10 Awesome Concept Cars Revealed in 2016

Toyota Setsuna Concept Car

The first awesome concept is a simple Toyota’s Setsuna concept car. It is simple and yet very unique concept, which caught some attention during the spring of 2016. One of the main causes for that attention is not only the shape of a true roadster but also the materials that were used on that car. It is made of wood – Japanese cedar and birch.

The technology behind that car is a traditional Japanese craftsmanship which doesn’t involve any nails or screws. It is something that you would keep in your living room as a piece of furniture. On the other hand, its creators have something else on their minds. They think of it as a symbiotic connection between the owner and the car. Because the car is made of living materials, it ages and changes over the years, just like its owner. It even has a one hundred year meter in it, to mark the beginning and the end of one epoch. If you take a good care of it, it will look as young as it can, but if you neglect it, it will age more rapidly.

Splinter Supercar

This one is a bit more enthusiastic. It is being made by a group of serious car enthusiasts who were inspired by the fastest WW2 plane, also made of wood. The car is not made to last a thousand years and if you want it, you must take a good care of it, having in mind the materials which were used. That is just like with the Toyota’s little roadster. But this one is made to be a modern supercar.

The engine is a 7.0-liter small block V8 with an 8 throttle body intake manifold, a camshaft ground made specifically for the custom system, and a custom built crossflow exhaust system. The total output should be somewhere close to 700bhp.

Basically, only things not made of wood are the engine and the transmission. Everything else, including the wheels, is made entirely out of wood. That “little” project is not meant to be the new breakthrough in the automobile industry but a statement of creativity. Who knows maybe that’s a foundation for some new “ideas and perceptions of wood”.

Ferrari Millenio – Bold design, Fast Car, No Windshield… What?

This is a concept of a supercar that will not be taken into consideration in some near future. The design itself is a couple of years old and it looks like a perfect sports car. But the materials that are meant to be used are far ahead of its time.

The main material is a super light material called Buckypaper. That is a thin sheet made from an aggregate of carbon nanotubes. Every layer of those tubes is 50,000 times thinner than a human hair. If the research goes as planned, it will find its use in the automobile industry, military and next generation electronic equipment.

Except for that material, the other problem will be to implement solar cells around the car, because the plan is to use them as the main source of energy. Of course, that was before the “superchargers” appeared on the streets.

Mercedes-Benz BIOME – Growing Car

This one is highly improbable but it sounds cool. The main idea is to grow a car. Yeah not metaphorically “grow” but literally grow a car from the cellular level. Material that will be manufactured in the laboratory will be the most durable material, and yet lighter than metal and plastic. The entire process will be done in a special laboratory. It will include two different parts of the growing process. Interior will grow from the front star and exterior from the rear Mercedes star. It’s all on the level of genetics and there is no way to explain more thoroughly.

The final product which will be lighter than any car of its size (somewhere around 400 kg or 900 lbs, which is an astounding 5,000 lbs lighter than the 2018 G-Class!) will be in total symbiosis with nature. That’s, of course, a hypothetical assumption.

Design and the idea are already seven years old, but nobody can stop us from dreaming. Car looks beautiful and I don’t see any obstacle in creating such a car from the regular materials. It would be awesome to see this kind of a car on the streets.

The Metromorph Concept Car – Self-driving and Self Parking Balcony…

This is one more concept for the ideal urban everyday vehicle, but it seems like it’s almost a century ahead of its time.

It’s difficult to explain the main concept. It is a vehicle for some other world. It is an elegantly made bubble which stands like your balcony. When you need to get out of the building, you get into your balcony which then detaches from your apartment and goes down like an elevator. But, in order to have that, every building must have that railing system. People basically need to change their entire cities. It would definitely solve the parking problem, but it is too expensive to make.

Taihoo 2046 Concept car – Zen Vehicle

Electric cars have already become a reality, and that brings us the age of new designs. We could see an alteration of this concept in some near future. It is a well thought and a pretty modern car with a completely new design of wheels. That is a good and a very bad thing in the same moment.

Exterior and the interior designs are perfect. It has four autonomous parts:

– Main beam

– Cockpit with solar cells

– Aluminum Body

– Drivetrain system

When you drive, you are in a completely translucent bubble, surrounded by the super light aluminum body frame. It is one “out of the box” design, but with one big flaw. It looks like designers didn’t think about the weight of the occupants when designing the front.

