It’s a bit like Scooby-Doo meets A Clockwork Orange.
Graduate students at Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) spent two years working with Toyota to create the ideal vehicle for the next age demographic to leap into the car-buying fray: Generation Z.
No, we’re not talking about some stodgy Millennial born in 1985, with his cardigans and Dodge Journey. Generation Z refers to the cohort born in the late 1990s (at the earliest) onward, and these are the people automakers are going to start targeting right … about … now.
Working under the project name Deep Orange (“Orange?” Hmm … ), the students crafted the ultimate ride for the generation who’ll have Instagram photos from their elementary school graduation. The year 2020 was the engineering group’s target marketing date.
Called the uBox, a name Scion might have appropriated if this was 2004, the vehicle blends versatility, cargo room and some degree of off-road capability. Clamshell doors, 3D-printed materials, a bonded glass roof and emissions-free connectivity hookups everywhere are defining characteristics of the uBox.
“Deep Orange gives students hands-on experience with the entire vehicle development process, from identifying the market opportunity through the vehicle build,” said Johnell Brooks, an associate professor in Clemson’s graduate engineering program, in a release.
Configurable seats and interior panels would allow buyers to put a personal touch on their rides. After all, you don’t want a uBox that looks just like the one your friends Jayden and Liam own.
“They’re not brand loyal, but they are very brand conscious,” said Mark Benton, Clemson’s project manager for Deep Orange, of Gen-Z car buyers. “They like to have products they can customize.”
Toyota and Clemson weren’t forthcoming on the concept’s propulsion source, but the wording of their statements and body style implies a battery electric vehicle. A high floor would allow for a large, flat battery pack and electric motor, freeing up space for a cavernous interior (which could be rented out on Airbnb during Gen-Z’s low-money years).
[Image: Toyota Motor Corporation]
“Toyota and Clemson weren’t forthcoming on the concept’s propulsion source…”
The hybrid good intentions/unicorn farts motor is still under development.
Rainbow burps keep messing up the bubble converter.
I read 2000 for Z-ombies, meaning the oldest is 16. These folks won’t matter for at least a decade from the car buying standpoint.
Great job, kids- you just spent two years reinventing every stupid people-hauler concept that’s been introduced since the mid-1970s.
Maybe Soylent Green would be a more fitting name than Deep Orange.
It does look like an old concept Renault Espace.
It looks like a Hot Wheels car.
Like, an actual Hot Wheels car I’ve found at Walmart.
NoGoYo – beat me to it. It looks like a Hot Wheels car come to life.
Looks like the runabout from Ark II.
https://johnkennethmuir.files.wordpress.com/2012/05/ark2f.jpg
T.K. We’re dating ourselves, but that’s immediately what occurred to me. Except I couldn’t remember the show.
Stop showing me g-d teal bullsh!t, manufacturers. Teal isn’t going to work.
“Teal is going to work!”
-Ford Motor Company in 1990-
I’ll see your Tempo and raise you a Tracker! (With neon pink tape stripe.)
And I will comeback with Ford Mystichrome! Or a purple Probe.
So that’s their TM name for chameleon paint? I never knew there was one. Boy am I glad that trend only lasted from 02-04.
Also had no idea they applied the oil stain treatment to the interior as well.
https://s-media-cache-ak0.pinimg.com/736x/95/4b/eb/954bebe98eabbbb6219acf2cf9685dfd.jpg
mix all the colors in the paint booth together and you get this putrid color they slapped on this Toyota concept.
Looks like someone in the paint kitchen purged all the lines onto this POS.
Toyota paint booth operator: What color are we painting this piece of sh!t?
Toyota Designer: All of them, Frank.
LOL
Actually, if you mix all the colors, you get a brown-tinted gray.
It depends what colors said Toyota paint booth has.
Teal worked in getting me a Jeep TJ Wrangler – $9990.
