Flat-pack cardboard and plywood car scoops Eco-Design award at Shell Eco-Marathon

What are your odds of surviving being bumped by a truck while driving it?

Slowburn. It's about competition, not prying your gas truck out of your hands.

Competition is fine but over the life of a daily driver I'd bet the weight penalty of a flat pack car would out weigh the fuel savings of being shipped in a flat packed condition. especially with the move to inclosed car carrier trucks.

Expect to see them on the shelves of IKEA this time next year...... actually, Im more interested in the material/manufacture costs. If cheap enough, could easily see this sort of easy to self maintain/repair vehicle get a slice of the third world market (where safety is generally irrelevant). Don't think it'll ship with a hydrogen fuel cell though.... how about sticking a simple engine on it?

Slow: so glad you brought up odds of encounters with trucks; what are they anyway? If I drive 50,000 miles/year for 500 years, will that be enough driving to become a truck/car collision fatality?

Frank the odds of being hit by a car/truck are great. The odds of survival has a lot to do with the vehicle. I am 35 never had an accident in over 500k miles. Once I almost go hit by a car passing me. I slowed abruptly to avoid a definite collision and got rear ended for the trouble. My SUV with traction control had a busted bumper and broken tail light. In this thing I would of been dead.

I am not saying safety is the only thing to consider in a car design, if we had computers driving I would be fine with the above, but as long as humans are behind the wheel I am not taking the chance.

That said I don't think the above car is intended for real world use anyways. This is just an expensive adult version of the boy scouts pine wood derby.

re; Frank Lee

I was really asking about crash safety in general whether it be a bump by a truck or T-boned by a Honda running a red light.

The flat pack design sounds heavy for the structural integrity it provides and the energy consumed by shipping the car from the factory to the dealer/destination is an infinitesimal percentage of total lifetime energy consumption and dragging the extra weight around will quickly eat whatever savings that were achieved in shipping.

Too bad they didn't post the WEIGHT of the little deathtrap- slow must have access to information they didn't present. Mike- go research what the REAL odds are of being a traffic fatality, using REAL statistics, then get back to us on how dangerous it is out on the roads. After that we can work on assessing the risk of dying in something small vs something large.

Sounds like a throw away car. Put it on the road with lead acid batteries and a range of 300km, bet it would sell. Safety? Fill all empty spaces with foam rubber or urathane.

Hi, I'm one of the designers for the car, happy to answer any questions about it.

The idea behind the car was to explore alternative materials, manufacturing processes, logistical processes and areas within the life cycle of the car that negatively affect the environment. The car is not something that will go straight in to production, but a collaboration of ideas that question current automotive production and consider the future of automotive technology.

What’s the point in designing a concept car for the future that is built using the same materials and processes of today’s cars?

The total weight of the car is 170kg, it does 50mpg and about 25mph.

Also, this article doesn’t mention the folding mechanism of the car that shortens the wheelbase to less than that of a smart car

Here’s a link to a YouTube video if you’re interested in seeing it in action.

Common guys, relax, this is a competition for students. You know, they are the people who actually can still learn and be learned, not know-it-alls like yourselves.

Many a good idea has been hatched from competitions like this, and alot of experience gained.

Would you want the student teams to design multi-ton SUV's?

I am impressed by this design, well done to the team.

This is really a great idea, I'm sure something good for the automotive industry will come out of this.

While I'm not fond of H2 foolcells, the chassis is really cool.

Slowburn do you ever have anything good to say? Many people chose vehicles that won't survive a bad wreck. They just make a point of staying out of them. Afterall how many MC's are there?

Why do you think everything has to fit you or it's no good? From your posts nothing seems to to be.