Tag Archives: automotive designs

The Top 10 bike designs of 2020!

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2020 has been a year no one is bound to forget anytime soon. And while we have seen plenty of hardships this year, this year has also been one where we have seen humanity reveal their myriad shades – from healthcare workers who risk their lives to treat you, designers who have risen splendidly to solve the COVID-19 crisis to the average joe who is doing his bit by staying at home – we look up to all of you who have played their part in this year. While we are down to the final 8 days of this year, Yanko Design is here to brighten your spirits by showcasing the best of the designs we featured this year – the bike designs that we curated and you love. Take a walk through memory lane and save this post – this list is sure to keep you inspired for a long time!

Meet the BMW R9T, a one-off customized version of BMW’s new R18 cruiser, by the guys at Moscow-based Zillers Garage. It retains the R18’s internal build but comes with a redesigned outer body, made entirely from fabricated aluminum parts. The bike comes with a relatively closed design that integrates all its elements, from the headlight, all the way till the tail-light into a single unified mass with a naked metal finish that gives it its raw, post-apocalyptic appeal. It comes with a menacing HID lamp at the front, and a taillight mounted on a sliding rear that you can open to access the bike’s electricals.

Switch Motorcycles is a new electric bike company and they have just unveiled the eScrambler which is their very first product and we have to say, it’s quite impressive! To share some context, we expect nothing short of this from custom motorcycle veteran Matthew Waddick who teamed up with designer Michel Riis (former Yamaha Japan Advanced Labs Industrial Designer and past Danish Flat Track champion!) The first thing you’ll notice is that it has a sturdy, angular build, almost like the flat trackers and classic bikes of the ’70s or even the Tesla Cybertruck, making it stand apart from the usual slimmer electric bikes. To complete its big-guy aesthetic, it has 18-inch wheels wrapped in chunky tires, KTM forks, and a central mono-shock. Being a vehicle in 2020, it has all the tech you’d want in a bike – a digital display, cruise control, a battery level indicator, integrated GPS tracking, three power modes, and in-built Wi-Fi which truly sets it apart.

If it were up to King T’Challa, the MIMIC e-bike would be fitted with vibranium tech, but we’re going to stick to an electric power-train for now. This crouching-jungle-cat of a bike is a concept designed by Roman Dolzhenko. Outfitted with what looks less like a body and more like armor, the MIMIC e-bike comes with a rounded, Tron Light Cycle-inspired form with rounded elements and just an overall absence of straight lines or sharp edges.

Designer Tanner Van De Veer in collaboration with DAAPworks has proposed a mid-weight Harley Davidson electric motorcycle, destined to revive the brand. The project goal is to bring a motorcycle to the streets which preserves the historical essence of the Harley design language while infusing contemporary trends. He calls it the “Harley Davidson Revival” and lends the bike an eco-conscious touch with the swappable electric battery pack. The electric powertrain of Revival will embody lightweight aesthetics, and yes, it will come sans any clutch or gears. Revival borrows its basic body structure design from the early designs of the motorcycle which shaped its destiny in the early years of development.

Created as a commissioned piece for the Haas Moto Museum and Sculpture Gallery, the bike incorporates design-trends and technologies that are indicative of the future of automotive design. The stunning 2029 comes with an electric drivetrain, fully enclosed aluminum body, hub-centric steering, transparent PolyCarbonate wheels, and 3D printed bike parts, furnished out of Titanium. If the bike looks like nothing you’ve ever seen before, that’s purely out of intention. Designer Bryan Fuller says, “There are few times in my career that we have built something so gratifying. The 2029 combines both my drive to innovate and my love of metal.”

Designer Shane Baxley from Hollywood has a profound affinity for automotive designs and has mustered up yet another concept that shouts out loud for rightful attention. Shane foresees the future where hubless electric bikes will ride the tarmac, radiating a sense of authority on the road. His idea of this electric bike is known as the Baxley Moto (of course we get where the naming originates from) and it carries an ultra-futuristic street-legal vibe with the spokeless wheels. The hunched-forward riding position, big treaded tires, suspended tail section (sans any pillion seat), and the protruding sliders, all point towards a ride meant for daredevils who don’t mind the odd detour on the dirt trails.

