Nissan V2G
Nissan V2G
Basic premise: Forget charging stations - let's electrify the highways.
Conceptual execution: The highways have been electrified en masse, and Nissan's V2G (Vehicle-to-Grid) cars get their power directly from the road. The cars are cheap to purchase and come with a wide variety of grid access plans to choose from (think, again, of a mobile phone plan). Younger drivers, conversant with hacks and DIY projects, start figuring ways to take the vehicles off-grid, and a new car culture is born of the endless mods, tweaks, hacks and improvements that younger drivers make to their personalized off-grid V2Gs.
GM Car Hero
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General Motors Car Hero
Basic premise: If video games can teach you the fake guitar, maybe a real car can teach you to drive.
Conceptual execution: Both a game and an actual vehicle, Car Hero is a gamer's dream come true and a parent's nightmare. Except, of course, it's not as dangerous as it sounds: Plug your destination into a smart-phone app and the car gets you there on its own; while it's taking care of business on the road, though, you can "play along" while trying to match the system's "skill level." As you progress through the "game," the system challenges you via a "transmorphable" virtual architecture, meaning the better you get, the fewer wheels you have to work with. Go up a level and suddenly you're no longer piloting a 4-wheel vehicle, but a 3-wheel one and, eventually, the ultimate challenge: steering the single-wheel ride.
