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iChange: shape-shifting car controlled by your iPhone
Rinspeed sure has a few odd vehicles in its stable — just look at the company's transparent car, or its underwater convertible. Now Rinspeed is rolling out the diminutive iChange in time for the Geneva Motor Show, which the company bills as "the world's first car whose body adapts to the number of passengers on board," and everything from the shape-shifting seats (shown first in the gallery below) to the ignition is controllable with an iPhone.
From Rinspeed:
An initial walk-around reveals that the concept car has no doors. The entire electrically powered roof section… tilts forward to allow passengers to board. Also gone are such mundane things as a key. Its role is filled by an Apple iPhone, which also controls the most important vehicle functions… The energy for the electric motor comes from lithium-ion batteries that are available in two different stack configurations for short- and long-distance driving.So you get to sit up front like you're piloting a jet while one to three passengers sit behind, depending on how you have the seats laid out. We may never be driving anything even resembling the iChange, but it sure is purty — as the pictures below handily prove.
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Wired, via CrunchGear
By martinex at 6:33 AM ON 02/24/09
The photos don't give us a clue. Maybe a video is in order.
By Nixxon at 4:03 AM ON 02/26/09
Interesting car, although the "the world's first car whose body adapts to the number of passengers on board," is infact BS. There was a concept car built, that could extend itself to acompany two more passangeres (I don't remember who built it, but it had the Merc C lights in the front) and was a twoseater by default.
Interestingly, I designed (sketched) a very similar car a few years prior to that and sent it to the first Peugeot Design Contest. I hope they didn't get the idea there. :P
By annoyed at 4:45 AM ON 02/26/09
Seriously, how hard is it for Dvice to use a little javascript to allow visitors to go through the multiple images without having to reload the entire page for each image?! And this is supposed to be a tech site?? Even a lowly intern could figure out how to do this!
By NeuroPulse at 7:46 AM ON 02/26/09
"Seriously, how hard is it for Dvice to use a little javascript to allow visitors to go through the multiple images without having to reload the entire page for each image?!"
AGREED
By moviedemon at 8:27 AM ON 02/26/09
It also drives me nut the way the captcha times out by the time you read the article, and you have to refresh before you can post a comment.
hire a new web guy!!
By Smortal at 8:30 AM ON 02/26/09
Revenue vs. Usability
It is easy to do that, but then they would loose ad impressions. Notice, there is a banner and skyscraper ad on every page that wouldn't get refreshed.
By mjdallas at 9:26 AM ON 02/26/09
They make scripts to rotate the ads too....
By mr_coffee at 9:26 AM ON 02/26/09
You say that as though JS is incapable of rotating ads.
By mr_coffee at 9:28 AM ON 02/26/09
jinx.
By mjdallas at 9:35 AM ON 02/26/09
:-D
By stevefah at 10:48 AM ON 02/26/09
Interestingly, nobody has commented on the two different orientations of the iphone and "catem eberspacher" logo thingy in two different photos. Are we seeing a totally mocked up car?
By INQUISITOR at 11:25 AM ON 02/26/09
What woould you do with a child's car seat??
By TEVARIAN at 12:03 PM ON 02/26/09
"Interestingly, nobody has commented on the two different orientations of the iphone and "catem eberspacher" logo thingy in two different photos. Are we seeing a totally mocked up car?"
There is one on each side, look at the overhead view.
By Elvis at 12:26 PM ON 02/26/09
the more times the pages load, the more adds get shown.
but i agree, this is hi tech 80's web design. lol
By Lain at 2:13 PM ON 02/26/09
"What woould you do with a child's car seat??"
I second that motion. Regardless of however small we decide to make cars, there's really no way to shrink a car seat. For that reason, along with several others, there will always be a need for some larger cars. Mom don't buy minivans because they go to the car lot and fall in love with their sexiness. They buy them because it has enough space for the baby, the toddler, and all the crap associated with them.
"Seriously, how hard is it for Dvice to use a little javascript to allow visitors to go through the multiple images without having to reload the entire page for each image?!"
Seriously tech guys, if you don't start listening to your posters, you're going to lose your posters. I found refreshing to see every picture horrible and time consuming as well.
By PaintLight at 3:50 PM ON 02/26/09
Ok two things, none of these pictures show the car with more than two seats in back. And it's the perfect car for a guy looking for a divorce. "Look honey, your nagging ass has to sit in the back, AND I still get to play with my Iphone as I drive!"
By zatch at 5:15 PM ON 02/26/09
Ok two things, none of these pictures show the car with more than two seats in back. really if it changes why don't they show it with more sits cause to me it looks like could barely fit another seat in there whats up with that
By Buzzby at 5:21 PM ON 02/26/09
I'm still waiting to see how this car miraculously reconfigures itself...
By HBSteve at 1:23 PM ON 02/28/09
So he built a car, so it integrated an iphone that controls something, woopie, joes auto stereo on the corner can add a iphone to your civic for $99 no news here besides some rich guy making a fiberglass shell, a quick upholstery job, and a flashy paint job... all to get chicks... Nothing is "shape-shifting"... its called bolts... bolt in new seats, take out others... oooo I swear what do these guys smoke to think people will oooo and aweee about them? I've seen better built sandrails than this thing.
By Bigdadd at 1:28 AM ON 03/13/09
Never mind all the obvious problems with this car, I have a hard enough time with the doors on my van freezing closed in the winter, I would hate to have the whole top of the car freeze down. you would never get into this thing if you lived anywhere that has snow or freezing rain.
on your cellphone!
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Bigdadd:
Never mind all the obvious problems with this car, I have a hard enough time with the doors on my van freezing clos...More »