#HTE

How Designing an Interactive Race Car Could Help Revive Motorsport

On the back of recent news of a redesigned Roborace driverless electric race car concept from their chief design officer Daniel Simon (the same man who brought you those light cycles in Tron: Legacy)…

Source: Instagram

…we look at an alternative motorsport vision that targets an experiential and immersive racing experience.

Combining hydrogen power in a downhill-racing series, Michael Mills’ Concept XY aims to take eco-racing to another level. In an interview with Core77, Mills, a recent Coventry University grad in the Auto and Transport department who is currently a designer at Envisage UK, explains the process behind designing his concept.

“I asked myself the question: how could motorsport be beneficial to everyone, not just the fans and spectators at the race?”

“We’re in an era where traditional motorsport is on the decline, with falling viewing figures for F1 and Nascar for example, so I explored how the sport can be more involving for the fans through elements like a fitness program, AR/VR, and social media as a way of connecting to your team or favorite driver.”

“The idea is to combine the fun of a traditional circuit with the principle of ‘descent’ to save power and make regen easier, (regenerative braking system that converts kinetic energy into energy that can be used for acceleration) with potentially more excitement from the danger of downhill racing." 

"So one element of XY race is 'get fit for motorsport'—the idea that you can generate power for your team or your favorite driver that they then use as energy in the race. The driver and team could be responsible for encouraging and motivating people to recharge their car to get to 100% power for the next race.”

“Another feature to make the racing more of an immersive experience, is the AR/VR element for the spectators: an app, Project Descent, is the hub where fans can track and monitor their team’s power-levels, lap-times, g-levels etc. Fans could also access special team cameras throughout the race: driver’s-eye and pit-crew viewpoints, and augmented reality would give them live info-graphics on each car.”

What was the thinking behind the layered surfacing? As Mills told Core77:

“The layered surfacing was a way to make the vehicle visually lightweight, so by having this three-layer architecture, it shows the separation between the driver pod and interlocking layers above it which make up the XY graphic. The layered design also helped manipulate the airflow around the driver pod, so bettering the aerodynamic potential of the car.”

Anything you’d do differently? “Design wise, I wish I could have nailed the package of the vehicle sooner because not knowing the packaging of the components hindered the design process immensely. Once the package came together, the design came together very quickly too.”

“With this project I definitely developed as a designer, because I had half a year developing the design with 2D and 3D tools - so by the end of it I really understood the car in perspective and proportion.”