Judging a book by its cover

摘要

Volkswagen Group's design director seems to thinks so. Murat Guenak even believes that most designers would enjoy the challenge of designing exciting shapes for future projects - he certainly would. This is not, however, the overall opinion. Peter Horbury, ex-PAG design director and currently at Ford design in the US, does not see why the car's shape should necessarily change to reflect technology per se. Up until now the green car was an object of fantasy. As a result few designers have had the chance even to think about new solutions, but all of a sudden the whole movement is fast-forwarding with tremendous speed. Last year's Tokyo Show was bulging with green concepts while the main highlights in Detroit in January appeared to be environmentally friendly cars, added to which both the Toyota Prius, and to some extent the Honda Civic hybrid in the US, are also selling at a respectable rate.