Shulou(Shulou.com)11/24 Report--

The days of the trembling exhibition will eventually pass, and the new cars, which can only live in two dimensions, can spin and jump in the high-dimensional space.

In a year when there is no Beijing / Shanghai auto show, mass production cars can still show off their bodies in 4S stores, but not concept cars. From Mercedes-Benz EQXX to Jidu robots, the most they can do is to do flash motors to meet people.

Being at the forefront of public opinion is the inherent mission of the concept car, and it is also the concept car that bears the most prejudices for no reason.

Don't take the inappropriate concept of "concept" in the middle of this year, Jidu released the so-called "car robot" ROBO-01. As a result, the feature of having no B-pillar was criticized by many commentators. Not long after the release of the Star 6 concept car, everyone began to seriously discuss how to use its on-board unmanned opportunity.

However, concept cars are called concept cars because they are concept cars.

The origin of the concept car is not easy to do serious research, such as Wikipedia believes that the Buick Y-Job in 1939 is the earliest concept car, because it is the first car built from the beginning to showcase new technologies and ideas, not for mass production and sale.

The emergence of concept car is a natural process in the development of automobile industry. When the automobile industry matures, it often takes time for new technologies and ideas to fall to the ground. Manufacturers hope to show these results and ideas to enrich their image and status, so there is a concept car specially created for display purposes.

In today's eyes, the Buick Y-Job doesn't look like a concept car at all. But in the late 1930s, it was equipped with electric lights, buttons to open the door, electric windows, and so on, and these novelties will not appear and popularize in production cars until a decade or more later.

Since what we want is such a wild transcendence of reality, concept cars should not be considered according to the standards required for mass production. At the same time, the amazing but impractical bright spots on the concept body should not be projected too much into practical significance.

Different times will have different "reality" standards, so it will come down to the common "conceptual techniques" of this era. Today, for example, a variety of weird doors is one of the very common methods of concept cars, and designers have 10,000 designs regardless of production, practicality and safety.

The open door without B-pillar is probably one of the most conservative and "conventional" ones. The concept car uses a strange door structure, and even other structures that are not limited to the door, almost without exception is a hint-even a clear indication that "mass production will not be used."

A recent good example is smart # 1, the moment the concept version # 1 was launched, mature practitioners would not waste a trace of attention on "opening the door without B-posts". You shouldn't brag about how bold and innovative it is to open the door-come on, it's a concept car; you don't have to question the safety of no B-pillar-come on, it's just a concept car.

For doors like Jidu, it is only necessary to write "mass production can not be used" on the face to say why, the strange car door is probably the easiest thing to attract the attention of the general audience. Quick effect and good curative effect, and then ordinary mass production car concept car, once there is a domineering door can be on the C position, not to mention the concept car will not be mass production anyway.

This is not to say that any use of a "strange structure that is destined to be impossible for mass production" is grandstanding, because the concept car itself can be divided into many categories and levels, and different types of concept cars have different "capital" and "tasks". For example, the B-pillar-free doors of smart and set concept cars are in fact generous for people to "filter".

There are also some new features of concept cars that not only attract attention, but also have a certain value of attention. Most of these "new things" belong to one of the core display concepts of the concept car, and they will either have the possibility and value of practical application in the near future, or at least have a specific application purpose and belong to a meaningful exploration direction.

The most recent example is the Mercedes-Benz EQXX concept car, a retractable large rear spoiler and very low rear body to form a long tail, achieving 0.17Cd 's historically low wind resistance coefficient. This is almost impossible to be mass produced in the short term, even if the future is not necessarily a definite direction, but it belongs to one of the core concepts shown by EQXX, and also has a clear purpose and theoretical support.

The property of the Polar Star 6 concept car is actually very similar to the smart # 1 concept car, which is highly close to and predicts the type of production car. The concept car is equipped with an automatic aerial drone, a concept that falls somewhere between the above two types: gimmicks are absolutely gimmicks, concept cars can be ignored, but they are not just nonsense.

On the one hand, the possibility that it will really be carried in the mass production version in 2026 is basically zero, and even if it is really mass produced, its practical significance will be very limited (such as the sky-high price of useless and unqualified matching), and the significance of its car will be zero for Polar 6. Mass production abandoning the concept is like a fish losing its bike.

On the other hand, it is not a pure worthless fantasy, it has a clear purpose (car aerial photography), but at this stage, the value of the cost-effectiveness ratio to real consumers is zero; it also has a serious plan design (in cooperation with Hoco Flow), not drawing cakes out of thin air.

