IED Torino to display Honda EV concept in Geneva

The Istituto Europeo di Design in Turin has released a preview of the full-size model it will display at the 2019 Geneva Motor Show in a couple of weeks’ time. Created in partnership with Honda Design, it is known as ‘Tomo’ (Japanese for ‘friend’) and described as “the friendly mobility tool for 2025.”

The live project ultimately saw 13 students on IED’s two-year Master in Transportation Design course work to Honda’s brief, in a format mimicking that followed by a professional design studio. The aim was to create “the ideal means of transport for young people in the next six years.”

This involved months of research into everything from human behaviour to what makes driving fun, and even creating a manga story to set the near-future scene for which the Honda Tomo is designed.

The resulting car measures in at 3997mm long, 1893mm wide and 1556mm tall, and balances city usability with smart-device connectivity and outer-city leisure, in an environmentally considerate way.

The exterior proposal chosen for final development, initially by Ricardo Alejandro Campos Ortega of Mexico, takes its main inspiration from the Urban EV Concept we saw back in Frankfurt (and which will reappear in pre-production form at Geneva).

It therefore has a soft and approachable feel – with simple light units and blacked-out front and rear masks – but where the Tomo differs from the Urban and Sports EV concepts is in blending a coupé-like profile with a Ute bodystyle, featuring as it does a compact pickup bed over the rear axle (see top image).

Up front, the windscreen reaches marginally beyond the front axle centreline to maximise interior space. Making the sleek, all-glass roof less dome-like is a sharkfin-style kick in the beltline, which then accentuates the sloping tail-end buttresses flanking that load bed. Subtly flared front and rear wheel arches, with a tucked-in negative surface between them, add some stance.

No images of the interior – a development of Indian student Rudraksh Banerjie’s proposal – have yet been released, but we are told it is “designed to offer experiences in line with the easy, friendly setting of the screens, steering wheel and head-up display on the windscreen.”

Taku Kono (general manager, styling design division, Honda Design) calls the project “an exciting, constructive journey both for us and the students, thanks to the fusion of the Honda Design philosophy and the creative energy and commitment of the young IED designers.”

We will bring you more on this project when we see the model in Geneva.