Inflatable car, anyone?

[steuard]

Sam Tanenbaum, a former engineering professor and dean at Harvey Mudd who since retirement has been teaching an "Energy and the Environment" class in the Joint Science Department, passed along a fascinating link recently. It's to a company named "XP Vehicles", which last week produced a press release entitled "Low cost Inflatable electric car is announced as world’s first crash-proof, long range, flat-pack vehicle." The "Whisper" (pictured here, I think) is not yet available, but this does seem like a serious company. They plan to charge less than $5000, it's fully electric, and they claim that it's remarkably safe:

The engineers for the Whisper are confident you can drive it off a 25-foot cliff without serious injury to its passengers. ...

...the car will float in an emergency such as a flood or tsunami...

(The FAQ page does comment that such situations are "not part of the intended use".) They claim that two average adults with high school education can inflate and assemble the car in under two hours; that's relevant because home delivery is also feasible: "The whole vehicle packs into two cardboard boxes for shipping by common carrier anywhere in the world."

I don't know what to think of the idea, except that I won't be the first person in line. At least it's comforting that the company's FAQ page does address two of the first questions that occurred to me: "What if somebody stabs my inflatable car?" and "Can the inflatable version blow away?"

Comments

[kirin]

That's pretty cool, but if I were marketing it, I probably wouldn't release a demo render with a nifty plastic ray-tracing effect on the windshield that makes it look like you can't see through it. I actually do wonder what they do about the windows - presumably in the actual vehicle they'll be reasonably hard plastic so they don't wrinkle or warp.