BMW Cloth car

Yup you read the title right..! According to the metro newspaper, BMW's latest concept is a cloth car that changes shape. This link is all I could find that explains it quite well.

Great idea but not too sure of the practicality of it..

Maria

[the_lone_wolf]

very cool, and kudos to bmw for thinking outside the box again, but have you ever seen a fabric in 150mph winds? unless the material is taut enough to stop it flapping the drag would be horrific...

One car,one knife,one expensive disaster.

Originally Posted by sv-robo

One car,one knife,one expensive disaster.

Indeed.

That's fantastic, almost organic with a skin covered skeleton. I agree with Northy, I think the trick will be perfecting the materials for use at speed. I wouldn't be suprised if we start to see fabrics used in parts, if not the entire body, soon. I can imagine the 'eyelid' style headlights and organic looking spoilers etc. being relatively easy to achieve. Exciting stuff!

Edit: The bit about speed, they were covering planes with fabric for yonks weren't they... hmmmm. I would imagine cost will be the biggest problem :-/

Yeah, fabric could work, just as it did with aircraft for years - but that was doped to shrink-fit the framework and stiffen the fabric.

Uber cool.

Any serious benefits in power to weight ratio, or fuel economy??

it looks pretty damn cool, just the headlights if nothing else, it's like a modern version of popup headlights.