Wouldn’t it be great if all the nasty gas-guzzling Hummers of the world could be replaced by a clean green vehicle that produces oxygen and is completely recyclable? If General Motors is able to realize its utopian Hummer O2 design, we may actually see something like this in the near future. GM just won the Los Angeles Auto Show Design Challenge with a creative algae-fueled design for a green concept car.
GM beat out top electric car front runners, including Toyota and Honda, with their design of the Hummer O2. The contest challenged top automakers to design a vehicle that could be fully recycled after reaching the end of a five-year life span. The winning design from GM for their version of the Hummer O2 is powered by hydrogen tank and fuel cells. What sets the Hummer O2 apart is its algae-filled body shell that not only creates oxygen, but opens up like a flower to the afternoon sun to catch sunlight while it’s parked. While I’m not sure how much of a theft deterrent a wide open car proves to be, the innovative thinking behind the Hummer O2 is just a clip of what the future in automobiles hold for us.
GM also announced that the next three years would bring biofuel engine options to their entire Hummer lineup.
Via Archinect via CNN
the design looks funky,. and the concept of recycleability is a good one,.any one selling a product should be responsible for its end of life as well! not sure how realistic this is,. technology wise. We need to move away form the current car culture and locate people’s homes near there work,. create much more effective daily patterns for people,. not the daily burn to work and back again,. why do we do this,. it is a braindead design principle and rules in america,.
One worrying thing caught my eye from the article:
——————————————————————————–
The contest challenged top automakers to design a vehicle that could be fully recycled after reaching the end of a five-year life span
——————————————————————————–
Isn’t that a rather short lifespan? Yes it uses a fuel cell to prevent production of greenhouses gasses while in use, but both producing and recycling a car will use a lot of energy, no doubt currently produced mainly using fossil fuels,
If the thing only lasts five years, then how much more energy will be consumed than with a normal car which might have a 10-20 year life span? Also how much is used transporting the product to the showroom, and then at the end of five years to the recycling centre? Shouldn’t manufacturers be encouraged not only to look at how much energy the car uses, but also how much it takes to produce and recycle it?
Fascinating–and note the 5-year lifespan. Presumably it will “biodegrade” at the end of that period and owners would be obliged to buy a new vehicle from GM. Fascinating.
personally, jph, i don’t want to be tied to one location for employment. where i live is very important, where i work is secondary. and i’m not braindead.
Gee whiz (yawn). If it opened up to a fish bowl, GM could reclaim the “retro” look from Daimler-Chrysler, because it has “fins”! Better if they had wrapped an H3 with a biodiesel plug-in hybrid drive system in a thin-film PV skin…. There’s innovation and then there’s eye-candy….
By the exploded diagram, it looks as though this could possibly be shipped in flatpack-ish form to dealers who have an assembly facility on-site. Of course that method could/would reduce shipping costs by maximizing units-per-delivery, it’d localize assembly and post-sale maintenance jobs and could localize the recycling processes. The opening “like a flower” is a great concept but, as if Hummers didn’t take up so much room already, we’ll have to double the size of parking spaces at the grocery store. Interesting attempt at closing the loop though.
Perhaps the name Hummer and everything is stands for could biodegrade within 5 years… now that would be progress.
Another pathetic attempt at greenwashing the Hummer.
I don’t care if new Hummers are designed to run on gentle hugs and childrens laughter, they are still too big and too wasteful. GM should be focusing on something that works today. Like a plug-in carbon fiber sedan that can run on pure electricity around town and gas or diesel for an extended trip. We could have them on the road in a matter of months not decades.
We need a little more leadership and a little less “innovation”.
Interesting. Depending on price it could be a very expensive toy lasting only 5 years. The question is: Do we really need cars if our cities and towns are well designed?
jph, it’s quite true what you’re saying, but sometimes career changes involves working in another town or city. And leaving the current home, with connected social environment (family, friends) and facilities, is not so easy as it seems. I travel around 100km to and from work. It’s a daily trip which involves traffic jams and congestion.
I’m getting tired of it, that’s for sure, but it was a conscious decision of me to work where I work.
I’m not staying here forever though.
Maggie, that will mostly depend on the quality of public transportation, especially to ‘remote’ areas.
There will always be people who are dependent on cars, I reckon.
Plain nonsense. Why not start by downsizing the vehicule itself ? It would require less energy to be moved around. Consuming less energy is the real challenge, it’s not where it comes from.
Plus this looks more like a Massey Fergusson truck than a car for two to four persons.
Basically GM paid a design outfit to greenwash their biggest target.
They didn’t really have much choice though, all the other big car companies were entering the compo, and the hummer is the damocles’ sword hanging over any eclology claims by GM.
If they hadn’t commercialised the design they !- wouldn’t have sold so many that people would get so pissed at running across the damn things all the time, and 2- it would have a had a non-marketing reason to exist.
100km? You’ve got to be joking, sounds more like an un-conscious decision to me. my 2¢
I’d drive it!
Quote= Do we really need cars if our cities and towns are well designed? = Unquote. Our cities and towns are already “designed”, and there’s no changing them, so forget that. We will ALWAYS need personal transportation. So, I’m all for experimentation and innovation.
[...] And while we are on the subject of real men, would real men drive a hummer that has been pimped for a greener image? A hydrogen powered hummer with algae filled panels that exude oxygen? Or would a real man recognise this sort of cretinous gimmickry is the the automobile industries way of laughing at its critics? [...]
HOWEVER: here’s a good book for pondering “Carfree Cities” – http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/9057270420/sr=1-2/qid=1154623337/ref=sr_1_2?ie=UTF8&s=books&tag2=metaefficient-20
well… if you search you’ll see the military has already produced a hybrid H1. Electric motors propel it and it has batteries to enable it to run in stealth mode. It is absolutely silent except for the tires on the road. The batteries are charged by an onboard diesel engine. Hence, hybrid. AWESOME. Will we see it? Probably not.
This Hummer is so awesome! I personly want one of these. Keep the designing up and working!
[...] parked, releasing oxygen to the atmosphere. To see a few more photos of the Hummer O2, check out this post on [...]