The PUNCH is an e-bike that reinterprets the motorcycle template with its less-organic-more-geometric sensibilities. Owing to its battery and electric drivetrain setup, the PUNCH can afford to do away with the curvilinear, sinewy bike design and just lay the inner components out in a way that’s straightforward and yet comfortable. This renewed approach is what makes the PUNCH such a radically different two wheeler. It comes with a double-cylindrical body that seamlessly goes from headlight to seat to taillight, highly reminiscent of the Pocket Rocket from Sol Motors.

Tesla has dabbled in most sections of the four-wheeler industry, from sedans, to pickup trucks, roadsters, semi-trailer trucks, and even quad-bikes. There’s an obvious lack of two-wheelers in Tesla’s product portfolio, and James Gawley took it upon himself to fill that void, at least with a concept. Meet the Tesla Model M… designed to make electric bikes more of the status quo, the Model M comes with a unique aesthetic that deliberately chooses to create a negative space in its design where the fuel-tank would be, almost poking fun at its fuel-guzzling ancestors.

Mehmet Doruk Erdem’s “Khan” is an eclectic mix of unbelievable, dangerous, and beautiful. Erdem’s “Khan” concept takes a BMW R 1100 R twin-cylinder boxer engine and giving them an absolutely new lease of life, with a front-heavy wasp-inspired exterior and an almost naked frame at the rear, much like Erdem’s Alpha concept, and dominated by an extremely large rear wheel, and a seat in the middle, resting on a twin-suspension. There isn’t much method to Erdem’s madness, or maybe I don’t spot it, but the Khan is surely a beautiful beast.

The Dyson Bike started as a mere warmup sketching exercise for Rashid Tagirov in 2019. Seeing how the aesthetic began taking shape, and finding himself with extra time on his hands in 2020, Tagirov decided to take his sketch to the next level and flesh it out in 3D. The Dyson Bike champions the British appliance company’s design language, turning mundane geometric forms into a well-balanced thing of beauty.

C8 Corvette goes roofless – Result is a dapper speedster makeover that will turn heads!

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Italian coachbuilder ARES Design is a well-renowned name when it comes to creating stunning cars with a balanced fusion of craftsmanship and cutting-edge technology. The 2020 Corvette C8 Stingray is their latest canvas to show-off the creative prowess – turning it into a high-performance speedster which is more than just a superficial facelift, the kind we usually associate with custom body kits. According to Danny Bahar at ARES Designs, the motivation for the artisanal craftsmanship is “to create a car that combined the design of a hypercar, the performance of a supercar, and the accessibility of a sportscar.”

After a short stint on the S1 Project with the new Corvette – that, by the way, is too precious to be driven with the fear of destroying it – Bahar decided to come up with a design that looks even better. Hence came to life the topless Barchetta version of the Corvette C8 – the S1 Project Spyder that reminds one of the Ferrari Monza SP2 or even the McLaren Elva! Look closer at the bodywork and you’ll instantly say, it resembles the rare Lamborghini Aventador J, as the hood flows into the cabin – morphing into the stem of the infotainment system and the center console. Powering this beauty is the Corvette’s 6.2-liter LT2 V-8 that’s tweaked for prime performance courtesy of the custom exhaust and an ECU tune.

The windshield is gone in favor of an airy cabin, but the tradeoff is the presence of dual wind reflectors popping out from the all-carbon-fiber body, directing the airflow towards the intakes that sit just behind the driver and the passenger seat. We bet you’ll have messy hair once you hit speeds beyond the usual highway limits. The inside of the speedster takes a detour from the C8 Corvette design – there’s a handcrafted cockpit that’s embellished in Nappa leather and Alcantara – matching the fat alloy wheels.

ARES Design emphasized that they wanted to “bring the experience of driving a supercar back to a more authentic and visceral level, an experience that uses today’s technologies and materials to rediscover sensations of yesteryear.” Truly S1 Project Spyder is a car that’s pure emotion and the build looks stunning. Once S1 Project Spyder hits the roads (ARES Design hinted on a limited run at an unknown price) it’ll get those surefire oohs and ahhs!

Designer: ARES Design

Retro-inspired automotive designs that perfectly merge modern power with vintage charm!

