LA MOTOR SHOW: An automotive game-changer?

Is this the future of the motor vehicle?

It’s called REDS, which stands for Revolutionary Electrical Dream Space, and as far as its creator, the former BMW design chief Chris Bangle is concerned, it will change our automotive world forever.

“I will tell there are going to be all cars up until REDS and there are going to be all cars after REDS. This is the turning point,” he declared at the car’s Los Angeles motor show launch today.

“REDS offers you more. REDS I think is the new way to go forward.”

Bangle and the team at his design consultancy were commissioned in 2014 to create a connected car for Chinese megacities by the government-owned Chinese transport company CHTC Motors.

They came up with REDS, which is the first model from the CHTC subsidiary REDSPACE. It is a four-seat two-door rear-engined all-aluminium electric vehicle only 2.97 metres long.

Bangle says REDS is the first car to be designed from the inside out, meaning that the exterior look is determined by the contents of the passenger cell.

That even applies to the curious convex windscreen, which is shaped that way because the steering wheel can be folded forward out of the way when the car is not moving.

That’s just one example among many unique ideas REDS shows. Its seats slide back forth, rotate, fold, tilt, narrow and expand. An information screen on the dash can grow to a full 17-inch monitor for watching movies and playing games.

Even getting in and out of REDS is a unique experience because of a new system called ‘cartesian doors’ that move outwards and then slide backwards.

“They are faster and lighter than normal sliding doors,” said Bangle. “When people rotate their seats in concept cars, do they do it with the doors shut? They can in his car.”

The roof is almost long as the car itself, partially so it can be fitted with the maximum number of solar panels to power air-conditioning and other accessories without draining the driving range of the car.”

Intrinsic to the REDS concept is the fact that cars spend only 10 per cent of their time moving.

“We think of cars as moving objects, but they really aren’t. They are stopped most of the time,” said Bangle. “So we asked ourselves why are cars only designed for the 10 per cent?

“So, we thought ‘how about we do a good car that really focuses on the needs of space all the time you can drive it, but in that 90 per cent of time [when it is standing still] it is really special.”

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Despite its appearance, the car shown in Los Angeles was an ‘Alpha’ version of a production REDS rather than a concept. It is about two years from production reality and it should look almost exactly the same.

Bangle said REDS would have one of the fastest 0-50km/h acceleration times in the car industry and a turning circle tighter than a Smart car. No hints were given about pricing.

“This is a car designed for the real world and to deal with real world problems,” Bangle said.

It will be sold with advanced driving assist systems and meet global safety standards, as well as offering the full suite of social connectivity features that Bangle says will appeal to the buying audience.

“Our clients for this are really young people who maybe don’t care about cars now, but they love to have space of their own, a space to hang in, a space to be interactive in with their friends in.

“Young Mums have a lot of needs in their cars and also young business-people who have to use their cars almost like a mini-office.”