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L.A. Auto Show Design Challenge: Auto Industry's Top Designers Envision Cop Car of the Future

By Rain Noe - November 15, 2012

in Cars

Nothing crushes the exhilirating experience of driving a fast car quicker than hearing that siren, then glancing up to see flashing red and blue lights steadily getting larger in your rearview mirror. It's undoubtedly much more fun to see a police car on the sheet of paper or computer monitor in front of you, where it's coming out of your pen or your Wacom. Those who agree will dig the theme of this year's industry-only L.A. Auto Show Design Challenge: To envision a police car of the future.

Though the brief calls for highway patrol vehicles in the year 2025, it also calls for vehicles that can "effectively navigate dynamic urban environments," perhaps explaining why Mercedes' Ener-G-Force concept looks more like an off-roader:

Honda's concept is multi-faceted, consisting of wicked-looking motorcycle units...

...a copter...

...that deploys this beast...

...inside which an officer can remotely have the motorcycles, in pilot-less "Drone Squad" mode, do his bidding:

Also on the drone tip, BMW's EPatrol concept uses ground-based cars working in conjunction with small flying drones that relay camera footage to the driver:

GM's Volt Squad concept is another multi-faceted one, consisting of a jet-bike apparently designed to chase late-'60s Camaros through dry riverbeds...

...a lobster-like highway cruiser...

...and a friendlier-looking local-use vehicle with built-in electronic signage for traffic duty:

And finally Subaru, not wanting firemen to feel left out, created their SHARC (Super Highway Automated Response Concept) for New York's Bravest—although I can't fathom what the firefighting function is—as well as the California Highway Patrol:

Winners will be announced on November 29th, and this year's jury panel consists of Tom Matano of Mazda fame, now Exec Director of ID at San Francisco's Academy of Art University; CCS Provost Imre Molnar; Art Center's Transportation Design chairperson Stewart Reed; and fittingly, Bruce Meyer, former board member of the California Highway Patrol.

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Ari Palefski

6 years ago

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cool

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Bob

12 years ago

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It is no surprise to hear lots of negative comments on design blogs. It is a little sad tho :/

I for one was entertained by the work- I say keep it up. Anyone who confuses the LA design challenge with a production vehicle design problem may benefit from using a search engine.

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slippyfish

12 years ago

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The Subaru fire-fighter's disembodied hose end placement is pretty humorous though.
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James Patrick

12 years ago

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Where do they put the people that they arrest? Does each of these zippy squad cars require a separate support car to collect suspects? Mercedes' and Chevy's are the only ones that would be viable in the next 15 years. They're also the only ones that have side-view mirrors. And those jet-bikes incorporate laughably small rotors. It would take nuclear power for those to spin fast enough and long enough to sustain flight. Have these people ever spoken to an engineer?
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slippyfish

12 years ago

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Reminds me of how the US military desperately needs to transition from being a huge war force able to fight two major land/sea/air wars at the same time, to dealing with asymmetric warfare and quasi-civil war uprisings.

These concept images seem to be a response toward fighting criminals named Joker, Venom, Nexus6, and Megatron, vs dealing with the predominant police issues of the day including community outreach, staff reductions, and large-scale event security. The drone concepts fit this profile but they are probably supposed to be invisible or at least unobtrusive.

What a joke.
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J OG Smith

12 years ago

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Wait a minute - are you actually putting your need for speed before traffic safety or was this just a funny intro?
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T

12 years ago

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Oh wow... well these are bad. The pictures show pretty clearly the difference between concept design inside the industrial design field and "concept design" as the other field where people talented drawers but not thinkers...
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Andy Polaine

12 years ago

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This is pretty sad. Syd Mead was doing far better versions of these kinds of vehicles 40+ years ago. These designs would look outdated in any contemporary sci-fi movie.
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David Mills

12 years ago

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Nick Foster (comment no.1) couldn't be more right. And Tom Mc (comment no. 3) is right when he says that Militarization and dehumanization of police is dangerous to liberty. Real crime does not take place on the street. Very often it happens behind closed doors and glass, protected by federal law. These concepts may be good for some bad movies. But there is nothing original about them. If these attempts are meant to be serious, the creators should be ashamed.
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Sivakumar Thangavelu

12 years ago

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I thought these were second grade student entries. Completely hopeless; no thought whatsoever put in any of these concepts.
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Scott

12 years ago

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Is this even real?
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Tom Mc

12 years ago

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1. Militarization and dehumanization of police is dangerous to liberty.
2. I read the first line and thought about your comments with the lights. How do the lights grow bigger in your mirror if you are hammer down and trying to put distance between you and the Road Tax Collector? I dunno about you but I've broken most local land speed records avoiding astronomical fines for disobeying arbitrary numbers painted on a sign in the middle of BFE.
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Mukul

12 years ago

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Why some of the stuff here doesnt make any sense. and not possible to even make and that really works !!! who knows...
I will be back after more analysis stuff... but thats it for now..
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Nick Foster

12 years ago

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..which is why the car industry is the most vapid, introspective, and most dated of all design disciplines. What a telling insight into vehicle designer's vision of the future. Mercedes: perhaps correctly identifies the future might need more off-road vehicles, but we'll also need our lady-cops to wear skin tight leather dominatrix outfits, (also 'Ener-G-Force'.... really?). Honda assumes the future will be made of glossy hexagons and sticks a hot-rod Lego Harley Davidson into the mix (also includes that oh-so-futuristic Minority Report interface (btw that movie is over a decade old, can we let it go already?)). BMW makes a bit of sense, combining cars with drones, but again plumps for the Wipeout aesthetic, (which is a videogame from 1995). GM has both the weirdest and most pragmatic approach. On the one hand they bring us the perpetual vehicle designer's boner-inducing jet bike, which is as impractical as it is impossible (these are intended as concepts for 2025, 12 years from now). The pilots also appear to be part of the bodywork, which might be good for aerodynamics, but not for owt else. The 'lobster-like' cruiser is pure style over function, again with a healthy dose of Wipeout. The little city vehicle is perhaps the most realistic, and most likely to be what we'll see in 2025. Subaru created some ridiculous underlit, go-cart, with a cockpit too small for the driver and ribbons for suspension. This concept wouldn't even be approved at the Hot Wheels design centre. Oh, and they also called it the SHARC. Sheesh.

This has turned into a rather overlong rant, but vehicle designers are an embarrassment to the rest of the thoughtful, pragmatic, truly forward-thinking design world. We shouldn't tolerate this incessant, dated, misogynistic, narrowband bullshit any longer. Off with their heads.
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