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Motorsport

This is Infiniti’s racecar of the future

Published: 24 Nov 2014

Infiniti has designed a future racer able to compete in rally, circuit and even ‘Gymkhana-style' jet-air courses. It's not a race car, it's a race... thing. Internet, meet the Infiniti ‘Synaptiq'.

Perhaps you require some context, then. It was rendered for this year's LA Motor Show Design Challenge to answer the question of how humans will interact with cars in the year 2029, winning the 'People's Choice' award in the process, too.

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Infiniti's San Diego design team had the idea to strap the driver into a universal cockpit that ‘docks' itself to different vehicle types. So you strap up into this ‘Symbiotic User Interface Technology' (SUIT, no less), through a spinal lock attachment, and then ‘dock' into the three different types of car.

Inside your SUIT, you're treated to liquid crystal canopies enhanced with an augmented reality system displaying all relevant information. The SUIT also suspends the driver into the correct position for whichever vehicle you're piloting, and here's where it gets even more surreal.

Infiniti has mapped out a new race course called the ARC (Air, Race, Circuit) for this Synaptiq. The first part is an F1-style road course from LA to Vegas. Then you dock into an off-roader to race to the Grand Canyon, and from there, dock into a jet racer to shoot back to LA in a Gymkhana-style air race. Yeah, exactly.

"[The LA Design Challenge] allowed us to gaze even farther into the future, imagining drive technologies that are futuristic, but are also not that far from reality," says Infiniti.

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It'd be prudent to remind you that THIS ISN'T REAL, but tell us - is this how you'd want to interact with your car in the year 2029? Just imagine trying to change the oil filter on one of these...

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