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posted by Fnord666 on Tuesday November 27 2018, @12:05PM   Printer-friendly
from the dude-you're-getting-an-opal dept.

Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984

Vauxhall's GTX concept teases the future of mass-market EVs

Vauxhall and Opel, the Anglo-German car maker, joins a number of companies suddenly rushing to embrace electrification. As part of a wider shift away from gas-powered vehicles, it has built the GTX, an all-electric concept that serves as a mission statement for its EVs. You won't see this car popping up in showrooms, but this is the shape, broadly, of things to come.

[...] The GTX concept is an SUV, but built on to the chassis of a compact car, so while it has a high ride profile, its footprint is tiny. Measuring in at 13.3 feet (4.06 meters) by 6 feet (1.83 meters), it's built on the same platform that will underpin the 2019 Vauxhall Corsa, coming in both ICE and EV models. Adding to the look are four custom-made 17-inch tires with hubcaps designed to make them look much bigger.

[...] In place of wing-mirrors, the GTX has two (LG-made) LCD displays connected to cameras that pop out from the edge of the hood. The displays are mounted on the edges of the dashboard to match our instinct to look over when planning a turn. Expect to see more companies adopting this technology -- Audi already has them on the E-Tron SUV -- in the near future. No wing mirrors reduces drag and, perhaps more importantly, makes it easier to park in tighter spaces.

Vauxhall has also gone in hard on the use of LCD displays to cheat little flourishes on the car. On a Rolls Royce, the steering wheel and hubcap insignia remain level due to the inclusion of complex gyroscopic equipment. Here, Vauxhall used little screens to give the look of that (with gentle movement) without any complex engineering. There's also a small LCD battery indicator on the rear driver's-side door to let you know, as you approach the car, how charged it is.

The other big thing that the company is shouting about is the new Visor grille, which will be common across all new Vauxhalls. This five-sided grille will hold the LED headlights, turn signals, the automaker's light-up badge and, where available, the sensors for autonomous driving. Well, kinda -- the company says that it'll focus only on Level 3 self-driving for its production cars.

[...] These loose specs suggest the company is aiming for a range of around 200 miles for cars built on the same platform. The 2018 Nissan Leaf has a 40 kWh battery and has an EPA-rated range of 151 miles. The 2018 Chevy Bolt has a 60 kWh cell and is rated by the EPA for a range of 238 miles.

So, the future of Vauxhall is electricity, efficiency, weight reduction and an embrace of a more futuristic-looking design language. It'll be interesting to see how many of these concepts trickle down into its production models. And that will all start with next year's Corsa.


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  • (Score: 2) by acid andy on Tuesday November 27 2018, @09:44PM

    by acid andy (1683) on Tuesday November 27 2018, @09:44PM (#767056) Homepage Journal

    Yes. Could it be a sign of the dumbing down of consumer products and services? Flashy marketing now dominating the product's very design, where function used to be of prime importance and marketing was more of an afterthought? I suppose it's just too easy to underestimate how much of the population does fit into those categories of the obnoxious that you identified. Maybe the jack-of-all-trades / wannabe factor is higher due to people being less likely to afford more than one vehicle these days compared to the past. I think it's also a case of manufacturers cutting back their ranges as a cost saving exercise, often also using a common platform for different models and even badge engineering of one vehicle across different car companies. If one vehicle is just about good enough to sell to two or three groups of people that previously wanted different models, I guess they go with it. The manufacturer wins on their profit margin and the consumer loses on choice and winds up driving a compromise.

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