Mercedes Shows Off New Design Language—and Releases Design Manifesto

Mercedes-Benz has rolled out yet another design exploration, following up on their Vision One-Eleven and Vision V concepts. While the previous two were for a racy sportscar and a luxury executive transporter, respectively, their new Vision Iconic harkens back to a 1930s saloon.

“Inspired by the golden era of automotive design of the 1930s, this showcar embodies the pure essence of Mercedes-Benz,” the company writes. “With the VISION ICONIC, Mercedes-Benz shows what the future can look like when it is shaped by tradition, while remaining uncompromisingly modern.”

The concept is meant to represent “an unmistakable design language” that they’re calling “Sensual Purity.”

I do appreciate a vehicle concept where it looks like the clay guy or gal did most of the work. I love the confident, uncluttered surfacing and that arrow-straight beltline. The profile really nails it for me, with the blunt nose immediately giving way to a streamlined form that Raymond Loewy might’ve drawn. You can also see how absurdly, but beautifully, long the hood is; with most modern cars, the A-pillar points an imaginary line to the center of the front wheel. Here there’s at least an extra wheel’s worth of space.

They lose me a bit with the front grille—the LED grid reminds me of a Hyundai Ioniq 5—and I think the logo-fied headlights are a bridge too far. The chunky form of the LED trigrams doesn’t match the elegance of the hood ornament, and I find the effect jarring.

There’s just one shot of the interior, and it’s downright strange: Art Deco meets mystical sci-fi. It looks like, if you were to join the two artifacts suspended within the dashboard, the universe would explode.

Nitpicks aside: Mercedes is also, quite unusually, releasing a book in connection with the concept. Called “Iconic Design,” it’s billed as the brand’s design manifesto, as lead by Gorden Wagener, the company’s head of design. “Full of fascinating ideas and pulsating emotions, [the book] allows insights into the secret design studio in Sindelfingen and impresses with its close proximity to the design protagonists of Mercedes-Benz.” It contains previously-unpublished images, runs €75 (USD $87) and is limited to just 540 units.

Yamaha Teases Unusual Mobility Design Concepts

Once known for motorcycles, Yamaha is making a heavy push into the broader mobility space. This year’s Japan Mobility Show won’t open for another couple of weeks, but the brand has teased some of the creations they’ll be featuring at their booth.

Perhaps the strangest is this MOTOROiD:? motorcycle concept, with a construction that’s simulatanously lithe and beefy. The frame is meant to take a beating, because the AI-equipped bike is meant to learn to drive itself, autonomously; the “durable exoskeleton [is] engineered to withstand the trial-and-error impacts of the learning process,” the company says.

Furthermore, when it falls over, it “can decide on its own to get up, appropriately activating its different motors to stand upright and then maintain its own balance.”

The rationale behind a self-driving bike is a little murkier: “By giving the machine a degree of independent decision-making,” the company says, “MOTOROiD:? represents another step toward a new relationship in which it can grow alongside its user.”

Their TRICERA three-wheeler recalls the Morgan Super 3:

Built purely to provide visceral driving thrills, the low-slung vehicle differs from Morgan’s offering in that it steers with all three wheels.

Yamaha has a working prototype, and says its goal is to “maximize driver fun and achieve a new level of driver-machine unity.”

The Y-00B Base and Bricolage bicycles are e-bikes that don’t look like e-bikes. Here frame rigidity is achieved not through beefy tubing, but by doubling up on thinner tubing, giving the frames a slimmer look. The battery and drive unit, too, has been slimmed down. “It melds classic design aesthetics with modern technology,” Yamaha writes, “to create a truly unique look and style.”

The NACTUS VS TRE-X is a thre-wheeled electric wheelchair that allows the user to go off-road, and carry gear. The stability added by the third wheel “ensures comfortable travel even across rough terrain and unpaved paths where conventional wheelchairs often struggle,” the company says. The extended leg for the third wheel further earns its keep by offering a carrier rack atop it.

