2008: Smaller. Safer. Better.
Drawings on Display at Michelin Challenge Design™
Biography
Daniel Lawrence Lu, born in Singapore, October 1993, is currently a resident in Vancouver, BC, Canada, and enrolled in a university transition program jointly administered by the University of British Columbia and the Vancouver School Board. Since he was a boy, he has been very interested in cars, their design, and their evolution. Subsequently, he has spontaneously spent a lot of time drawing and designing cars from a very young age. As a result of his passionate pursuit of this hobby, his skills in car design have grown rapidly.
Daniel enjoys studying Physics and Mathematics, as they are crucial to reasoning new ideas and technologies for the automotive industry. He also finds great pleasure in the computing sciences. He makes extensive use of his computer for the development and production of his designs, although the pencil and drawing board provide more inspiration.
He strives for his dream in a car design career.
Description
The Pupple integrates a few notable technologies, of which the most important is the Rotational Cabin. Most cars’ cabins are built into the bodywork, but this is not so in the Pupple. Its cabin is capable of free rotation around its center, but does not rotate around the vertical axis. This keeps the driver facing forward. A mass at the bottom of the cabin causes it to tilt backwards when the car stops suddenly, to tilt forwards when the car starts accelerating suddenly, and to tilt sideways when the car is turning. In all cases, the person is pressed firmly into his seat by the inertia rather than thrown forward, backwards, and sideways. As the human being is more resistant to vertical forces, this can minimize injuries effectively.
Other applications of modern technology include the installation of high-resolution, high frame rate cameras around the circumference of the car, which feed information to a set of electronic color displays lining the interior of the cabin. This provides unobstructed all-round panoramic visibility of the outside world, with no blind spots. Furthermore, since the exterior of the car does not rotate like the cabin, the driver would not experience any dizziness during the journey.
The characteristic round shape of the Pupple not only makes it distinctly recognizable, but also provides excellent aerodynamic efficiency due to its teardrop profile. The wheels are directly mounted on electronic motors, which can control the power division between the four wheels, and provide perfect control of the car in all situations. The fins on which these motors are mounted also cause downforce, adding to the stability of the car at high speeds.
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