GM’s Bare Necessity Car Concept – a perfect trade-off between creature comforts and efficiency?
This is GM’s “Bare Necessity” Car concept, which was the result of them asking themselves: what are people willing to trade off for efficiency’s sake? And this is what they think is the car with the lowest cost per mile of any four-seater on the road.
They’ve conceptually designed it with some interesting stuff like retractable wipers to improve aerodynamic efficiency, and on the slide detailing the interior you can see that the default is pretty bare but they’ve already pre-planned various add-ons such as a reconfigurable touch display, modular HVAC systems, etc.
I’m pretty sure it’s an EREV with a hybrid system like the Volt too, since the instrumentation panel features both fuel levels and a battery level. GM thinks the best way to go about car propulsion now is what they call an Extended Range Electric Vehicle, which means the vehicle runs primarily on a battery and an electric motor, but a combustion engine is available to run to produce power to charge the battery only, not drive the wheels.
Look after the jump to view all the slides they’ve published. There’s also a video where they interview some of the team behind the concept.
August 12, 2009 @ 1:02 pm
Paul, any review about new Citroen C5? Recently saw one in KL. Looks hot!
August 12, 2009 @ 1:16 pm
cheh! i tot with “Bare Necessity” tagline they going to challange TATA Nano, but it just another expensive car that people most likely not going to buy.
August 12, 2009 @ 1:16 pm
They want their own Fiat 500/MINI Cooper?
August 12, 2009 @ 1:38 pm
good work gm,if you’re into customer needs & cover every expect of their necessities.
its going to be a time to roll out your creativitity and talents in production.
proton,its not to late,adapt yourself with the values and profession that’s lack in you and show out the total skills and technology of a malaysia brand.you can do it.
August 12, 2009 @ 1:44 pm
GM still don’t know what is their right direction.
they will bankrupt for the 3rd time later.
August 12, 2009 @ 2:44 pm
Now they ( GM) are thinking with their brains coming out with new ideas after the near death situation in the auto biz.Expect more to come out from GM after some Bud and fries otherwise GM will be history.
August 12, 2009 @ 3:00 pm
sorry out of the topic…..hope tat tis car’s emblem is not tat expensive lar compare to toyota dugong…cos the latest toyota dugong’s “TRD Sportivo” is selling at RM370….anyone want?
August 12, 2009 @ 3:25 pm
I read BYD electric car on similar hybrid idea where there’s a small engine to charge up the battery and not run the car drive system a year ago. AGAIN, GM claiming the publicity stuff….
August 12, 2009 @ 4:40 pm
alot of people will buy this car or just to show off??
August 12, 2009 @ 5:59 pm
this car outline… make me think of savvy
August 12, 2009 @ 8:37 pm
Retractable wipers? That will increase the cost. People also want something that looks good as well.
August 12, 2009 @ 9:28 pm
think they should focus on managing their company well and cutting dead weight first before delving into all these concepts.
August 13, 2009 @ 7:56 am
Already bancrupt and still wanna play with this kind of things?
August 13, 2009 @ 11:18 am
caution : sexist remarks!
a girl design a car? its a car… not a cupcakes!! hahahaa..
anyway.. its quite a good design.. very futuristic but not that realistic… most of it might be tune down to fit mass manufacturing capability (read: accounting department)