End-of-year closeout. Loss leader for 1998 – survived a whole year of bait-and-switch. Teal on teal; white top, no carpeting.
The Wrangler market was healthy enough that two years later I sold it for what I paid for it. No lie…there was room in that unquenchable market even for teal Jeeps.
Maybe Toyota, using inscrutable Japanese logic, wants to channel some more of that luck.
“some stodgy Millennial born in 1985, with his cardigans and Dodge Journey.”
I hate Craig.
Orange as in Clemson colors.
I lived near Clemson for several years on my OEM hiatus status. What John D. Hollingsworth did for the region and ICAR is insane. It’s been great for the community, especially since Clemson used to be the go to for textiles only. Clemson has spit out many talented engineers that I’ve worked with.
With that said, those kids are pretty cocky with respect to the rest of automotive / manufacturing based education. They don’t even know who John D. Hollingsworth is and why they have ‘nice things.’
This isn’t what I’d call a shining moment indicative of Clemson’s engineers.
“They like to have products they can customize.”
If you change the word “customize” to “coachwork,” then you’ll have my attention.
I deleted the e-mail notification of the new post without bothering to open it. Then, curious, I opened the e-mail from my trash just to get a glimpse.
After seeing the image, I hastily clicked the “comment” link before even more hastily clicking the “delete forever” box in hopes that it would wash my memory clean. I still haven’t read the article, and I don’t care to.
Now if you’ll excuse me, I have some ozone to go deplete in a proper car.
Big Trucks, is that you?
Nope, just a Generation Y corporate schill trying to maintain his dignity in a world gone mad.
What kind of money will Generation Z have to spend on anything other than food and video games?
“Generation Z” is too busy staring at their smartphones and snottily rolling their eyes at their parents to care about any car.
JimZ – you just described my 12 year old. LOL
The lion’s share of their money will be going toward student loan payments on those psychotically overpriced Gender Studies degrees.
Where else will they learn how their barbaric ancestors banned penises from the ladies rooms?
It’s OK, these will probably be rented by the hour from an app. They need to have standard bike racks attached to the back, or otherwise the kids who don’t live in a mixed-income/use development won’t be able to get to where the nearest Orange is parked.
Generation Z is gonna be so deep in compounding interest debt they’ll be lucky if they can afford an UBER that looks like this.
And their parents will be no help – they’ll be in foreclosure with their Chinese-owned lenders.
The Chinese can take all our stuff but they will never take away our guns.
Good thing the ATF banned imported barrels or we’d see the rednecks (who soak up all the Chinese crap because it’s cheaper) buying Chicom AR15’s claiming to be red blooded ‘mericans.
Is that the off-road version of the Tartan Prancer?
I like that color.
Complete with pedestrian eviscerator on the hood, and twin graters covering the A-pillars, perfect for any pieces left.
Nobody scores my navigator!
Is there a logical explanation for the rear spoiler mounted on the front hood?
My guess is to provide a spongy surface to for pedestrians to bounce off of, in conformance with European safety requirements.
Other than that, the sucked-in-cheeks look of the sides just reduces space for side-impact protections and interior space, while weighing more than a flat side would. More pictures would give even more details to wonder about.
Well, that group doesn’t include me, but does include my sister, who was born in the late 90s. Unfortunately, she’s grown up listening to me rattling on and on about various cars, and so her desires in a car are about the same as mine…
First mistake is thinking a whole generation of people think alike. Second mistake is thinking teenagers know what they want.
Is there some reason that automotive design students absolutely never come up with anything even remotely non-hideous? I can’t imagine that any of these students ever go on to work in industry, because even counting the Aztek and the Juke I’ve never seen an actual production vehicle that’s even in the same solar system of ugliness as the most comely of student design efforts.
*horrified shiver*
Kudos for eschewing the word “disrupt”. Or “eschew.”
“just like the one your friends Jayden and Liam own.”
I think you meant ride in,as in Uber, driven by a gig economy X’er.
