Zero-Emission New York Taxi Concept – Breaking the comfort zone

When New York set out to find an environment friendly taxi it served as an inspiration to leave my comfort zone and apply the newly found Alias Organic Modeling Technique to experiment with new sculptures to find a shape that would truly reflect the innovation that seemed to be sought with this project. Of course we all have seen what in actual fact came out of the whole project in NYC deciding for a very mundane looking Nissan NV van converted in passenger transportation version, a very controversial choice and certainly not what people were hoping for.

Together with George Gaffoglio from Metalcrafters Inc. we developed a platform similar in proportion to a Dodge Grand Caravan, placed the battery packs under the floor and packaged 4 in-wheel motors to leave as much interior space for the occupants and their potential luggage. The driver was positioned in a very forward area which allowed us to to create a very secure area with ample space for security features and payment receiving with the risk factor reduced to a minimum.

https://youtu.be/FNCz7r2G0pU

Using the Autodesk Alias Autostudio Organic Modeling I showed before, I started sculpting a general form encapsulating the package layout. From there I started pulling surfaces to cover the areas needed for extremities like the lights, sill and roof height. With tight traffic conditions expected within down town NYC, we decided on a simple bumper construction which would cover all the needed areas but still were very affordable and easy to replace in case of damage.

The double bubble front glass area combined with the over-wrapping DLO in the passenger area allows both the driver as well as the passenger perfect vision to both properly see all the traffic lights, traffic signs and other traffic, as well as the vast amounts of sights all over NYC, even the towering ones. It was decided that the vehicle would best be equipped with proper HVAC to avoid both heat and cold conditions as well keep out most smells from less environmentally friendly vehicles and industries.