Awesome Concepts

Designer Andrey Avgust came up with a series of futuristic and beautiful designs for United States’ dollar bills. Each bill is made of layers of plastic, with serial numbers, QR codes and other details that are readable under UV light.

The Mission E Cross Turismo is Porsche’s concept sports SUV. The electric all-wheel drive vehicle has a total output of around 600hp, lasts up to 310mi per charge and can be charged to a nearly 250mi range in just 15 minutes.

Jeep and Mopar have unveiled their annual concepts for the Moab Easter Jeep Safari. The seven vehicles include the restored 1965 Wagoneer, a stripped-down, lightweight Wrangler called 4SPEED, and the rolling Mopar catalog known as the Nacho.

Vivo’s Apex concept smartphone manages to stretch the screen to nearly the entirety of the front with clever workarounds. The phone’s fingerprint sensor and speaker are both beneath the display, while its front facing camera pops up from the top.

There are video screens everywhere, from our phones to our watches to our thermostats. Universal Everything and Kouhei Nakama envision some of the form factors that screens might take in the future. Can you imagine an aquarium filled with OLED illuminated fish?

At the 2018 Geneva Motor Show, Toyota showed a concept car which serves as a preview of the return of the Supra, its powerful front engine, rear-wheel drive sports car. The racing version has lightweight aero upgrades, a giant wing, and a stripped-down cabin.

Intel is working on augmented reality eyeglasses designed mainly to show information. The Vaunt looks like a normal pair of glasses, and have no cameras or hardware controls. It projects a small red display directly to your eyes, just below your line of sight.

Arvind Sanjeev’s Lumen is a portable augmented reality system in the form of a flashlight. The idea is for it to automatically recognize objects and enhance their function, provide information, display video or animation and more.

The Cota Forever Battery is a proof-of-concept AA battery that receives power over long distances, similar to how connected devices use Wi-Fi. It relays its location to a transmitter, which then sends back up to 1W of power 100 times a second.

Razer’s Project Linda is a laptop dock for the Razer Phone. It has a 13.3″ 2560×1440 touchscreen, 200GB of storage, a USB-C port, a USB-A port, and a headphone jack. It charges the phone, while the mobile device can act as a second screen or a touchpad.

Honda’s concept autonomous ATV is designed to work like a robotic pack mule, carrying loads to work sites, and also performing tasks like plowing snow, tilling soil, or harvesting crops with attachment modules. It’s rugged, has a 4-wheel drivetrain, and runs on electric power.

LG recently showcased a proof-of-concept for a 65″ OLED TV that rolls up and down like a giant piece of paper. More than just a party trick, the flexible display can be set to different heights to vary its aspect ratio, and can even be used at about a third of its height.

The Sound Ray or S-Ray concepts are Samsung’s small and affordable takes on directional speakers, which send sound in a narrow path so that only its target can hear it, even from a distance. There’s a neckband, a handheld and a smartphone cover.

Italian coach builder Ares Design is preparing a reimagining of the classic De Tomaso Pantera for 2018. The Ares Project Panther will be a bespoke sports car that wraps the Pantera’s ’70s aesthetic over a modern Lamborghini Huracán chassis.

RISD industrial design students George Duan and Megan Lee made a pair of chairs designed to give office workers a much needed chuckle. Teeter and Tot are foam-covered wooden chairs. They have springs in their legs that make them buckle when used.

LEGO Ideas member demon1408 made this kickass proposal for a 1/60th scale model of Gundam Barbatos Lupus from the hit anime Gundam: Iron-Blooded Orphans. It’s fully articulated and comes with a sword-mace and guns. DIY instruction video here.

Before the characters we know and love first emerged on movie screens, there were other conceptual incarnations created by George Lucas and artist Ralph McQuarrie. The DAVE School envisions what the first movie might have looked like had those early ideas stuck.

Toyota’s rugged compact SUV is designed as an adventurous counterpoint to its urban C-HR. It borrows design elements from Toyota’s trucks, offers increased ground clearance, AWD with terrain modes and torque vectoring, and versatile storage for all your gear.

Digital Habits shares a concept for a pendant lighting fixture which is capable of detecting the predominant color of the surface beneath it, then changing its own color to match. It may not have much practical application, but it’s still a really cool design.

Automobili Lamborghini and MIT teamed up to envision a pure-electric, 4WD hypercar concept which would use supercapacitor tech to increase power density and performance, and a carbon fiber structure made using nanotech to monitor the car for cracks and damage.

One of two beautiful concept designs that Mazda brought to the 2017 Tokyo Motor Show, the KAI to pushes the limits of Mazda’s excellent “KODO” design language, and is more than likely the muse for the next-gen Mazda3 5-door. Mazda, please build it exactly like this.

LEGO Ideas member Sleepy17’s playset hides all of the pieces’ studs for a clean look. The set consists of puzzle pieces that form one of two cubes when they’re correctly put together. The 3×3 cube is for beginners, while the 4×4 cube is harder to solve.

General Motors’ SURUS (Silent Utility Rover Universal Superstructure) is a universal truck platform that has autonomous capabilities and is powered by hydrogen fuel cells. Modules include a cab for human drivers, an ambulance and a mobile generator.