These will all be on display at the Japan Mobility Show, which opens on October 30th

A Honda Scooter with a Chinese Design Aesthetic

Earlier we looked at the sharply-designed OMO X, a scooter by Chinese manufacturer Omoway.

Seeing the OMO X we wondered if Honda, the global leader in scooters, would notice and counter with a designey Chinese-market scooter of their own. We now have the answer: Not exactly. In China, Honda has partnered up with Sundiro, another Chinese brand, to produce scooters together. The idea is to combine Honda engineering with Sundiro’s distinctly-Chinese-market flavor. The 50-50 venture has yielded this Sundiro Honda Square X125, which almost looks like it was designed in Minecraft:

The 125cc scooter is designed to have a techie appeal, with squares and boxes unexpectedly interrupting the form.

Behind the seatback is a rack for strapping things to, and the surface is festooned with cutouts; the companies plan to release storage accessories that can be slotted in.

The seatback can also be folded down, serving as passenger seating.

On the side is a little flip-up table, for…tea breaks?

The utilitarian design also includes two USB ports.

If you’re wondering where the gas cap is, it’s down in the center.

While the tank only holds 1.5 gallons (you read that right), the scooter gets an absurd 138 mpg. That’s enough for a city dweller to get out into the country, as the marketing materials suggest.

Released just this month in China, the scooter retails for 12,680 yuan, which is under USD $1,800. However, fat chance we’ll see one of these in the ‘States.

Dacia’s Wild-Looking Ultracompact Hipster EV Concept

I can’t decide if this is the spiritual successor to the Scion xB or the original Volkswagen bug. This Hipster concept is by Dacia, a Romanian automaker under Renault’s umbrella. It’s intended to be an affordable EV for the masses, a true people’s car.

“This is the most Dacia-esque project that I have ever worked on,” says Romain Gauvin, Dacia’s Head of Advanced Design and Exterior Design. “It has the same societal impact as the Logan did 20 years ago, and it involves inventing something that does not exist today.” (Note: The Dacia Logan is a compact, ultra-affordable family sedan targeted at customers for whom most cars are financially out of reach. It launched in 2004 for just €5,900, or about USD $6,200!)

“Our ambition in reinventing the true people’s car was to give it a distinctive and memorable design,” Gauvin continues. “A car that can be sketched in three strokes of a pencil.”

Aside from developing the unique aesthetic, the designers did everything they could to keep costs as low as possible:

Dacia Hipster Concept is not like other cars. It gets straight to the point, and this is evident from the moment you first see it. The exterior door handle has been replaced by a strap, which is lighter, less expensive and just as practical.

The Dacia Hipster Concept stands out for being very simple and robust. It’s a block sitting firmly on four wheels at the four corners, with no overhang at either the front or rear.

This simplicity is reflected in the design of the front end, which is entirely horizontal and incorporates sleek headlights that give Dacia Hipster Concept a serious yet friendly look.

Priority is given to functionality at the rear. The tailgate covers the entire width of Dacia Hipster Concept and opens in two parts to provide ultra-practical access to the boot.

True to its design-to-cost expertise, Dacia Hipster Concept features an innovative rear light design. Positioned behind the tailgate window, they do not require their own glass panel.

In keeping with this approach, Hipster Concept is designed with a single body colour and only three three painted parts – the front of the car and the side door entry elements.

Dacia has paid particular attention to the design of the seats to combine comfort and user-friendliness with weight and cost reduction. Their design has been simplified with a visible frame combined with a particularly warm technical mesh fabric. The front seats are merged to form a bench seat, a simple and welcoming feature that is another nod to the iconic popular cars of the past.

Finally, the openwork headrests once again help to optimise weight.

Although billed as a concept, the car isn’t vaporware; Dacia says they’ve got a driveable prototype “finished to near-production standards,” according to Electrifying.

