The functioning of a lightweight and efficient car with a revolutionary propulsion system should be described in its shape; and lines that work attractively at the front of a car should be echoed and resolved on the sides and rear.
Spowers, especially, felt one common fault was the students’ tendency to propose shapes that were fuller, and “more GT-like” than he had in mind. And in some cases the best parts of the development sketches didn’t make it to the 3D model.
According to Callum and Day, that’s a fault that plagues even the professionals. It’s a reason why car design takes care and time, and why all car designers must become used to listening carefully to the opinions of critics, both bosses and peers.
In the event, we finished up with four commended students from which we selected one winner, Haoyuan Bai, already an intern of Nio in Shanghai, China, whose nicely proportioned design featuring eye-catching rear spats was the universal choice.
Others commended were Zefan Shang and Yuyong Yin, also Chinese, and Bo Silkens from the Netherlands. Each of these was good enough to win, the judges felt, especially if they had made a better fist of the tough transition of turning attractive sketches into a 3D creation with the same visual appeal.
The important thing was that the design professionals’ winner was also the choice of Riversimple managing director Spowers. He particularly felt winner Bai had produced a design of unique appeal, which had got the “volumes” right: it wasn’t too tall or full in its sections, like some of the others, and it qualified as a proper supercar.
Having put quite a lot of time and effort into it, Spowers pronounced the design competition “a thoroughly positive experience”, though he acknowledged, just as the students did, that these were very much first steps.
He already builds functioning cars, knows how much more is involved in getting a new model on the road and is currently deciding what to do next.