When 'Rally Sweden' descended upon Umeå on February 24, the
sound of the roaring engines reverberated across the West Bothnian
forests, from Kroksjö to Örträsk. Those days are soon over.
Tomorrow's rally cars will likely be driven with the quieter
electric motors. Students from the Master's Programme in
Transportation Design at UID were challenged to take the rally
sport into a new era, with a focus on sustainability, safety and
the visual experience.
In a showroom at Utopia Shopping in central Umeå, visitors got a
glimpse of a futuristic and positive vision of tomorrow's
sustainable electric rally series. The design concepts strive to
give rally fans a stronger visual overall experience, in the
absence of the roaring petrol engines. The students' artistic
ambitions have centered around capturing the essence of the
state-ot-the-art electric machinery in order to design the vehicle
exteriors to reflect the new technology.
"An important goal has been to communicate the technological
advances that the new drivelines in EV rally cars entail. There are
so many work hours behind the creation of an engine concept for a
rally car and you really want it to be visible on the outside as
well, says Lotta Quist, supervisor during the project and design
consultant at Knightec.
During 'Rally Sweden', students from UID were
challenged to take the sport into a new era, with a focus on
sustainability, safety and the visual experience.
Image: Jonas Sandström
The exhibition 'Group Be Electric' got its name from the
mythical Group B era in the 1980s when International Automobile
Federation (FIA) eased regulations and the rally cars were allowed
to pack over 600 horsepower. Many enthusiasts still label it the
golden era of rallying, but a series of tragic accidents forced FIA
to close down the racing class in 1986.
The sport of rally is expected to experience a new dawn due to
the revolutionary technological shift towards electrification. The
lightness of the new technology gives designers more freedom when
forming the cars' exterior compared to the traditional internal
combustion engines. The students at Umeå Insitute of Design have
seized the opportunity and sculpted challenging shapes that benefit
from the flexibility of packing an electric driveline.
In
a showroom at Utopia Shopping in central Umeå, visitors got a
glimpse of a futuristic and positive vision of tomorrow's
sustainable electric rally
series. Image: Elin Lundgren
"In contrast to today's rally cars, which are based on the
appearance of production cars, the students here created a design
language that is intended for competitive racing in the first
place, with the opportunity to influence the look of production
cars going forward. So, the dynamic is reversed from today. The
goal here was to create continued spectacular experiences for the
audience, where the design of the vehicles and the brands'
opportunities to create unique expressions will be an important
component for success in tomorrow's sustainable motorsport ", says
Jonas Sandström, Programme Director for the Master's Programme in
Transportation Design.
Quick Facts
´Group Be Electric´ is the result of a design exercise where
transportation design students at the School of Design at Umeå
Insitute of Design transform 2D sketches into 3D form, in clay. In
the course, students also learn the basics of vehicle construction
and vehicle history. The project runs over 5 weeks and the students
belong to TD1, the first academic year of two in the MFA
Transportation Design Programme.
