CES 2017: Rinspeed Oasis designed around radishes

Traditional motor shows might be on the wane, but the 2017 Consumer Electronics Show looks like it’s picking up the slack nicely, with a car designed around radishes.

And we already know the first of the concept cars to hit the Las Vegas tech show, with Swiss design house Rinspeed delivering a self-driving electric urban car dubbed the Oasis.

They’re clearly thinking more of palm trees in the Nevada desert than the ever-feuding Gallagher brothers, with a two-seat city car from the fertile, but rarely practical, mind of its founder Frank Rinderknecht.

It’s Rinderknecht’s way of railing against the US belief that cities “require multi-ton SUVs for survival” and the increasingly martial look of truck-based US SUVs.

The runabout’s profile is dominated by enormous glass areas and brings back olde-worlde spats to cover the front wheels and he’s fitted it with rear-wheel steering so that it almost turns inside its own length.

The interior offers what Rinspeed calls “a new living space with the ambience of a modern-day family room”, fitted with an armchair, a television, a windscreen that doubles as an augmented reality screen and even a sideboard.

It goes further, giving it a small “green space” beneath the windscreen to house plants such as “flowers or radishes”. Yes, radishes.

Rinspeed imagines it to cover all the societal needs he could imagine (and that’s usually quite a lot), including commuting, shopping, a parcel-delivery van or a pizza taxi.

It can do any of these jobs as a specialised machine, or as a commuter car sublet during the day, thanks to the rear-end’s code-protected drop box, which can be either heated or cooled depending on what it’s being used for.