The idea is to have three wheels. Two traditional wheels on the back and one big sphere on the front are some kinds of an idea, but not a good one. The front would be too wide for one wheel and it would be difficult to maneuver in curves. The car would tilt to the side and immediately plow the road. It is illogical. The better way would be to get the regular four wheels and problem solved. We would’ve got the best vehicle of the decade.

Renault Trezor – White Batmobile

French automaker Renault presented its newest “future car” concept at the 2016 Paris Auto Show. That concept is one of those plausible ones. It even has an official Internet presentation with a pretty cool “developer’s diary” attached with it.

Like every other concept, it is used to “explore the styling and technology of the future models”.

It has a very low and wide posture. It looks like they took the shape from those old speedsters from 1950’s and 1960’s, but that is only the base shape. Everything else smells like the future. The entire body is made with some strange texture which looks like scales or honeycomb. The front part, the hood, is covered by solar cells and air intakes which automatically open up on certain temperatures and speed.

There are no doors, and the entire upper part of the vehicle rises up for you to get in. That particular decision will make some pretty serious head injuries for tall people, but why not?

It will have a fully electrical drivetrain, the one Renault is using in Formula E, but weaker. It will have somewhere around 350hp and it will go from 0-60 in less than 4 seconds.

Volkswagen I.D. Buzz

If you are old enough, you remember those wacky sixties. That was a time of hippies and Volkswagen Microbus. Everybody liked that Microbus and Volkswagen are using that old fame to come back to the U.S.

It is a good design, and it was officially unveiled at the 2017 Detroit Auto Show. God knows how many times they have tried to make this vehicle. The first announcement was made back in 2001. There is a huge fan base for the VW Microbus in U.S and 2001 would’ve been the perfect year to release this vehicle. Now it is a different story. Even though it is a completely electric version Tesla has already covered that with their announcement for the Microbus. Judging by the sales, after the diesel fiasco, drivers in the U.S. do not trust the German automaker.

Whether or not this thing is going to flop, we don’t know. What we do know is that the concept is good. The price, on the other hand, has not been specified, but they said that it is going to be cheap. How cheap, on the other hand, no.

That Microbus is going to be a part of the Volkswagen’s offensive in the field of electric cars. Their battle begins in 2020, and their plan is to sell over 1 million electric vehicles per year, by 2025.

Jekyll and Hyde – The Transformer

This design maybe deserves the first place but it’s far from the final product. It’s too complicated and too expensive to manufacture, so no one even bothers to do so.

The idea is made for Bentley and it’s meant for the richest layers of society. Although the price is not even mentioned anywhere, and the design itself lost its popularity so you can hardly find anything about it. But, nevertheless, the technology behind it makes it one of the best designs out there.

The name is not a random one, but it serves its purpose. Jekyll and Hyde are two versions of the vehicle. That first version is for the daytime, slick and elegant, with solar panels all around it, which are used to replenish batteries during the day. The second one, Mr. Hyde is a transformed version which automatically activates as soon as the sun disappears behind the horizon. That other version pops different ventilation openings and flaps. They use air resistance and wind to move propellers inside the chassis which are again, charging the batteries during the night ride. That kind of a concept can be seen as some kind of perpetual mobile. It could’ve been an unstoppable machine.

AirPod Concept – A True Green Energy Car

In the ocean of vehicles with all sorts of power sources, the one was always special for me. That is the AirPod. It is simple to make, very cheap to buy and a complete (possible) revolution in car design. It is basically using compressed air to move pistons. It is simple as that. You fill your tank with that compressed air and that is it. There is no need to make those expensive factories for lithium batteries. But nobody wants to invest in that project, except for that small production facility in France. They have the prototype, but there is something wrong and fishy with the marketing department.

The manufacturing company keeps promising the final production date for the AirPod, but it hasn’t gone on sale as of January 2017.

The design is… not so menacing like previously mentioned concepts. It is very funny looking but we do have to save the planet, and “green energy” vehicles will not go cheaper than $7,000. That will be the starting price for this little vehicle, and what else do you need? Hell, even I have a compressor, and I could use it to fuel this little goblin.