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History repeats itself, and in the world of design, history often serves as an inspiration for the future. A lot of cars take inspiration from vintage designs, but those that are well designed, they are a sight to behold. In the current day scenario where cars are essentially sleek design, each of the curated designs showcased in this collection makes the car and their owner stands apart from the crowd – the strong dose of nostalgia is guaranteed!

Let’s admire the beauty that is the Helvezzia Tipo-6 concept, an alt-reality race car with a 1940s-inspired exterior and a powerful electric interior. Designed specifically for racing by Alexander Imnadze Baldini, the Helvezzia Tipo-6 seats just one person with a pretty advanced looking dashboard featuring a steering wheel with gauges and switches, and a secondary set of gauges behind the steering. The car comes with a nice, tubular body, an open cockpit, and wheels that pop out of the bodywork, with hubcaps covering the rims entirely. There’s even a step knee located to the left of the driver, headlamps with their own covers too, and by far my favorite detail, that ridiculously beautiful chrome grille on the front, added purely for vanity purposes because an EV wouldn’t really need a radiator.

 This 1961 Volkswagen Beetle deluxe converted into a roadster with a matte black treatment is the work of Danni Koldal, who’s virtually facelifted the vintage four-wheeler into a hotrod that’s not overdone, still maintains its masculine appeal. The front windshield has been trimmed down to the bare minimum, giving the ride a mean attitude that matches its personality. The black is contrasted by the silver-white trims on the doors, hood, and alloy wheels. Those fat wheels also go with the upper body of the Volkswagen that Danni has managed to turn into hot property – we want to own it right away. Interiors carry forward the sleek appeal which shouts out loud for a midnight drive on the freeway.

Fiat is an icon for the Youngtimer era of cars and this quarantine period has led to MA-DE studio being inspired to create a concept design of the beloved Fiat to fit in our new world – the all-electric Fiat 126 Vision! Vision 126 has a balanced aesthetic of vintage and modern. While the concept has square headlights to resemble the original model, making it slightly slimmer would it a slightly more modern look and would take off some visual bulk from the front. Vision features radial vents in a way where they are integrated within the steel cap which is similar to the original wheel design.

Designed by Abraham Chacko, the EV90 is a direct rebuttal of how major car companies approach modern car designs. Rising beltlines and shrunken DLOs (DayLight Openings) often make cars look sleeker, but end up creating a claustrophobic interior by really closing you into the cabin. The EV9’s response is to make a car that feels almost meditative and comes with a larger DLO that allows more light to enter the interiors of the vehicle. Every element of the EV9 focuses on reinterpreting details and minimizing distraction without affecting the car’s performance. Just like its ancestor, the E9, the EV9 sports two spherical headlights on each side, and comes with the iconic BMW kidney grille.

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Designed for Eadon Green, a new British luxury brand focused on re-establishing the classic art of automotive coach-building, the Black Cuillin is their first model and was launched at the Geneva Auto Show in March 2017. Refined, elegant, powerful, and exclusive, the Black Cuillin fuses the materials and skills from traditional coach building with the very latest, state of the art development and manufacturing techniques. It’s based on a modified, class-leading European luxury car platform and is powered by a 6.0L V12 engine.

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With its vintage-hip design language, including exposed show tires and a stub-nose front end, the Avanti Gara is reminiscent of prewar speedsters only with a cushy interior that’s undeniably today. Designed by Ross Compton for Macchina Design, it’s unabashedly designed for the self-indulgent who care less about track times and more about inspiring the imagination through stunning visual appeal and closeness to the road. Its all-aluminum body is scattered with rivets and venting including signature 3 dot vents along the side at the rear that provide a focal point as well as ample venting for the engine that sits directly behind the driver. The front hood contains a small storage compartment where you can fit just a few bags or two for your getaway. Leather straps give the exterior a bespoke feel.

This is the Carmen, named after Carmen Mateu, the granddaughter of the founder of Hispano Suiza, and the current president’s mother. Touted as a birth, or a rebirth if you will, the Carmen, unlike most hypercars, doesn’t look like a part of the same family. Channeling a beautiful retrofuturistic aesthetic, the Carmen’s stylings take inspiration from the car’s 1930s history (arguably their peak), and bring those to the modern world. Showing off curves like they’re nobody’s business, the Carmen is equal parts contemporary and blast-from-the-past. Its vintage-meets-new-age stylings aside, the Carmen has the innards of a futuristic automobile. Powered by an electric drivetrain, the Carmen boasts of a two-motor rear-wheel-drive delivering a cool 1,005 horsepower.

