A roadster for the future? The Aura Concept

In terms of motoring romance, little compares to a small two-seater roadster. It’s a typology that Britain has excelled at over the years dating back to the days of Morgan and MG. The world is a different place compared to when those revered marques were tearing down country lanes. However, just when the sports car was starting to look increasingly irrelevant when pitted against the cultural morays of today, along comes the Aura Concept – an EV sports car that takes design cues from the golden age of motorsport as defined by the Auto Union racers of the 1930s.

The Aura is about aerodynamics, yes, but with a view to improving efficiency rather than track times. To that end, it has a claimed range of about 400 miles thanks to a 88kWh system output through two 44kWh batteries, one front mounted, the other underneath the chassis for maintenance and optimum weight distribution. The Aura is the result of a coalition of four companies: Astheimer (exterior and interior design), Potenza (drivetrain and battery technology), Conjure (HMI design and development), and Bamd (materials). Car Design News spoke to Carsten Astheimer of Astheimer and Chris Tingley of Conjure to find out more.

Car Design News: We’re in a moment of lots of EV launches and mobility ‘solutions’, but you’ve gone for a sports car. Why did you go down that route?

Carsten Astheimer: For a couple of years, I’ve had this idea of creating a zero downforce ‘land glider’. The idea where performance is not about creating a lap record but where it is about optimising range. And the whole objective around this project is as a showpiece for our capabilities, and as a vision of what a sports car could be.

We saw from the protest at the recent IAA show in Germany that there is a strong anti-car movement. We need to define this project as being not inspired by nature, but designed for nature to become part of our natural world. So it’s designed for nature to fit in with it and experience it. The idea of this roadster being able to glide through the landscape and appreciate nature. So we see it as a weekend car where you can get up and go to the Welsh hills, for example, with efficiency be the sole driving force behind every aspect of the design.

CDN: How did that idea feed into the HMI?

Chris Tingley: One of the key themes of that driving efficiency is around aerodynamic performance. And we wanted to make sure that was an active part of the driving experience as well. So we’re using an array of sensors, which you would usually find on F1 vehicles, which analyse the aerodynamic performance in real time and sends that back to the driver. So giving the driver the ability to have some effect over that performance, whether it is driving in an easier or aggressive manner, or maybe slipstream-ing on the motorway.

CA: The central display has these aerodynamic slipstream lines, which change colour at certain speeds. The read-out will tell you if you’re in the green zones, which is optimum speed. It’ll go blue if you got a tailwind, for example, and tell you to speed up. Or it’ll go red and tell you to slow down. This is a real first in the automotive industry – to give you aerodynamic feedback a read-out of how your car is performing through the air.

CDN: When you filter this data-informed driving hrough the lens of efficiency, you’re changing the terms of the debate somewhat. I mean, we are a long way from flooring it in a V8…

CA: Well, exactly. In the history of the automobile, it’s all about bigger, more powerful engines and then creating downforce. An F1 car has got this mad array of wings and winglets all creating downforce. What’s really interesting about the design is we started off with an idea of creating this thing that glided through the air so the car has the feeling of those early aerodynamic auto union racecars, which have very clean, long flat surfaces. Our design was optimised with Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) and we went through multiple loops to optimise it.

CDN: So it is about simplicity.

CA: We believe that if you can boil down the essence of a design team into as few features as possible, you will create a more memorable design. And so that whole thing has played into our design philosophy really, in creating a very simple, unique design. It is just two lines that create that teardrop shape on the front, which wraps around the cabin and just escaping at the rear. We covered up the rear wheels to ensure the airflow to stays on the surfaces as long as possible. All that helps the aerodynamics.

CDN: The classical form shows there are certain things that remain constant in terms of design principles. Would you agree?

CA: Absolutely, and that’s why it does look like the early aerodynamic vehicles because they were very good at minimising drag. The covered wheels as well – they’re a symbol of aerodynamics, whereas many car designs are all about making the wheels look bigger with haunches over the wheel arch to make the model look aggressive.

CDN: How important was it for the design team and the HMI team to work together?

CT: We’ve worked with OEMs for a decade on HMI, and I think the problem is that it’s considered too late. It was so rare for us to be involved in an HMI – we were involved on the early concepts with Carsten and his team and that just doesn’t normally happen. It never seems that they’re considered to be part of the same objectives. It was nice to have those design cues and objectives to work with from the outset.

CDN: Can you tell us about the self-leveling display on the steering wheel? How much of a challenge was that element?

CT: From a software perspective, we had to make sure that the screen, when viewed at a different angle, was going to look right. Screens are generally designed to be looked at from two different angles – landscape and portrait. When you’ve got those different angles in between, you know, sometimes they can look a bit weird. We found that actually if you rotate the screen really quickly, it feels a bit inorganic and can be jarring. We did some experiments making it feel a little bit more like water leveling in a glass.

CDN: What other elements of the interior would you highlight?

CA: From an architectural point of view, the interior is really small but we maximise that with the bucket seats and this cocooning form. We have the main set of information screen in the middle, which contains that aerodynamic feedback and information. Then there is the driver-focused essential information on the display for the driver. Again, super clean and it’s perfectly symmetrical up to the steering wheel.

CDN: Materials are a very significant element of this project. How they were selected?

CA: We already really knew we wanted natural plant composites. Sustainability is a key part of the concept, and the natural plant composites are half way, in terms of weight, between a glass fibre and a carbon. But they’re super elastic. Carbon cracks and glass fibre is also brittle, but the natural fibres have got that elasticity. You can bash into it and it’ll bow, you’ll bounce out. And the Aura being a one-off, we 3D printed as much as we could. In fact, nearly all the interiors are 3D printed. Additive manufacturing will play a bigger and bigger role. It’s been a bit slow, but for limited series manufacture, we’re getting closer and closer to using more and more 3D printed parts.

CDN: What is next for the collaboration and the Aura Concept?

CA: We’re in stage one of the project where we’ve built the car. Now, we’re getting all the bugs out of the electrical systems and drive systems. We’re going to be doing the commissioning in spring next year, and a long-range run. This will be stage two of the project, where we test real-world conditions. And then we will test it out on the market.