What is the sports car of the future that uses hydrogen as fuel

“Many models that are made in a factory are just an exercise in designing a vehicle that is never going to be produced. It is done to think about concepts, ideas, which can then be applied to another design.” That phrase was left by the Argentine Juan Manuel Díaz, creator of the Audi RS Q e-tron that raced in the Dakar rally, when he was asked about the cars of the future during his recent visit to Buenos Aires.

Another Argentine designer, Rubén Wainberg, who currently works at Stellantis, also told Infobae that “the process of designing a new car is complex. It doesn't start by drawing the car, that's more or less the fourth stage. It starts with the head of the company, which studies the market and then decides what type of product should be launched. And from there a presentation is made to the design area, in which designers are quite free to propose general ideas of dimensions and little else.”

All this is what happens in factories, but it is not the same situation in conceptual design studios, or in design schools, where there are no product limitations, nor is there a previous experiment of parts that must be applied to a new product to be designed.

In Milan, Italy, at the Istituto Europeo di Design (IED), every year the students of the final year produce, in agreement and collaboration with a car brand, a conceptual model to be presented at the Geneva International Motor Show. And although the event was interrupted by the pandemic and was not held either in 2020, nor in 2021, nor will it be held this year, the program of closing the race with a complete prototype, was always maintained.

The objective of the 2021 project was to achieve a high-performance car design, but which also had an outstanding performance in terms of environmental care.

Thus, the 28 students who participated in the project agreed with Alpine, Renault's sports brand, to sketch a car by 2035, when the French brand will be 80 years old. The car is called Alpine A4810, and it is a hypercar that will be powered by a hydrogen-powered engine, and this is where, again, the possibility of creating without having to adhere to a company's product strategy requirements, allows the designers of the future to evaluate the concept that best represents the locker.

The few numbers that both Alpine and IED have released for the A4810, is that it is 5.09 m long by 2.01 m wide and 1.06 m high, with a wheelbase of 2.72 meters. Aerodynamically, they highlight the horn with a large spliter that enters air into the floor of the car, and a tail in which, in addition to a prominent diffuser with two outlets in its lower part, the vertical lights with transparent surfaces that, in addition to containing LEDs, act as air directors, and two large exhaust vents, suggesting that the hydrogen they would use if the car were a concept for production would not be a fuel cell electric motor, but a combustion engine that would be injected with pulverized hydrogen into the combustion chamber.

The interesting thing, beyond the design that is very colorful and attractive, is that in the creative head of the designers of the future, hydrogen is considered and evaluated as a cleaner option than electricity. Or at least for these 28 young people from Milan.

KEEP READING

One or two wheels? : how does the curious bicycle that rides on an infinity symbol work