Design Development: Chery FV2030 concept

Chery’s impressive FV2030 was one of the stars of the Beijing motor show this spring: a true concept car in that it was spectacular-looking, reflective of the thinking and future vision of its design team – under executive design director James Hope – and a signal of intent.

“The aims were both to amaze and shock the public but also to announce the direction for upcoming Chery production cars,” says exterior designer Alan Derosier.

An unapologetic crowd-puller with its gullwing doors, huge wheels, striking graphics and bright red exterior, the FV2030 – Future Vision 2030 – is not just eye candy, nonetheless. It has been designed to showcase several of Chery’s patented innovations, as well as the company’s growing design confidence, inside and out.

Exterior

The brief was to create a fashionable, youthful car for a target group interior design director Sergio Loureiro refers to as “progressive, modern, mainstream”. It had to reflect Chery’s ‘Life in Motion’ concept, a proposal for the lifestyle needs of future consumers, and to look ahead at market developments.

Sketches by exterior designer, Alan Derosier

“The idea was to imagine which car we could propose to Chinese customers once the current SUV trend loses its appeal,” says Derosier. “We decided to keep the all-road look because in our opinion,SUVs have a lot of success in China thanks to their safe and robust feel.”

Early proportion research led to car’s novel combination of formats

Sketching began in October 2015. “Inspirations were diverse, from sports shoes to animal postures and architecture,” says Derosier. “The proportions were much studied. We’ve really tried to propose a new type of car with the interior space of a sedan, the proportions of a coupe and the ground clearance and tough feeling of a crossover. The design idea was to have simple and sensual surfaces contrasted by complex details and the wheels.”

Wheel design by Frederik Dalmeyer

The wheels – designed by Frederik Dalmeyer – are a key feature, housing electric motors and energy-capture technologies. “From the beginning there was a strong concept for how the wheels work and what new functions they could introduce to the overall concept,” Derosier explains. “The wheels can be charged through the road surface of dedicated induction highways and charge the car’s batteries. So thinking about how the wheel works, and how it could be separated into different components, gave the opportunity to create design elements that are new to wheels. For example, the induction surfaces, which capture and transfer energy, create an interlocking tyre with an interesting graphic break-up. How they sit within the wheel also had an influence on the tread and spokes.”

Sketches show car with and without gloss-black wheelarches

The open, glossy black wheelarches are another definitive element in the FV2030’s side profile and bold stance. “The wheelbase of the car is pretty long, so to attenuate this feeling we’ve stretched them out, and also given a strong in and out section to them,” says Derosier.

Build in progress at Zuki Design

The technical team was based at the Chery Technology Center Shanghai (CTCS), but concept build was executed by Zuki Design in Qingdao, over a five-week period from March 2015. Foil was used in place of exterior paint, applied by suppliers DC-Town at the Zuki premises.

Red exterior foil being applied by DC-Town

“The idea of the foil came by itself,” says Derosier. “Next-door to the design studio, DC-Town foils all these supercars with crazy coloured foil: chromed, matte, metallic matte… For us it was shocking, but also very unique, and in a way very Chinese, so we really thought this was the thing we should do on our show car.”

Honeycomb pattern used to blur boundary between transparent and opaque on doors

The foil features a honeycomb pattern giving varying and selectable degrees of transparency and opacity. “The fading hexagons on the side windows represent the pixel glass technology,” says Derosier. “We have imagined that, in the future, on autonomous vehicles we could have side windows that can become opaque in order to provide a kind of cocoon, looking away from the traffic.”

Finished FV2030, with gullwing door open

In the nearer future, he adds, “the headlights and taillights are bars of LEDs, and these announce the direction for upcoming production cars’ lamp signatures.”

Interior

Interior sketches by Sunghoon Oh show work in progress, and a theme sketch was selected in January 2016. The media concept can be seen from this early stage: spot the Instagram, WeChat and GoPro icons on the touchscreens.

Sketch shows WeChat logo in centre infotainment screen

Key themes for the FV2030 are flexibility, technology and innovation – and the car also had to have a sense of fun. “The autonomous aspect is part of the ‘fun to drive’ philosophy,” says Alex Miklosi, Chery’s strategic design director. “The big picture is that we want the car to be driven when the road is exciting, but we want to take the task away from the driver when it becomes a chore, for example in a traffic jam. Autonomous driving fulfils the promise of our philosophy, so it became a must-have from the beginning.”

