Volkswagen of the Future? The People's Car Project

Jul 25
07:07

2012

Andrea Avery

Andrea Avery

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According to the science fiction magazines and novels of the 1950s, America and the rest of the world would be travelling by flying car by the year 2012. Has Volkswagen developed the car that will finally realize that dream?

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According to the science fiction magazines and novels of the 1950s,Volkswagen of the Future? The People's Car Project Articles America and the rest of the world would be travelling by flying car by the year 2012. To the disappointment of everyone who despises rush hour traffic, this hasn't happened yet. Or has it? With the People's Car Project, venerable automaker Volkswagen debuted a concept vehicle developed with crowd-sourced ideas from their Chinese consumers. The result was a floating disk using electromagnetism to stay off the ground. Could we be looking at the future of car travel? When the magazines and movies envisioned the flying car, it looked...well, not that much different from the cars we see on the road today. Sleeker? Perhaps, but it is no more exotic than the latest Lamborghini. The Volkswagen concept, however, was a different story altogether. It looked like nothing so much as a floating donut. Of course, to the manufacturer that came up with the unique shape of the Beetle, perhaps some out of the box thinking is not the last thing we should be expecting. Making its public debut at the 2012 Beijing Motor Show, the Volkswagen Hover Car was shown on video to an excited audience. Floating approximately a foot off the ground, it's easy to envision how this method of vehicle construction would change the way we drive. Without the road-friction slowing the vehicle, how would it change the way we use energy? The possibilities are immense. Additionally, since the vehicle would be following a predetermined path (guided by electromagnetic strips in the road), it could take the driver out of the situation, leaving him free to browse his phone (or whatever form of entertainment is prevalent when this type of technology hits the mainstream). Unfortunately, for those who would love to see a massive leap forward in technology, the Volkswagen Hover Car is nothing more than a CGI dream as it stands today. The point of bringing it out at the People's Car Project was not so much to get people thinking about the flying car, but rather to start a dialogue about possibility. VW has always seen themselves as a car manufacturer of the people, a philosophy reflected in its vehicle designs, which have often taken brave chances. While their version of the flying car may not hit the market anytime soon, Chinese customers were convinced that this is a manufacturer far from its last days of innovation. Of course, the exciting thing about the development of the Hover Car (if only in a computer) is the bending of the definition of the word "car". If auto manufacturers and consumers can look at this development as a positive step forward, then perhaps innovation will begin growing at a rate that would leave the sci-fi writers of the 50s breathless. Time will tell.