Former BMW Group design honcho Chris Bangle has been tagged by a Chinese firm to design an electric car for its Redspace Project, a venture bent on creating an EV for urban environments.
The result is, um, unique. Although it is, to this author’s jaundiced eye, no worse than a BMW 7 Series from the 2002 model year, a car which was apocalyptically ugly even when compared to a large goiter and an offense to any human blessed with the gift of sight.
As our associate editor ably referenced in September, Bangle is a tortured artist toiling in a world that refuses to acknowledge his genius. After he packed up his desk at BMW in 2009, he set out and started his own design company, forming Chris Bangle Associates. Since then, the company has designed buildings and art but, tellingly, never a car. Until now.
Billed as a new visual language for EVs, the REDS (short for Redspace), is “a space, a space that became a car.” A project developed by Bangle and his team for CHTC (China Hi-Tech Group Corporation), it is not considered by the company to a concept car, a research program, or a even a design exercise. Instead, according to its creators, it is the first phase of a program with the aim to start manufacturing in the near term.
Slightly longer than a Smart Fortwo but with a smaller turning radius, the REDS can apparently seat four adults when it is moving and five when stopped. There is no mention as to what the fifth person is supposed to do once traffic starts moving. Walk, perhaps? Anyway, the description goes on to say it has space for one or two suitcases depending on configuration, and has a rotatable driver’s seat, even with the doors closed.
There is little mention of battery capacity or other technical details, though it is described as a rear-drive machine. The builders do claim it will have a “best-in-class” 0-50 km/h acceleration, promising an EV range at the top of its class. The battery is apparently supported by the largest solar panel roof in its category. By this, we assume they mean other EVs.
Bangle mentions in the press release that the car is conceived and crafted to get the most out of life in Chinese mega-cities, where a car is not in movement 90 percent of the time. In this, the man has a very good point. It’s easy to be an armchair critic, after all; at least Mr. Bangle is making good use of his talents and creating something interesting.
None of this should come as a surprise, of course, given that Bangle’s company bills a “round Ping-Pong Table for five players” as part of its inspiration for experimentation. At least the REDS doesn’t look like an E65 7 Series.
[Images: Chris Bangle Associates]
I take offense for quality blenders everywhere.
The buttons on the dash are for:
Stir
Chop
Mix
Blend
Puree
Liquify
I disagree!
It looks MUCH more like a humidifier than a blender!
Actually, it’s an incredibly creative way to address the design challenges of tollbooths – instead of having the cars come to the tollbooth, put the tollbooth on wheels and have it come to you!
I am repeatedly amazed that some people pay other people good money – actual money, that could be used to buy groceries, or better, a BMW that actually looks good like say a round-taillights 2002 – to generate this kind of visual excrement.
Paying Bangle his money already got them the desired effect of being featured here because of Bangle. No such thing as bad publicity, and all that. This article never would’ve happened if an identical design had been drawn by the CEO’s five-year-old.
If I saw that in my neighborhood, I’d flag it down and buy an ice cream cone!
It looks as if the DLO was made by stacking a Tupperwear container onto the body.
My lunch meat comes in that container.
Yes its odd. But I like it! In a rolling landscape filled with the automotive equivalents to beige stucco McMansions, its different. Needs the Hello Kitty decal kit, but I like it. It would be like driving a old breezeway Merc backwards, and as a contrarian that appreciates unique things, Bangle is a modern version of Sbarro.
For good or bad, take your pick.
I’d not want to live in a world where these things littered the streets. Give me beige stucco McMansions on wheels before these autoturds.
It looks like the coffee cup that the operator would rather be occupying himself with on the lounge seat.
Yet, considering traffic jams in China can last literally for *days*, this isn’t as bad an idea as it looks from our perspective.
Now the Bangle Butt is in the front.
Bangle fupa?
It looks like one of those pre-cut cardboard fold-up models of toy car for Fisher-Price Little People. Tab A, Slot B, Bangle Forehead.
In a stretch to describe it relative to some established meme or style, I would say it is a fusion of Memphis Style and Star Wars. Also I like it.
Why did you slam “Memphis Style”…?
Hire the Mythbusters to blow it up…
I don’t want the future.
This future ain’t happening…
If you listen carefully, you can hear the sound of heads shaking hands being wrung in north Munich … if only they’d stuck it out, this could have been the new BMW X3
This makes an Aztec look like a stroke of genius!
Makes an AMC Gremlin look good — almost!
All I see in the first photo a gargantuan North Korean army saucer hat!
You have got to be kidding…
“Former BMW Group design honcho Chris Bangle has been tagged by a Chinese firm to design an electric car”
And that’s pretty much all the article has to say.
Looks like Simpson design car.
Reference to Fox show “The Simpsons”
Hard to tell from the pictures, but if that dash is fuzzy velvet, I want one! Little kids will love it, because it’s a modernized Theodore Tugboat for use on dry land. And how many cars have Foot Message?
Yes, it’s a design tour-de-force, proving that Bangle has moved on beyond flame-surfacing unsuspecting BMWs, while combining velvet, wood and leather into a fantasy.
Visting hours are 10am till 8pm daily at Bangle’s current residence, check with the duty nurse upon arrival.
Goes from designing ugly cars for one of the most recognized brands in the planet to rendering ugly concepts for a Chinese program named after a straight-to-DVD low-budget flick.
Give it another decade CB will be as famous as Roy Brown Jr. in Wikipedia.
That reminds me, I need to pick up a new coffee maker for my wife this Christmas…..
I think that to understand this in context one has to have seen pictures of the insanely cramped living quarters that some people put up with in Singapore or Hong Kong. Places where a family lives in a 10′ x 10′ room, part of an enormous complex containing thousands of those rooms. The reference to a car not being in movement 90% of the time is the tip off. I think that the concept is this thing would be transport plus an additional space for living.
http://i.telegraph.co.uk/multimedia/archive/02489/hong-kong-4_2489579k.jpg
Will somebody please put Bangle in a straitjacket, so he can’t draw, or operate a computer? Maybe also gag him and cover his eyes, so he can’t operate a computer by sight, or voice command. Oh, and shackle his ankles, too.
When I saw this my first thought was “Picasso designs a car!”. My second thought was, I like it. There is nothing dull about this design. It really stands out. Of course, the way it stands out might not please all, but I do like it.
i thought Juicero went out of business?
but seriously… i can see how this very Japanese slash Sino type design would work… its the extreme extension of cars like the Cube Ruckus Scion XYZ etc.
if a car ends up being like a Total Recall JohnnyCab then what it looks like doesnt matter but I have this view than some of us at least want to feel like we see our cars first thing in the morning and we hope its inviting.
There are some that this doesnt matter. This is for them.
Is this a new Keurig?
You’d never lose it in a parking lot. On second thought, maybe you would, since it appears to have dazzle camouflage.
So he gets his design ideas from old Anime now?