BMW GINA: Concept car with cloth for a skin

[Thorin]

BMW has developed a new concept car that they call GINA.  The car has a space-frame that is covered in some type of silvery cloth.  Parts of the frame can move, and the fabric can be pulled apart or pushed back together.  Personally, I think the car is fugly and that using cloth as a skin is a step *backwards* in time, but hey, to each their own:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTYiEkQYhWY

[Mr. Analog]

What's next? Paper and resin cars?

(j/k)

I kinda like this design, and it's very interesting from not only a form factor perspective but also a fuel economy one. Imagine the millage you'd get without having that heavy fibre or poly shell on a car?

Now if only someone could develop a lightweight gearing system that meets North American needs...

[Darren Dirt]

flammable?

[Thorin]

What's next? Paper and resin cars?

Like the Trabant?  Although it's only the doors (and hood?) of the Trabant that are resin.

I kinda like this design, and it's very interesting from not only a form factor perspective but also a fuel economy one. Imagine the millage you'd get without having that heavy fibre or poly shell on a car?

Now if only someone could develop a lightweight gearing system that meets North American needs...

I doubt that the GINA would have good fuel economy.  Instead, it'll have average fuel economy for its class with excellent-to-class-leading acceleration and handling.  Look at a Vette, for instance.  It's got a lightweight skin, but instead of using that as an advantage to get better fuel economy, they stuff a giant engine in it and use the lack of weight to make it handle and accelerate wickedly fast.

I'm not convinced that changing from a (already pretty thin) steel unibody to a cloth-body-on-space-frame will save more than a couple hundred pounds, especially with all the actuators needed to move all those parts of the body (the self-opening doors, for instance, need electric motors and a higher-power charging system).

Now, if the law changed so they don't have to stuff all those airbags and black boxes into cars, that'd cut out a bunch of weight!  Of course then we'll just ask for more power-things (like windows and seats), and the extra motors will bring the weight back.

Reducing weight and turning potential energy (stored in some type of fuel) into forward motion more efficiently, that's the two ways that carmakers can make great strides in fuel economy.  Unfortunately they're all trying to follow Toyota's example of making cars that perform really well in the lab tests so that they can claim great fuel economy when in real life the fuel economy is frequently much worse than stated (I'm looking at you, Prius!).

[Lazybones]

Was I the only one creaped out about how the engine was exposed? It looked like a chest buster was about to pop out or some kind of chest operation.