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The E-Legend concept from French automotive company Peugeot is an exercise in what we call Retrofuturism. The car looks strangely antiquated yet contemporary both at the same time… which is a good look to embody, just because it satisfies both purists and neophiles. The concept car comes with headlights that almost rip your soul apart (I detect a Mustang vibe), and an electric build that’s capable of 456 horsepower and a head-spinning 590 foot-pounds of torque. The car can pull off a 0 to62 in under 4 seconds, with a top speed of 137mph. Peugeot also boasts of a 373-mile range on the battery, with a whopping 311 miles with just a 25-minute charge.

If your love for automobiles and architecture has never met before, well they have now in Chris Labrooy’s Winter Cabin. Labrooy wedged the classic Volvo 240 into a quintessential cabin. The Volvo 240 was a vintage wonder, though long and slow, it was considered the ideal family car. Honest and dependable, the 1974’s car became a member of a number of households. Hence it’s no surprise that Labrooy merged it with an adorable little red and white cabin, perfect for those family getaways during the winter vacations. However, Labrooy’s version of the car comprises of two Volvo 240s combined together, creating an inverted mirror image. Slide the structure into a cabin, and you have a quirky architectural concept perfect for all those vintage automobile lovers, who want to take a trip down memory lane!

Tesla-inspired automotive designs that show why this company is at the peak of modern innovation

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Speak of electric vehicles and the first name that pops up in our head is Tesla. Being run by Elon Musk who has been compared to Iron Man of our times more often than not, Tesla lately topped the charts by becoming the most valuable automotive company in the world. One thing that Tesla’s success proves is that the world still values innovation. Inspired by Tesla’s habit of pushing the envelope, the product designers can’t stay far behind in their conceptual designs and the collection showcased here tells the same story. Each angular, edgy and innovative design inspired by Tesla is designed to take the automotive world by storm!

Named after the very man who pioneered the edgy, angular, low-poly aesthetic, the Brubaker Box by Samir Sadikhov is a minivan inspired by the designs of Curt Brubaker – whose work also directly influenced the design of the Tesla Cybertruck. The Brubaker Box is essentially designed for families who want to adopt the Cybertruck aesthetic without necessarily buying a pickup. Made possibly for edgy soccer moms, the minivan comes with a slightly softer low-poly design that’s more approachable and friendly (after all, you want to look more like a family person and less like you’re Mad Max-ing your way through life).

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If any company had to build something as outlandish as a pod system with a fixed electric powertrain platform and an interchangeable upper pod based on use, it would probably be Tesla. Designed as a part of his thesis project, Fábio Martins’ conceptual Tesla Pod system is pretty intriguing and especially makes sense, given that Musk is launching the Boring Tunnel project that will only work with a handful of cars that are compatible with the underground travel system. The idea for the Pod is simple. The electric powertrain base is common to all modes of transport, while the upper part alternates between three different pods that serve three different purposes… one for public transport, one for private transport, and one for commercial transport.

Designed with sheer attention to detail, the pickup is envisioned as a part of Tesla’s Model P series, by Istanbul-based designer, Emre Husmen. The conceptual Model P (let’s just call it that for now) is a brilliant exercise in brand and form semantics… that’s a fancy-design-jargon way of saying that it looks exactly like something Tesla would launch. With the beautiful razor-thin headlamps and taillamps, the absence of a radiator-grille on the front (thanks to its electric build), and aesthetic features and detailing that are just innately Tesla, the conceptual pickup truck looks both fast and dominating together. It comes with a four-door setup and a pretty high ground clearance. An off-road Tesla? I’d quite like to see that, Mr. Musk.

The Tesla x SpaceX x BTTF combination comes from the mind of Charlie Nghiem, a maverick automotive designer who’s even made a Tesla x Rimowa concept collab. This holy-trinity mashup features both of Elon Musk’s current ventures, electric automobile company Tesla, and space exploration venture SpaceX, along with an unlikely third, the DeLorean from Back To The Future (Musk is a Rick and Morty fan, so maybe he loves BTTF too?) The car looks like a pimped out Tesla Roadster complete with all the trims and the massive afterburners from the BTTF automobile. The car’s even got a hoverboard casually resting against its side, and features a SpaceX logo at the base of the C pillar, because where they’re going, they don’t need roads.