The others will be buying wrapped Lambos.
One of my old GM workmates is the major domo of CU-ICAR.
I need to call him up and snark on this…..
Is it just me or is the Aztec looking better with each new car that gets released?
The Aztec’s not even odd looking anymore. If the Isuzu Vehicross of 15 years ago came out today, no one would give it a second glance. Both of those are pretty damn modest by today’s standards.
This makes the Aztec and the Vehicross look beautiful. This can be the first Chinese made Toyota imported to the US market in 2020.
I always liked the VehiCROSS. I’d drive one around happily.
To come to think about it you guys are right! The Aztec and Vehicross are revolutionary for their generation and, if they came out today, they would be sucessful!
Those who think outside the box create inspiration for the next generation.
No, not at all. The neighbor across the street has a son or grandson that drives one and I’m reminded every few days that the Aztek is still hideous. Bonus: it leaks oil.
I love it except for the trellis towers welded to the front and the sheet metal growing up into where greenhouse should be. At least it’s tall and very cab forward.
“Jayden and Liam”
+1
Of course, the problem with customizing your ride is that nobody else wants that combination when you sell it.
The shape things to come? Wow, I guess Triumph wasn’t full of sh!t after all.
Shoot, they even got the color right…
I do find it weird that a decade apart Toyota still claims that youths want to ‘customize’ things. If cell phones and tablets have told us anything, NO, NO WE DON’T. We like to customize easily moved and replaced features in our gadgets but actually customizing our gadgets with expensive add-ons? Not really. The most successful add-ons for phones are payment systems to cut cost on proprietary POSes & camera modules that actually do heavy lifting camera work.
Side note: I saw today a FCA 2-door sebring blacked out and completely stripped . Not really caring that much but it was clearly in ‘test bed swirls’ livery I decided to check it out. It’s a plug-in test bed car that when I cornered the guys at the waterfront went mum about what it was actually packing or who they worked for. Hilarity ensued. It was fast though, when I was trying to catch up to it it went from a rolling start to nearly 50 in under 5 seconds. (EV power!)
We don’t build a sebring. Your story must be a fabrication.
Move along, nothing to see here.
It was still wearing older sebring bits but had newer 200 doors…It was all kinds of odd to be honest. I gathered they were stress-testing the car’s endurance in wet/hot/humid climates and NOLA is a solid place to get real world dynamics and all those effects.
EDIT: Trunk was 2010 Sebring, front was a newer 200 face without a grill insert at all. I gathered that the car was newer with grabbed older parts because the interior was basically brand new.
Hard to see FCA putting something of that nature into production now that they’re letting the Dart and 200 wither on the vine. Whatever lessons learned from the hobgoblin you witnessed will be applied elsewhere I imagine. Technology test bed.
Customization doesn’t sell cars, except maybe at the very high end. If customization actually sold, Scion would still be around and making scads of money on assorted plastic speaker grills, exhaust tips, and Red Bull cup holder bushings.
The #1 used car among millenials is the Dodge Magnum. Go figure.
“The #1 used car among millenials is the Dodge Magnum.”
How did you come to that conclusion? Just looking in university parking lots, it seems the #1 used car is a Camry, or some early-00s Pontiac/Olds/Buick.
He heard a bunch of 20-year old boys bragging that they bought Magnums, and just assumed they were talking about cars.
LOLOL
I think most college students would be embarrassed to own a (Dodge) Magnum.
Hate to say it, but this is what electric cars are going to look like. There’s no reason to retain the long hood with no internal combustion engine underneath. We have seen the future, your preconceived design notions be damned.
Long hoods, like brick factories and polio, are a thing of the past.
And with brick factories no longer being built, so too have gone the brick factories used to make the bricks to build the brick factories.
Looks like a cross between a Renault Avantime, GM Dustbuster mini-van and a Aztek
Designed by idiots for blind idiots
Designed by Pixar to be used as a filter feeder for Finding Dory?