Automaker Hyundai recently held what seems like the best office-wide contest ever, asking its R&D engineers to show off their ideas. And they certainly did, unveiling a multi-rotor flying electric concept car.
Since 2010, Hyundai’s R&D Center in South Korea has organized an internal contest to come up with innovative ideas. Recently the company held its annual Idea Festival to highlight the staff’s most creative “free mobility” designs from 2012.
The concept car shown in South Korea doesn’t have a name yet — and I have a feeling it probably won’t, at least not in this iteration. As PopSci’s Colin Lecher pointed out, “car” is a loose term here since it works more like a drone. The engineers put a crash test dummy in the cockpit while an engineer wearing a red cape controlled the hovering electric vehicle remotely. Like I said, it’s clearly just a concept.
The rest of the ideas debuted at the festival were similarly wacky and fantastic (video), particularly the black and bright yellow electric E4U Egg Car that looks perfectly suited for a villainous mall cop or a cartoon arch-enemy.
Nobody is likely to get up into international airspace in Hyundai's concept flying car, that's for sure.