The projected price, if it were to go into production, is reportedly sub-£15,000 (sub-USD-$20,000)!

A “Flying Suitcase” Personal VTOL Aircraft that Fits in a Car Trunk

A Chinese company called X-Control is developing this Janus-I Flying Suitcase.

This is a personal VTOL aircraft that looks like an engineering school project, but bear with us. The heart of this design is that overhead structure housing the rotors. A gas-powered turboshaft engine is slung beneath it, on the rear end. The company’s aim is for the design to be modular and support different body styles beneath the flight-enabling structure.

Surprisingly, both the rotor housing and the cockpit can be broken down like origami:

The company says their final design will fit into a car trunk, and that “its user-friendly controls make flying as simple as driving a car — no license required.” (I imagine that would depend on the municipality.)

They also envision an autonomous version that can carry cargo.

Vaporware, or real deal? Only time will tell; the company hasn’t announced a production date nor pricing.

Here’s video of them buzzing around a lake with a prototype:

User-Adjustable Leather Tool Organizers

For some, the appeal of having a leather sheath for a much-carried or valued tool is high. However, these are typically single-purpose items, sized and dedicated to a single object.

Silver Fox Tool, a small UK-based hand tool manufacturer, has a different idea. Their Mule Pouch is designed to carry several items, and is user-configurable. Only the side pocket has a dictated size.

The manufacturer refers to the brass fasteners as “rivets”–which might be a British thing, as in the ‘States rivets aren’t reversible–but they’re actually tiny hex-head bolts and (I believe) T-nuts. Six of each are included and the Allen wrench is thrown in too, so you can move them around as you please.

A larger offering is their Mule Book, which comes with a dozen fasteners:

Lastly, their Mule Note variant leaves one side free for a small notebook.

The hand-stitched leather objects run $70, $92 and $98, respectively, extra if you opt for engraving.

An Ironworker’s Brilliant (or Crazy?) Improvised Climbing Solution

Gone viral is this video of a brilliant (or brave and idiotic, according to some) ironworker scaling a column. Needing to scale a column to a height beyond the reach of the ladder, he’s devised this solution:

If it’s not clear, he’s got a pipe wrench attached to each foot. He’s exploited the nature of an I-section column by using the pipes’ jaws to wedge against the flanges, locking the wrenches in place as he puts weight on them.

As you can imagine, the video had safety trolls up in arms. At least one of their GIFs was funny:

To the worker’s credit, you can see that he is wearing an untethered safety line during the climb, and at the very end you can see him reaching for it, presumably to attach it to something near the height of his task.

Testing Shows Automotive Glassbreakers Can’t Break Modern Automotive Glass

It’s easy to convince EDC people to buy EDC things. But how do you convince non-EDC folks to buy your product?

Simple: Fear.

The global “car escape tool market,” according to market research firm Data Insights Market, is valued at $500 this year, projected to grow 7% a year and hit $900 million in 2033. The trend is being driven by “heightened safety concerns among consumers.”

A big seller in this category is the automotive window breaker and seat belt cutter. The fantasy being peddled by the toolmakers is: You will crash, remain conscious, find that your car has burst into flame or is slowly sinking in water, find that you cannot undo your seatbelt, yet are still able to reach for this specialty tool, slice through your seatbelt, then smash the window open and climb free to safety.

This image sure looks real to us!

Accidents that involve fire or water are less than half of one percent of all accidents, according to the NHTSA. And the amount of accidents where the above scenario actually occurred, and that tool saved lives, is not recorded as a statistic. Similarly, seat belt jamming is so rare that neither the NHTSA nor the AAA track it as a statistic.

As for the glassbreakers, here’s the big thing that most people don’t realize: They’re designed to break tempered glass, which is what most cars used to have for the side windows. However, modern safety regulations—specifically, the “Ejection Mitigation Rule” in the 2013 Federal Motor Vehicle Safety Standard 226 (FMVSS 226), mean that most manufacturers have transitioned to laminated glass for the side windows.

