Morgan Life Car = Sex

What a gorgeous design for this concept:


First, summary from Ecogeek (first place I read it):

"Morgan, a luxury car company, has teamed up with the UK government and several leading universities to produce the Life Car, a high-performance, luxury, fuel cell vehicle with a zero-to-sixty time of 7 seconds and a top speed of 90 mph. Think "Tesla Roadster," but nicer and more expensive...and hydrogen-powered."

And a word from Inhabitat, of course (all the pictures came from there, FYI):

Instead of simply locating a large fuel cell to drive the engine, the team installed smaller, more compact fuel cells that can provide enough power for cruising. For accelerating purposes, the vehicle draws upon a row of ultracapacitors which are recharged by the braking system, at the very efficient rate of 50%

The power system sounds positively genius! But time for another pic...

From the manufacturers themselves:

Going far beyond the incremental adaptation of traditional car designs as seen in current hybrid vehicles, it will demonstrate that a new step in vehicle architecture is enabled by the use of a fuel cell hybrid power train. The approach is one of whole system design in which the architecture is generated from the characteristics of the fuel cell, in a light-weight vehicle coupled with a high hybridization level.

Quite an undertaking, for sure. Did you pay attention to the power plant inside of this thing? Small, multiple fuel cells and capacitors to store electricity... a likely combination in the coming years.

The design is amazing... but, in some ways, polarizing. Is everyone going to want a 2-seater? Is a 2-seater environmentally viable? Does everyone like the retro styling that's going on?

Morgan, possibly inadvertently, has made a sexy car that just is not going to work for a lot of people. Is that ok? It's REALLY OK, in fact, it's probably a great move. Appealing to a niche market like this lets them reach the kind of people that will not only feel honored to drive something like this but will likely put up with any shortcomings that it has. The technology they're talking about is not really up to mass production right now (or, said another way, commercially viable) but neither is the F1 racing technology that makes it into our cars after several years.

And, my favorite thing about it, the Life Car puts it out there that innovative, no/zero emission technology can prove to be BETTER than what it replaces. So many people seem to have this antiquated idea that there is no replacing the automobile as it stands... petroleum is too energy dense and cheap! Hydrogen is too expensive! The infrastructure! All of these are problems, there's no doubt about it, but the idea that we're all going to be driving egg-shaped, 1000 lb death pods at 35mph down the freeway in the future is just ridiculous... and short-sighted.

Bravo, chaps!