Photo: Antoine Crobe via Behance
Perhaps Elon Musk is off by a few years when he says that Level 5 autonomy will be reached by the end of 2020, but it's not entirely hazardous to assume the technology will be pretty commonplace ten years from now.
So, it's 2030. You used to enjoy driving your car, but with time a vanishing commodity, slowly but surely you started taking advantage of the vehicle's self-driving abilities to get other stuff done while you move around. You didn't plan to, but it happened. Now, you're just like all the other people strapped in their pods, sending emails or looking over spreadsheets on their way to work.
Well, not all the other people: there're still those who aren't completely ready to hang their driving gloves. For those people and those people alone, Porsche should be making the 555K model. What is this thing, other than weirdly named? Well, it is essentially the automotive (barely) version of a street luge meant to provide the ultimate boost of adrenaline to its driver.
Looking at Antoine Crobe's project, we can see no reason why it would fail to do so. For one thing, the driver sits very reclined, not unlike the position you would find in a land speed record vehicle. The 555K, however, doesn't need a great deal of pace to get the driver's heart pumping, though we're sure it's pretty capable of that too - it is a Porsche, after all.
So, back to the driver, it's not just the position he's in, but also the thing he's in as well. The concept vehicle sits its human occupant in a capsule that moves independently from the rest of the car. That means it can act as a supplementary suspension system, but it can also lean into corners to counter the effect of the lateral g forces.
That is the vehicle's main party trick and is what sets it apart from other speedsters that share some of its design features. Speaking of design, the 555K doesn't strike you immediately as a member of the Porsche family, but then again Porsche hasn't made anything quite like this for a while, so we're short on references. You'll have to go all the way back to the 1955 550 Spyder, which is just as good since that's probably where this concept's name comes from.
We don't know about you, but a future where we need to buy single-seaters just so we can feel the thrill of driving again sounds like a dystopic one to us. That being said, we sure wouldn't mind giving the Porsche 555K a go.
Well, not all the other people: there're still those who aren't completely ready to hang their driving gloves. For those people and those people alone, Porsche should be making the 555K model. What is this thing, other than weirdly named? Well, it is essentially the automotive (barely) version of a street luge meant to provide the ultimate boost of adrenaline to its driver.
Looking at Antoine Crobe's project, we can see no reason why it would fail to do so. For one thing, the driver sits very reclined, not unlike the position you would find in a land speed record vehicle. The 555K, however, doesn't need a great deal of pace to get the driver's heart pumping, though we're sure it's pretty capable of that too - it is a Porsche, after all.
So, back to the driver, it's not just the position he's in, but also the thing he's in as well. The concept vehicle sits its human occupant in a capsule that moves independently from the rest of the car. That means it can act as a supplementary suspension system, but it can also lean into corners to counter the effect of the lateral g forces.
That is the vehicle's main party trick and is what sets it apart from other speedsters that share some of its design features. Speaking of design, the 555K doesn't strike you immediately as a member of the Porsche family, but then again Porsche hasn't made anything quite like this for a while, so we're short on references. You'll have to go all the way back to the 1955 550 Spyder, which is just as good since that's probably where this concept's name comes from.
We don't know about you, but a future where we need to buy single-seaters just so we can feel the thrill of driving again sounds like a dystopic one to us. That being said, we sure wouldn't mind giving the Porsche 555K a go.
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