Light Car -- Open Source: Bringing OLED TVs to the streets

By Rory Reid on 04 March 2009, 4:41pm

1 of 6

Light Car -- Open Source: Bringing OLED TVs to the streets Image 1

Your Crave reps at the Geneva International Motor Show just walked past the EDAG stand and nearly tripped over our tongues. Why? Because of the Light Car -- Open Source, a frankly stunning (if annoyingly punctuated) vision of the eco-friendly driving future.

Yes, it's another wacky electric concept car, but get this: it has an OLED display in the tailgate, which can be used as a screen for communicating with other cars. It's madness, we tell you!

You can't send your fellow road-goers carefully worded messages of admiration for their wonderful driving skills, but you can relay a variety of safety-related graphics that may help save lives. Examples we saw included warnings for driving too close, and icons explaining that there was a pedestrian crossing ahead, but the possibilities are virtually endless.

The Light Car's designers, EDAG, say it will be powered by an all-electric drive system with a range of up to 93 miles, so it's ideal as a city runaround. The battery is of the lithium-ion variety and propulsion will be handled by four individual electric motors positioned directly inside each wheel -- rather like the similarly named Lightning GTS.

EDAG tells us the Light Car will be based on a rolling chassis -- a universal platform on which other types of vehicle can be built, simply by connecting alternative body shells. This, we're told, enables vehicle derivatives -- convertibles, pick-up trucks, sports cars and more -- to be developed on the same platform, but at lower cost and with improved speed. There's also a slim chance users might be able to swap between body shells after purchase.

Speaking of bodies, the Light Car is almost entirely constructed from industrially standardised basalt fibre, a material that has similar properties to fibreglass or carbon fibre. It's 100 per cent recyclable, is lighter, cheaper, and -- according to EDAG -- is strong enough to withstand crashes due to its high compression strength. We can't vouch for that, but we've been down with all this recycling stuff from day one. Bring it on. Click through for more pics.