Latest news with #AdvancedDesign
Forbes
2 days ago
- Automotive
- Forbes
GM's Pasadena Design Studio Unveils Its California Corvette Concept
The California Corvette concept is stunning. In America, the Corvette occupies a unique space in our cultural history. From the start, it cast a distinct shadow and established the sports car as an affordable dream. It has carried on for decades as new generations discover and covet this machine. At General Motors' Advanced Design studios in Pasadena, California, a new vision of an icon has been born. It's all electric, extremely aerodynamic, and futuristic, and Chevrolet dubbed it the California Corvette. The California Corvette, a sleek carbon tub concept riding on futuristic wheels, was designed with a T-shaped prismatic battery. This enables a lower seating position than the typical, flat skateboard type. GM allowed some journalists to experience the interior of the C10 concept via virtual reality headset, which showed an augmented-reality head-up display, adjustable pedals, racecar-worthy seats, a wireless phone charger, and a steering apparatus that is more jet fighter jet than car. Sliding behind the adjustable steering 'wheel' requires lifting a single-piece front-hinged in the GM Pasadena studio sketch out digital ideas. Extreme Aerodynamics And A T-Shaped Battery Located in Pasadena, the GM studio is spread out over a 148,000 square-foot campus. Roughly 130 staff work in design, creative, facilities, operations, sculpting, and fabrication, and skilled artisans craft physical clay models. The Advanced Design team invited multiple GM studios in Detroit, Shanghai, Seoul, the UK and Los Angeles to envision Corvette-inspired hypercars. Back in March, the UK studio revealed the first version and the California studio just issued the latest one. From my view, the California studio nailed the spirit of the iconic model with lines that identify it as a Corvette, while the UK studio's version was more cartoonishly angular. Bearing a decidedly pronounced rear diffuser and a series of carved-out tunnels for airflow, the California Corvette was imagined as an aerodynamic superstar. Of course, there are elements that might evoke memories of the Batmobile in the Christian Bale versions of the movies, but in silver and red. Bruce Wayne would surely drive this car when he's not fighting criminals. 'The defining design aspect is the single-piece, front-hinged canopy than enables the entire upper shell to be removed, transforming the concept from an agile, slick sports car to a lightweight, open-air track car," says Brian Smith, design director, GM Advanced Design Pasadena. Rear view of the Chevrolet California Corvette Only In Our Dreams… For Now GM says 'there is no production intent behind this design study." While this Corvette is not intended for production and may never see the light of day, it's a design that both evokes the heritage and strength of the model nameplate. And although this concept bears a 'C10' internal designation, it's very much speculation at this point, says Caleb Miller from Car and Driver. 'With the current C8 Corvette expected to remain on sale until the end of this decade, that means the California Corvette concept is likely looking out to at least the year 2040,' Miller observes. Even so, the California Corvette is an intriguing look into the future of what a Corvette might look like. I'll be looking forward to new concepts from the other design studios and even more revelations about what could be.
Digital Trends
4 days ago
- Automotive
- Digital Trends
This week in EV tech: California dreaming
While Chevrolet Corvette hybrids are now a thing, it could still be a while before an all-electric Corvette enters production. But General Motors is tasking its designers to imagine what a future Corvette EV could look like. Unveiled this week, the California Corvette concept is the second of three 'Vette design studies debuting this year, each from a GM studio in a different region. The first, revealed in March, came from the automaker's U.K. studio while this one, as the name implies, is the product of GM's Advanced Design studios in Pasadena, California. Recommended Videos Borrowing the internal codename of another concept car that eventually morphed into 1992's Corvette Stingray III concept, the California Corvette of 2025 leverages the packaging flexibility of electric powertrains to improve performance. Its carbon-fiber tub chassis incorporates a T-shaped battery pack with prismatic cells (the same form factor used in current GM EVs), which leaves room for large underbody tunnels that channel air more efficiently around the vehicle. Tunnels like these have been used in race cars — mostly notably the AAR/Toyota Eagle Mk III — to generate downforce that presses the car into the track surface for better grip without generating the aerodynamic drag associated with more conventional downforce-generating like spoilers that sit on the surface of the bodywork. Minimizing drag is crucial to maximizing EV range, so a design like this could offer the best of both worlds for a future electric sports car. The California Corvette is just a design exercise, but GM did say in 2022 that an all-electric Corvette, based on the current-generation C8 model, was in development. When we'll finally see it — and whether it will look anything like the California Corvette or the other two concepts GM is trotting out — remains to be seen. Faraday Future's new face Few EV startups have been embroiled in as much drama as Faraday Future, which spent nearly a decade trying to get its FF91 electric SUV into a production, a process that saw it abandon a planned Nevada factory project for a repurposed tire plant in California while suffering a constant stream of financial calamities. Having finally launched low-volume production of the FF91, Faraday Future this week unveiled a bizarre follow-up. It's called the Faraday FX Super One, and it's an electric minivan pitched as a rival to the Cadillac Escalade, with high-tech AI features. In actuality, it's a Chinese-market Great Wall Motors Wey Gaoshan with a screen attached to the front. Faraday Future calls that 'Super EAI F.A.C.E. (Front AI Communication Ecosystem) System,' and claims it will allow the vehicle to 'communicate' with the world as a representative of its driver. How that will work, and what benefit it might have, is unclear. On the more practical side, Faraday Future said the FX Super One will be available in six-, seven-, or more luxurious four-seat configurations. The latter will feature suspended zero-gravity seats with heating, ventilation, and 10-way massage. Faraday isn't the only automaker thinking along these lines; earlier this year Mercedes-Benz unveiled its Vision V concept, previewing a luxurious van expected to debut within the next year or so. Solid-state batteries still in the news Two announcements this week indicated incremental progress in bringing solid-state batteries to production EVs. Solid-state batteries get their name from their solid electrolyte, which a host of startups and automakers have said will result greater range without increasing battery-pack size. But commercialization has proceeded slowly. Volkswagen has been collaborating with solid-state battery developer QuantumScape since 2012, and last year its PowerCo battery division inked a deal with QuantumScape for enough batteries to power up to one million EVs annually. This week the two corporate entities announced an expansion of that agreement that will see PowerCo become actively involved in pilot production of solid-state batteries earlier. QuantumScape says this will help it scale manufacturing more quickly. Meanwhile, fellow German automaker Mercedes-Benz expects to bring an EV powered by solid-state batteries to production 'before the end of the decade,' Markus Schafer, the automaker's head of development, said in an interview with Automobilwoche. Mercedes has also partnered with a startup — Factorial — but has also begun public testing of an EQS sedan with prototype solid-state batteries.
