Nike Fit for Bertone is my final thesis project, in collaboration with Alessandro Manunza and Bertone. Bertone came to IED Barcelona and presented a "non-typical automotive thesis briefing".
The project was about developing a vehicle for 2025, but with a totally different approach. The objectives consisted on this points:
- Year 2025.
- Young user, from 18 to 25, today's "digital generation".
- It has to be produced by an outsider from automotive world (It has to be able to invest in this new market but never produced any car).
- Urban environment.
- Sustainable, not only in ecothinking, but thinking about the way it's been produced and economy running costs.
So we've choosen our brand, Nike, the coolest, trendy, digital, powerful and awesome brand for invest in a vehicle.
At this point, we started to think on the vehicle as a fashion complement, like a sub-brand of Nike:
This video was actually the first part of our presentation with Mike Robinson, Design director and Carlos Arroyo, chief designer at Bertone.
Nike will "hipothetically" produce this vehicle using their patented tecnologies, such as FREE, HYPERFUSE and FLYKNIT.
It has three main parts:
- Chassis (like the sneaker'ssole) made of a variable density foam (EVA, like the Free technology, but more complex). It contains elements like suspension, the main frame, batteries, performance parts...
- Body, which is a multi-layered textile skin for the exterior of the vehicle. We used the Nike Hyperfuse, a thermo pressure layered technology. It allows to meet all the requirements that we need, incluiding sound isolation, anti-thief textile, customized exterior, weather isolation, flexibility, opening parts, etc...
- Wheels, with an in-wheel electric engine in each one of the four wheels. Thanks to this, we've reduced all the mechanical or metalic parts to the minimum.
Its a self driven vehicle, but can be ocasionally driven with the help of an hologram system that projects a 360º view of what's all around in the interior. The vehicle doesn't need any windscreen thanks to that.