Laminated glass (which is what the windshields were already made of) is tougher to break, and is now used to prevent occupants from being ejected through the side glass.

An AAA research report tested six commonly-available glassbreakers. Not a single one of them was capable of breaking through laminated glass—and two of the tools couldn’t even break through tempered glass, but instead broke themselves. On the glass.

It’s true that not all automakers have switched over to laminated glass for the side windows; the FMVSS 226 law stipulates that you can get around it if you install elaborate side airbags that also prevent ejection.

The automakers that are using laminated side glass are only: Acura, Audi, BMW, Cadillac, Chevrolet, Chrysler, Dodge, Ford, Genesis, GMC, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Jeep, Kia, Land Rover, Lexus, Lincoln, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Porsche, Ram, Subaru, Toyota, Volkswagen and Volvo. Some of them, like Chevy and BMW, have been using laminated glass since the ’70s and ’80s. Glassbreakers might only be useful if you’re driving around in a classic car and believe you’ll become submerged.

That said, seatbelt cutters are of supreme use to firefighters, EMTs and other first responders who may not be able to reach an unconscious accident victim’s seatbelt release. So there might be a case for them if you see yourself in a situation where you need to free an unconscious person, and have the training to safely extricate them.

The Digital Watch Started Out as a Sci-Fi Movie Prop

We don’t think of Stanley Kubrick as the father of the digital watch, but he had more than a little to do with it. In the 1960s, while Kubrick was developing “2001: A Space Odyssey,” he envisioned a futuristic watch that the astronauts would wear. He brought his concept to the Hamilton Watch Company and asked if they could create it as a prop for the film.

This was the resultant prop (which, ironically, is never once focused upon in the finished film):

For those of you who are younger, prior to this there was no such thing as a digital electronic watch. But Hamilton engineer John Bergey, the company’s head of R&D, figured they could create one for real. Following the success of the 1968 film, Bergey got the company to partner with Electro/Data, a Texas-based electronics firm, to create a new Pulsar division within Hamilton. Their goal was to develop a digital watch.

By 1970 they had a working model, but it was a far cry from what was depicted in the film. Bergey somehow managed to get booked on The Tonight Show, and he showed the Pulsar invention off to several million Americans.

The LED display used so much power that the display was off by default. You had to push a button, then the red numbers would illuminate for 1.5 seconds.

Host Johnny Carson was shocked at the announced price of $1,500 (about $13,000 in today’s money), and joked “The watch will also tell you the exact moment that you went bankrupt.” That aside, the episode and the watch generated buzz. Bergey and Pulsar had a production model ready by 1972, and they leaned into the expensive price: The watch was now 18-karat-gold-plated and sold for $2,100, more than a Rolex at the time.

The 400-unit first production run sold out in a matter of days.

In 1973, Pulsar released a more affordable stainless steel version called the P2. It retailed for a more manageable $395.

James Bond wore one in “Live and Let Die,” and the P2 became a giant hit.

Sales figures aside, the watch looked nothing like Kubrick’s prop. In 2006 Hamilton created an homage to Kubrick’s vision and released the ODC X-01…

…though they still couldn’t nail the digits:

Today you can find X-01’s for sale on eBay. And, wouldn’t you know it, they sell for around $1,500.

A Camera Grip That Can Charge your iPhone

Belkin’s PowerGrip is for those who shoot lots of video with their iPhone. It solves two problems at once: It provides all the juice you need for a long shoot, and it provides a comfortable camera-like grip.

It attaches magnetically, and can be used in either portrait or landscape orientations. There’s also a physical shutter button, which works via Bluetooth.

The 15W battery has enough capacity to charge your phone “up to 1.6x,” the company says. It also features a retractable USB-C cable and a second USB-C port, if you want to use it to charge other devices. And the bottom is tapped with a 1/4″ thread so you can attach it to any tripod.

It can also be used as a phone stand.

Runs $80.