Apr 13, 2016 | By Alec

Japanese car manufacturer Toyota is one of the most successful in its field for a variety of reasons, including excellent safety standards. But more importantly, they seem to know exactly what their target groups want, something that the hybrid Toyota Prius and environmentally aware drivers proved once again. Now, the company has set its sights on a completely different group: the young adults that make up Generation Z. To reach that difficult demographic, the company has designed the Toyota uBox: a sporty vehicle that can be both professional and recreational and even features a customizable 3D printed dashboard.

This new car concept is remarkable in a number of ways. While most of Toyota’s North American vehicles are developed and produced in Southeast Michigan, the uBox is actually the result of an intensive collaboration with graduate students from Clemson University’s International Center for Automotive Research (CU-ICAR) in South Carolina. The collaboration, called Deep Orange, has been ongoing for two years now and has enabled considerable student design input; the students even hand-built the concept car. According to Johnell Brooks, an associate professor in Clemson's graduate engineering program, it was almost like a boot camp for automotive development. “Deep Orange gives students’ hands-on experience with the entire vehicle development process, from identifying the market opportunity through the vehicle build,” he said of the experience.

But how do you begin to reach the young Generation Z? The oldest of the generation are already in their late teens and early twenties, and have a reputation for liking big-ticket, flashy purchases, such as cars. To reach them, Toyota was looking for a car that is pleasing to the eye, featuring modern curves, and appeals to both the young professionals who can afford it and the party loving students who want it. “The typical customer for uBox is a young entrepreneur who wants a vehicle that can provide utility and recreation on the weekend but that can also offer office space or other career-centric or lifestyle uses during the week,” Toyota explains in their press release.

A challenging goal, but it certainly seems like the CU-ICAR students delivered. The exterior is bold and eye-catching, and looks a bit muscular – if that’s even possible for a car. Most importantly, they made the interior fully customizable and reconfigurable. The floors and seats, for instance, can be rearranged to make room for lots of cargo or for transporting passengers. If you want, you can also add a curved glass roof to the vehicle, supported by composite carbon fiber rails developed through a unique pultrusion technique. “The roof pultrusion was something unexpected and very interesting when they first started talking about the concept,” said Toyota Executive Program Manager Craig Payne. “The fact that [the students] were able to achieve an industry-first manufacturing technique as students speaks volumes for this program.”

But nowhere is that drive for customization more visible than in the interior features, where a large number of components can be replaced through 3D printing. This includes the vents, the dashboard display fixtures and door trims. To support that customizable nature of the uBox, Toyota has announced that they are working on an online 3D printing hub, where car owners can upload and share their 3D printable designs. Perfect for accommodating the modern desire for originality.

Of course young people also need constant access to electricity as well so Toyota has built in a compact, dual-purpose, all-electric powertrain and plenty of 110-volt sockets on the inside and outside of the vehicle. These will provide power for all forms of consumer electronics, from smartphones to tablets. Even power tools, they say, can be plugged in. But the car is still under development, so who knows what other features might be incorporated. Toyota is currently aiming for a 2020 release.

Unsurprisingly, CU-ICAR was very impressed. “The Toyota management team constantly challenged the students with justifying their design and engineering decisions based on brand essence, real-world customers and what the students believed the future would embrace. This experience can simply not be gained from a text book,” said Paul Venhovens, endowed chair for automotive systems integration at CU-ICAR. But more importantly, the car’s breakthrough customization options gives us a glimpse of what the cars of the future might look like. Before we know it, we might all be 3D printing car accessories.

 

 

Posted in 3D Printing Application

 

 

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