BMW Thrive – Concept

Three Junior Designers take care about safety and worked out a new car concept with special attention to pedestrian protection. The open carrosserie is made of three layers who can contract like a flower which maintains in better aerodynamics. The design is also influenced by the flower to give the car a kind and trustful expression. Today’s SUVs – Sport Utility Vehicle – are luxury equipped, heavy cars, which should look like tough off-road trucks but have a tremendous lack in pedestrian protection and protection of other traffic participants.

Because of their weight, their enormous proportions and their huge ground clearance they are far more dangerous to other cars and pedestrians than smaller and lighter automobiles. That causes in accidents with often severe injury and is a big issue to every traffic participant. Because of this reason three undergraduate students – Timotheus Lazar, Martin Pabis, Thomas Hribar – took care of the topic „SUV – safety to other traffic participants“. This often discussed topic „pedestrian saefty and saefty to other traffic participants“, which is the reason for headache and bad mood in a lot of design offices is going to be advanced within this project and the main concept of the final design. The junior designers have been inspired by nature and taken over the layer composition from flowers in their design concept. An arrangement of three superposed layer destroys the heavy and massive shape of the automobile, changes it into single complementary layers and comes to a friendly, light and sporty formal statement.

As in nature flowers do, BMW THRIVE is adapting to the circumstances and is able to close the gaps between the layer by contracting which maintains in better aerodynamics at high speeds and therefore less energy consumption. Through the use of innovative materials like self illuminating layer, new light-surfaces have been possible to substitute common front and rear lights. Self illuminating surfaces need less energy than common light emitting materials and need no dangerous and sharp component parts than can become a big issue in the case of an accident.

BMW THRIVE is going perfectly with the sporty, attractive formal appearances of BMW. Among the typical kidney shaped grille at the front, that can not be absence at any BMW there is the obligatory „Hofmeisterknick“ worked out individually to the formal topic. In addition the side is defined by an elegant, sporty cutline which is continued in the front and rear light-surfaces and stretches the car along the length.