Among the many upcoming concept vehicles sure to be
present at this year’s Geneva Motor Show in March will be the TOMO. It’s a 1:1
scale concept made by the Instituto Europeo di Design (IED) as a thesis project
for transportation design master students, in partnership with Honda. The TOMO, which in Japanese means
“Friend”, measures 3,997 mm in length, 1,893 mm in
width, 1,556 mm in height and has a 2,690 mm wheelbase.
It’s also meant to have electric propulsion, as you
might expect from a car designed for the year 2025. A total of 13 IED Master students
worked on this project, aiming to build a car that combines the need for
“leisure time outside the city with the business demands of the city.” As a
faithful companion of sorts, the TOMO was designed to adapt to its users wishes
and needs.
While that tiny model isn’t
much to look at, it does help us get an idea of what to expect – a sort of MPV
with what we assume will be a spacious, perhaps lounge-like interior where
occupants can relax.
During the sketching phase, the team used a comic
storyboard design in order to figure out what the car should look like. The
main exterior concept idea came from one Ricardo Alejandro Campos Ortega of
Mexico, while the interior was drawn up by Rudraksh Banerjie of India.
Other students involved on the project were: Tanmay Madhukar Chavan (India),
Michele Corneliani (Italy), Shobhanjit Das (India), Alexander Marcel Fröse
(Germany), Xiaole Ge (China), Ramon Emmanuel Hernandez Cortes (Mexico),
Tianchen Huang (China), Sameer Aminullah Khan (India), Saketh Nalla (India),
Jay Shrikant Nibandhe (India) and Yu-Jie Wang (Taiwan).
The 89th Geneva International Motor Show will take
place between 7-17 of March.
