Will Knott

As we all know, the future was supposed to be full of flying cars, and that simply didn’t happen.

Maybe they were too busy thinking “jet cars” to think “sail boats that fly”.

Industrial designer Damien Grossemy designed a hypoththetical flying electric vehicle for Renault that is simply beautiful. The “Zep’lin” has a mostly vertical structure, a large part of which can be covered with solar panels, that resembles the offspring of a seed pod and a sail boat. Its actually possible to imagine that this is a genetically engineered type of maple until you see the elegant rudder / engine combination. True, I don’t see this doing a tight turning circle, and I’m not too sure how it would perform in a high wind take off to work, but it needs no dedicated infrastructure to land.

To park might be another matter.

And I wanna try it out.

It sails rather than powers from one location to another. The promotional video implies a potential around the world Zep’lin race for rich playboys. Which, if the design works, is not as infeasible as an around the world yacht race. So he has his early adopters identified, and can use their attention seeking antics to market the thing while their payments pay for the development of a commuter model.

And they look beautiful.

You may need to click through to see the embedded video.

Apparently the solar panels can tilt toward the sun, but looking at more of the designs I think its the solar equivalent of tacking, getting power in the sail from one angle, while traveling in another.

Renault spent 2 months designing a scale model, and we’ll see if it eventually becomes a working design.

take care,

Will