back to article Swiss boffins build bonkers iPhone-operated electric sportster

The Geneva Motor Show tends to bring the crazies out of the woodwork and it looks as though 2009 won't be an exception. The renowned Swiss auto-boffins at Rinspeed have released details of a working concept car they'll showing at Geneva called the iChange. Rinspeed iChange Rinspeed's iChange: goes like stink, apparenty In …

COMMENTS

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  1. TeeCee Gold badge
    Jobs Horns

    Go on, build it.

    It'll be *really* bloody funny when Apple decide to ban the controller app from the App Store, as is their capricious wont........

  2. Steven Jones

    Eco Credentials?

    Leather and woold as eco-credentials? Perhaps they could use a mink coat lining instead. You have to be joking right? I rather suspect that, in terms of the Earth's resources being used that textiles based on plant material (or even, dare I say oil) will beat the hell out of using animal byproducts.

  3. g e

    byproducts

    Yeah but the animal skin and wool would be there anyway seeing as the leather would have contained someone's dinner at some point and the sheep would be sheared regardless.

  4. Ken Hagan Gold badge

    Call themselves boffins?

    James Bond could drive his car from his mobile *years* ago. Haven't they got any new ideas?

  5. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    iPhone and batteries...?

    So then it's a straight race to see which battery runs out first, the car or the iPhone. It's Swiss, so I wonder what happens to that distance if you've driven it over Sustenpass ?

  6. Calvin Davidson

    @ Stephen Jones

    Environmental-friendliness has nothing to do with animal rights, although the mindless extremists of both cults tend to be unable to grasp this simple truth.

  7. Wize

    What can we use?

    Can't use plastic as its not environmentally friendly and requires the oil which is running out.

    Can't use animal products as the veggies will complain.

    What are we supposed to use on the inside? Plant seed and grow grass on the seats?

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Rinspeed?

    Sister company of Spincycle??

  9. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Sod the car

    How much for the Inspector?

  10. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Before driving

    Please disable the iPhone's sleep function

  11. Steve W
    Coat

    Oh no, a steering wheel

    There was me thinking that you'd have to drive it using an iPhone instead of a steering wheel, tilting the phone left and right to steer the car....

    "Sorry, officer ; I was taking a corner at 60mph and the phone rang"

  12. Andraž Levstik

    Running on...

    ...Apple[TM] iJuice[TM] ONLY

    ;)

  13. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Problem is..

    .. you can only run one thing at a time on the phone, and it will always kick out the application if you recieve a call, so the "important functions of the car" will stop if you recieve a phone call. I hope this does come out, hours of fun annoying your mates by phoning em while they are driving so the engine cuts out :P

  14. Anonymous Coward
    Flame

    @Steve

    I'm shure you mean the kind of oil that used to be an animal millions of years ago?

  15. Graham Marsden

    @Steven Jones

    Are you a member of PETA by any chance...?

  16. Gerard Krupa
    Flame

    Leather, wool, oil and Steven Jones

    Hmm. Now I'm not 100% sure on the facts here but you're suggesting that leather (a replenishable natural resource that can be harvested as a by-product from a food source) and wool (a replenishable natural resource that doesn't even require killing anything and can - even if it isn't usually - be harvested using simple hand-operated tools) is as environmentally friendly as oil (a limited natural resource that requires vast amounts of fuel and electricity to harness, process and transport and occasionally gets spilled into the ocean killing hundreds of thousands of marine creatures).

    Not to say your point isn't valid on some very glib level but you seem to be confusing ecology with the ethics of using animal products and even then you seem to be a bit confused about where wool comes from. Try that argument again next time an Exxon tanker pollutes 10,000 square miles of ocean with its deadly cargo of wooly jumpers.

  17. b
    Go

    wow, lovely lookin'!

    vewy nice!

    like the mclaren-esque central driving position as well..very bond..

    the momentum for leccy ve-hickles is finally here, it would seem..

    bring it on, the more the merrier..hows that chinese BYD firm doing?

    cheers,

    bill

    p.s. stuff and nonsense: http://www.eupeople.net/forum

  18. evilbobthebob
    Go

    Hardhats?

    Can't be very safe if you have to wear a hardhat when the roof is open.

  19. Pete James

    Bit rubbish really

    Ungainly.

    Meaningless range.

    A couple of feature toys thrown in

    Not really relevant, is it?

    Okay, the Siemens and Harmon Kardon bits may have some use elsewhere, but this is just a badly packaged (front feet between the front axle line? Schoolboy error, tsk) adolescent wet dream with last season's trinkets scattered over it. If they were being remotely serious then it would be packing a CVT and not some left-over cogbox from a Subaru.

    Don't get me wrong, I love sports cars. I love my two Ducatis even more. I just find these silly pretend things all rather shallow, badly realised and not very clever.

  20. Andy ORourke
    Happy

    I dont like

    This "fashion" that seems to plague all Leccy prototype cars where they cover over half of the rear wheel arch, it must give some drag reduction benefit because (to me at least) it doesnt provide an aesthetic goodness

    @Rinspeed? - You sir owe me a monitor!

  21. Pete James

    @ Andy ORourke

    Andy, rear wheel spats are far from being a recent trend. You can go back a good 80 years to see them first appearing, and were a feature of many vehicles over time. The SS Saloon for example was also available in what Lyons called the Airline model, and he continued to have spats on Jaguars right up to the 1961. The Citroen DS had rear spats, and loads more.

    Their aerodynamic contribution is not huge, but it is measurable, and in high performance applications they have served an additional purpose of helping to manage airflow around brakes. Aesthetically, a bit like yourself I can take or leave them, depending on the motor.

  22. John Sturdy
    Thumb Up

    @AC 13:20 -- important safety interlock?

    The `"important functions of the car" will stop if you recieve a phone call'?

    That's one way of stopping people talking on the phone while driving.

    On the other hand, if the phone refused to take or make calls while the car control application was running, it might make some real sense.

  23. Francis Offord

    Bloody Suisse, unreliable as usual.

    Why, when they have invented a virtual "nookie magnet"< do the swiss roll out the stops? Something like this would have been a sure fire starter in the seduction stakes when I were a lad,

    actually almost anything with wheels was back then.

  24. E

    Terrible design mistake

    Such a sexy car must have room for two up front. How else can the driver get a blowjob?

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