Created by automotive designer Alex Baldini Imnadze, the SpaceTruck is a concept created as a dream collaboration between Tesla and SpaceX. Unlike Tesla’s original semi-truck, the SpaceTruck is more situation-specific, designed to transport rocket parts and the Dragon crew around and between facilities. Citing Syd Mead as his primary source of inspiration, Baldini says the SpaceTruck was created as an effort to embrace ‘Astro-design’, creating a vehicle that visually represented the space-age we’re currently in. The SpaceTruck’s design language mimics the Dragon Crew Capsule, with a similar white and black color combination. Needless to say, the truck is entirely powered by an electric drive-train and features a cockpit that sits above all the machinery, jutting out too, to slightly resemble the SpaceX astronaut helmet.

There’s an obvious lack of two-wheelers in Tesla’s product portfolio, and James Gawley took it upon himself to fill that void, at least with a concept. Meet the Tesla Model M… designed to make electric bikes more of the status quo, the Model M comes with a unique aesthetic that deliberately chooses to create a negative space in its design where the fuel-tank would be, almost poking fun at its fuel-guzzling ancestors. The bike’s curvy outer body harks to the curvilinear design-language of its sedans like the Model X and Model S, and a massive dashboard occupies a significant amount of space where you’d expect the fuel tank’s inlet – giving you a whole host of data from your speed and battery level to the bike’s performance and even a detailed map to help you navigate.

Powered by the kind of AI you’d find in autonomous vehicles (with 4K cameras and sensors that can accurately identify objects in her path), the Toadi is practically the Tesla of lawnmowers. Designed to work less like a robot and more like a living organism, the Toadi reinvents a category that hasn’t seen a significant-tech upgrade… and yes, Toadi is a ‘her’. The Toadi uses 4K cameras to ‘see’ the way humans do. She accurately differentiates between grass, gravel, cemented paths, and even identifies and avoids objects like animals, toys, flower-beds, and fences. Using a sensing and tracking system that’s much more superior to the LiDAR sensors and GPS chips found in home-cleaning robots, the Toadi effortlessly moves around the lawn on her own, mowing in straight lines, crossing over to other parts of the lawn if need be, avoiding flower-beds, objects, or pets (and other garden animals), and staying clear off fences.

If Elon tweeted the Cybertruck design as a cool designer-made concept, I’d definitely appreciate it for its game-changing design. That being said, the Cybertruck has also sparked its fair share of design concepts created using the low-poly design language as inspiration… and I’ll be honest. Some of them are pretty dope. Take for instance the Rimac 2080 Hyper Cyber, a concept by 3Dmente Digital. Designed as a part of Rimac’s Design Challenge on Instagram, the Hyper Cyber is an edgy, retro-techno-punkish bike with a low-poly body in the signature metallic finish. The bike sports an unusual seat design that’s molded in a single piece, with negative spaces that give it a cushioning effect, and quite like the Cybertruck, it’s missing rearview mirrors too.

Antonio Paglia sure seems to think the Tesla Helicopter is well on its way. Built in a time where Tesla’s batteries will be able to power large manned airborne vehicles, the Tesla Helicopter carries the company’s DNA, both physically and spiritually. Designed for efficiency and speed, the Helicopter would do well in departments like safety and patrol, allowing the administration to effectively patrol the skies and ground while even in some cases offer assistance in an emergency. Thoughts, Mr. Musk?

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Designed for the Cybertruck patron, Tesla enthusiast, and lover of all-things-electric, the Cybunker by Lars Büro is literally styled on the polarizing polygonal design of the pickup truck which launched a month ago. Made to work off the grid, the bunker comes with a roof of solar panels that power its interiors, even providing juice to the two cars that can fit into its garage, accessible by the two folding gates that open just like the Cybertruck’s ‘vault’. The 1800 sq.ft. possesses the ability to double up as an apartment, shelter, storage, or space for commercial activities. Under it lies its infrastructural ‘motherboard’ which houses all of the unit’s utilities and computer systems, as well as the battery bank that stores all the energy generated by the roof.