the first skyscraper to be built entirely from prefabricated parts that are custom made in a workshop and then installed on site.

University of Florida mechanical and aerospace engineering associate professor Subrata Roy has submitted a patent application for a circular, spinning aircraft design reminiscent of the spaceships seen in countless Hollywood films. Roy, however, calls his design a "wingless electromagnetic air vehicle," or WEAV. The vehicle will be powered by a phenomenon called magnetohydrodynamics, or the force created when a current or a magnetic field is passed through a conducting fluid. The conducting fluid will be created by electrodes that cover each of the vehicle's surfaces and ionize the surrounding air into plasma. The force created by passing an electrical current through this plasma pushes around the surrounding air, and that swirling air creates lift and momentum and provides stability against wind gusts. The vehicle will have no moving parts. Towering obstacles stand between the blueprint and liftoff. The power source needs to be extremely lightweight yet still produce enough power to generate the necessary plasma.