Concept and concept are not "equal" although the concept car has a clear definition relative to the mass production car: it will not be sold in mass production, but the painting style of the concept car itself can be very volatile. The difference between a concept car and a concept car can be much greater than the difference between some of these concept cars and production cars.

Today, before the advent of mass production cars, most car companies will launch the corresponding quasi-production concept cars. The appearance of these concept cars is almost the same as the following mass production version, and most of the only very "concept" concept elements can be easily eliminated, and even the car name may be related to the mass production version.

In fact, there are so many such concept cars. For example, BMW's 2012 concept car, the Concept Active Tourer, is almost indistinguishable from the mass-produced 2-Series Active Tourer SUV, both in appearance and interior. In fact, this is the appearance of mass production cars regardless of practical restrictions such as cost and technology.

As a retention program for this type of concept car, Concept Active Tourer, like the Polar Star 6 mentioned earlier, has added some eye-catching conceptual designs-otherwise it would be too difficult to pay attention to the appearance of the mass-production car version alone.

BMW's little trick is the bicycle bracket in the trunk, which is not only in line with the interesting thinking of the vehicle's "SUV future" identity, but also unlikely to be a factory standard for mass production. The aerial drone of the Polar Star 6 concept car is similar to the "incidental concept".

Some of the more "conceptual" types of concept cars are "concept cars are not directly related to mass production cars": they may be mass-produced in the future, but there are no ready-made corresponding models; they may also be partially restored to some mass-produced cars. Mass-produced cars will have their shadow, but they will also be very different; they may not be mass-produced at all, but you will see traces of it in a generation of design.

The "task" of this kind of concept car is heavier, which is not only the exploration and exploration of future design, but also some important new technologies in the future.

A typical example is Mercedes-Benz's 2010 concept car, the F800 Style, which you can see in the prototype design of a whole generation of Mercedes-Benz cars from 2013 to 2020, while it is also a hydrogen-powered (optional) car.

Sometimes if the identity is right and fate has arrived, this kind of concept car also has the possibility of being directly "reincarnated" as a mass production car. For example, the Volvo concept car Concept Coupe in 2013 was originally used as a rehearsal for the new S90, which was about to be mass produced, but it was transformed into a two-door image that Volvo could not mass produce at that time, which can be said to be a "deliberate" two-door concept.

However, in 2018, the Polar Star, which was born in Volvo, was in urgent need of a two-door sports car to start the mountain, so the concept car five years ago was transformed into Polar Star 1.

On the basis of this kind of concept car, which is between reality and fantasy, and then far away from reality, it will enter the general and simple understanding of "concept car" of the most ordinary audience, which is purely based on future fantasy.

These concept cars can hardly see any elements that can land on the ground. at most, they may have four wheels or even no wheels at all. This kind of concept car may also undertake part of the task of design exploration, but it is more because it is too advanced and has nothing to do with the design, everything serves for the core concepts it is exploring.

What you are most familiar with may be the Weilai store furnished EVE concept car, which simply does not correspond to any realistic or near-realistic possibility of mass production, and what it looks like is not important at all, its fundamental purpose lies in the core concept of the car, that is, the interior space of the home car in the era of fully autonomous driving.

BMW's concept car last year, the i Vision Circular, falls into this category. It has nothing to do with any specific BMW production car today or recently, and even if BMW landed as a compact four-door car, it would be very different from the i Vision Circular. Some people think that it reflects the design direction, but the exploration elements are very uncertain.

What is really certain is still the core concept of i Vision Circular, that is, a zero-carbon green city car with 100% recyclable raw materials, which is the core purpose of its birth and almost all of its mission.

Audi's concept car grandsphere and light group last year have some forward-looking value for the next Audi design, but the guidelines are still vague and uncertain; the fundamental purpose is still the core concept of this concept car: the future fully self-driving era of GT large cruise cars, inside and outside a series of sci-fi technologies are around this service.

For the majority of ordinary melon-eating audience, the concept car is still a relatively novel concept, novelty will rarely realize that, in fact, a lot of not so novel and too novel, can be called a concept car.

In fact, this is the case, as the opposite of mass production cars, do not want mass production, can not be mass production, do not want to mass production …... As long as there is no mass production to show, all can be called concept cars, naturally the cage is very large and there are all kinds of birds.

People generally think that the concept car that "looks cool" is actually only part of the concept car world.

This article comes from the official account of Wechat: autocarweekly (ID:autocarweekly), article: Aohu

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