This Is The Car For Young City-Dwellers

on April 24, 2015 at 3:27 pm

Deep Orange 5 is designed for young adults in big cities

The Deep Orange 5 is part car, part party venue. The concept vehicle has double-hinged doors that open out like nightclub doors, allowing easy access to seats that can be reversed, turning it from car into social space.

General Motors and Clemson University students unveiled a vehicle Wednesday aimed at young, price-conscious consumers in big cities that takes the connected, digital car to a new level. The Deep Orange 5 was designed by the Art Center College of Design student MinKi Chung and engineered by Clemson’s automotive engineering graduate students to appeal to young adults who will live in mega cities in 2020.

Paul Venhovens, who leads the Deep Orange program, said the concept vehicle was “about creating a better value proposition for young adults that have little money to spare, less interest in vehicle ownership than previous generations, yet need a personal mobility solution that aligns with their complex lifestyle.”

The compact car features unique modular seating, providing a reconfigurable layout to transform from a driver focused configuration, to a lounge environment, or a reclined setup conducive to relaxation. The concept features double-hinged doors, with embedded displays that allow both the driver and the passenger to post unique design and messages.

The body and chassis of the Deep Orange 5 are built completely from scratch, and share no structural components with any existing production vehicle. It was designed to be a light vehicle focused on city driving, with extensive use of carbon fiber and aluminum to save pounds.

Rather than adhering to a General Motors-mandated design, the millennial concept car design was developed by members of the much-maligned generational group themselves. Stewart Reed, the chair of California’s Art Center College of Design Transportation Design, said the CU-ICAR students had “really immersed themselves into the personas of youth living in urban settings while designing this vehicle.” The result is light, using a carbon fiber body to make getting around a city easier, and more ecologically considerate than most cars — the students projected that a final model would use a natural gas engine, and built space into the chassis to contain it.