Seats in their ‘talking’ mode

The seating layouts adapt from ‘normal’ driving to a ‘talking’ mode, the driver and front passenger facing rearwards to interact with rear-seat occupants, and the car is also envisaged as operating on-demand, going empty to pick up its owners or members of a subscription programme. The steering wheel has foldaway elements for controls not essential to the driver in autonomous mode.

Roof console for HVAC system

As the air vents are placed in a roof console, removable Bluetooth wireless speakers can be sited at each end of the IP. “The removable speakers show the plug-and-play thinking – you can take the party outside of the car,” says Loureiro. The flexible interior layout also allows for the carrying of a bicycle (onto which a speaker can be clipped) and for an interior entertainment screen down the side of the cabin.

Sketch shows how seats index with one another

The seats are designed to fold, slide and even stack over each other, further enhancing the interior versatility. “The moving seat sketches were done at a very early stage,” explains Loureiro. “Once the idea was selected we had to make sure the seat design would fit with the rest of the interior. Therefore the seat evolved into a more ‘product’ design.”

Fold-flat foot pedals

Continuing this theme, “the floor sketches grab their inspiration from living room rugs,” Loureiro adds. “The folding pedals create in autonomous mode this living room feeling. The floor becomes a rug.”

Sketch with rejected acid-green colourway

A red-based colourway was chosen for the interior in place of the acid yellow seen in some of the sketches. “Yellow was considered together with a gunmetal grey exterior, but was dropped once the red exterior colour was chosen,” says Miklosi, explaining also: “the yellow fabric was not available in the colourway that we needed. With concepts you are given tremendous freedom, but also a lot of restriction in terms of material timing and availability.”

Later sketch shows sportswear-inspired red and grey colours

The red is set against white and grey, with high-tech fabrics a priority. “We turned to the sporting goods industry for material that fits the vehicle character well. We were fortunate to find the white fabric in the desired texture that reinforces the athletic theme,” says Miklosi. “The materials were chosen for their modernity. Carbon fibre and polymer-infused knits can look both technical and aid functional attributes. There are high-tech materials in the IP and on the controls, for example, but ‘low tech’ like the grey felt on the seats is still very appropriate and fresh. We were inspired by architecture and the furniture industry, which does a very good job in being progressive with existing material applications.”

Seat being constructed

Completion of the concept build ran very close indeed to the Beijing Show deadline: “It was finished on April 20th,” says Sergio Loureiro: less than a week from the show’s opening. “The biggest challenge was the short time to build the moving seats, because they could collide when sliding one under the other,” he notes.

Finished FV2030 stacked IP

The finished IP shows the 3D holographic screen and the full-width displays, as well as the three-zone presentation of data to the driver. “We wanted to separate the driver info on the screen just below the windshield from the media info that is placed on the IP,” says Loureiro.

The HMI concept includes a payment interface for services in the car’s fully-networked communications platform, with honeycomb-shaped virtual ‘buttons’ reflecting the exterior and window patterns.

Completed car with finished roof-mounted HVAC

The unique roof-mounted HVAC system with air filtering has been patented. “The roof console was an idea to challenge the conventional interior layout, moving the vents into the roof,” says Loureiro. “You pull in air that is fresher than that coming from the front fascia – and pulling the air from the roof allows you to liberate a lot of space in the IP. The doors also became lighter, and you can have transparency in the bottom half of the door.”

Final interior with seats in non-stacked position

“The FV2030 is a picture in time for us. It shows our vision of the future today,” Miklosi concludes. “We know many of the features in this vehicle will be mainstream by 2030, for example autonomous driving and alternative power sources. With these developments, we can bring foldaway steering controls and pedals.

Chery FV2030

“Some other features are independent of these tech advancements and can be integrated sooner, for example the roof air purification system, and the removable wi-fi speakers. Progressing as a design organisation, we will see the vision evolve.”

Chery FV2030

Vehicle type Concept crossover

Executive design director James Hope
Strategic design director Alex Miklosi
Exterior design director Charles Chen
Exterior designer Alan Derosier
Exterior designer, wheels and details Frederik Dalmeyer
Interior design director Sergio Loureiro da Silva
Interior chief designer Guillermo Mignot
FV2030 lead designer Sunghoon Oh
Senior interior designer Charlie Wang
Colour and trim designer Lv Ying
Seat designer Robin Wu
Interior and HMI designer Huang Guanghao
Component designer Victor Xu

Project started October 2015
Project completed April 2016
Launch Beijing motor show April 2016