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Concept

This is how you’ll road trip in the future

Published: 09 Jul 2014

This is the Nimbus e-Car, a concept study that's so cute we want to hug it until it pops.

It's the brainwave of Brazilian designer Eduardo Galvani, and looks like the ultimate road-tripper to navigate the superhighways and national parks of outer space.

The design is captivating. There's a bit of lunar rover in there, a sprinkling of Land Rover Camel Trophy Truck, part VW camper and a not-so-subtle hint of deep-sea submarine.

If it were to be built - which there are no current plans to do so - we're told the orb-like structure would utilise carbon-fiber, titanium and aluminium to save weight and optimise energy efficiency.

Powering the Nimbus is a 180bhp electric engine hooked up to a micro-combustion generator, rather like the range-extender system in BMW's i3. It'll theoretically return more than 180 miles per gallon - more than enough to explore the future's most distant galaxies.

The Nimbus is also equipped with regenerative brakes (just like a Porsche 918) and solar cells on the roof to help power the fun bus's ancillaries (like an Aston Martin race car).

Four passengers fit in the fish-bowl cabin, and gaze out at the world through massive panoramic windows. There's even onboard Wi-Fi, so they can upload heavily filtered cameraphone snaps of whatever epic planetary landscape they're traversing.

If the driver wants to kick back, relax and see the beauty of whatever-the-hell-planet he may be on, the Nimbus comes fictionally equipped with Auto-Pilot and "a Gearless Automatic Velocity System with Hill Descent Control". We're not exactly sure what the second one is, but it sounds cool. And remember this thing only exists as pixels in a Photoshop file.

But that doesn't mean we don't want Eduardo to make this a reality. In fact, it's queue-jumped straight to the front of TG's Concepts That Must Be Built Now list. And hey, Eduardo, since you'll presumably not be watching the World Cup final next weekend, you've got plenty of time to make this real...

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