BMW Hydrogen Powered Salt Flat Racer, E-fish-ient Dynamics

You can take all of the LA Design Challenge entrants with a healthy pinch of salt, so how ironic that you can't do the same with BMW's Salt Flat Racer. Far from an unrealistic flight of fancy, you could probably build your own 'SFR' using the contents of your garden shed.

EfficientDynamics are very much on the menu of this barbeque-wheeled future concept, because the entire car is built of 'reused' materials. According to BMW, 'reuse' will be the new 'recycle' in 2025, a concept which dispenses with the time and energy of recycling materials and encourages simple re-use of old stuff to make new things.

Therefore, the hydrogen-powered Salt Flat Racer has a body made of old oil barrels and BBQ lid wheels. There's no word on where the concept's run flat 'gel-nylon' tyres will come from, but they can be re-treaded and re-vulcanised, rather than thrown away. Most bizarre, however, is the inclusion of a goldfish as co-pilot. It doesn't actually do any piloting, but rather acts as, as BMW puts it, a 'canary in a coal mine' - on the basis that if the fish gets sick, the car isn't running clean emissions. The fish tank sits behind the driver's head, though why a simple sensor wouldn't suffice isn't clear.

Mark Nichol

Tuesday October 28