GENEVA MOTOR SHOW: Rinspeed Microsnap concept revealed

If you thought Rinspeed’s 2018 Snap concept was kooky and clever at the same time, wait until you see the Rinspeed Microsnap.

The Renault Twizy-sized self-driving concept car is basically a skateboard electric-car platform with a removable body.

The Swiss-based company, which has a rich history of oddball concepts, has conceived the Microsnap as a core of autonomous driving and freight distribution.

It has been planned around an automated Microsnap distribution centre, which will be able to change bodies or swap bodies onto fully charged platforms, then send the little EVs on their way.

The idea is that freight could be automatically couriered to a destination, and so could passengers.

“Customers want to be supplied more and more promptly and many passengers do not want to share taxis that take time-consuming detours,” said Rinspeed head Frank M Rinderknecht.

Rinspeed claims the two-seater Robo-Unit body style can carry passengers of all sizes “comfortably and efficiently on the shortest route to their destination.

“Because online business is booming and now includes the fresh food sector as well, we believe in small autonomous vehicles that swarm out and bring their goods to the customer without detours and ‘just in time.’

“It couldn’t be faster or more simple -- even refrigerated or heated.”

While part of the idea is to maximise transport-hub efficiency by simply swapping a passenger body on and a freight body off whenever a taxi is needed, rather than waiting for a completely different style of car, there is another reason.

It has been designed with a modular structure in mind so only the worn-out part of the car (planned to be the skateboard) needs to be recycled or scrapped at the end of its service life, rather than the entire car.

Working in partnership with the larger Snap, Rinspeed believes the Microsnap will cover a huge percentage of real-world autonomous-driving needs, with self-driving brainpower comes from noted software developer Luxoft.

The skateboard architecture, which is favoured as a modular platform by most EV makers from Audi to Rivian, is connected to a 5G network service and has redundant drive-by-wire functionality for its brakes, its steering and its single electric motor.

The concept car’s limited performance will come from the 57Nm of torque that emerges out of the 48-volt Mahle electric motor. It’s capable of 75km/h and its 6.1kW/h battery gives it almost 100km of range.

The passenger pod’s leather-clad interior is dominated by mood lighting and a full-width Swiss clock (it’s a Rinspeed in-joke) displayed on a curved 49-inch LED display.

It won’t be the only small self-driver on display in Geneva, though. Seat’s Twizy twin, the Minimo, will be in Geneva, along with a four-seat shuttle from automotive supplier, Bosch.

For reasons that relate to styling, it runs a set of Hankook low-friction 195/40 R17 tyres on 17-inch Borbet alloy wheels.