Balloons and tires are not the only things inflatable. The future of cars are too in the distant future. You heard it right here at PUMP N’ GO.
A company in California has developed an inflatable automobile. XP Vehicles have plans to produce a car that can inflate the body as a whole or certain parts of the body. No more metal? It seems the inflatable material in conjunction with other advanced materials XP plans on integrating will provide a robust safe car.
It uses an ultra light, inflatable polymer type body and it runs on a combination of electric battery -fuel cells technologies to create a vehicle that can also be upgradeable!
And believe it or not, the vehicle is sent directly to the consumer via mail for assembly or you can have a local dealer assemble it for you. It takes several hours to put together according to XP.
You can even customize the car to your liking–add a CD player, blue-tooth and pick many colors for the body as well. The price for such vehicles would be in the 10k range. Not too bad considering that we’re facing some tough times economically with respect to gas.
XP Vehicles plans on releasing the car to other countries first as well as fleet companies here in the U.S. Until further benchmarks are met by federal laws in the U.S., we won’t be able to get our hands on one of these yet. But don’t worry, the future not only seems bright, it also seems inflatable. PUMP N’ GO is happy to blow this car up one day.
Visit XP below for more info.
April 21, 2008 at 7:53 pm
So as “neat-o” as this idea sounds, it doesn’t seem to cover what happens when you hit a metal car. Looking over their site, the plans for an electric drive motor that runs off of batteries with a range of 300 miles is very nice, almost that of what the tesla design does with a lot lower price tag. The problem is there is no specs on this, what is the material made of? what type of forces can it absorb in the event of a crash with a non-inflatable care? is there a firewall still in place? lots of things make this very sketchy. Since they are still in the development phase and out of the design phase these questions should definitly be answered if they want to attract investors. Instead they put cute little tid bits of information about how their car can fly off a cliff and float….i bet everyone will be trying that one….anyways that’s all from me…peace
April 22, 2008 at 9:15 pm
Ragnarok,
Thanks for your comment. From what we at PUMP N’GO understand, the material the car company will be using to protect itself is the same material that NASA used for its land rover landing on Mars. The rover was protected by an inflatable barrier as it crashed landed on Mars surface to prevent damage on the rover.
Usually a start-up company will only provide basic information to the general public due to patent secrets that could be compromised if published. We will keep you updated as to the progress of the inflatable car itself within the upcoming months. Please visit us from time to time.
Thank you.
PUMP N’GO
October 26, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Seems that steering would be difficult at best when it’s windy.