Reaching into the past to promote the future
Automakers around the world have spent the last few years promoting hybrid and electric drivetrain technology in order to show how they’re thinking about the future. But lately, some of them are looking back to the past to promote these new technologies.
Friday was the first day of the annual Pebble Beach Concours d’Elegance, one of the ritziest car shows in the world. Staged along the California coast, the opening ceremonies featured appropriately outlandish announcements (like the $5.78 million 1,500-horsepower Bugatti Divo). But a few companies also went right for the nostalgia jugular.
Vintage cars converted to electric power shown at Fully Charged Live (Image: T. Larkum)
Infiniti kicked off the show with its new Prototype 10, an all-electric racer that the company says “recaptures the spirit of early speedsters for an era of electrified performance.” The single-seater arrow of a car is equal parts retro and neofuturistic, and is Infiniti’s way of doubling down on the early 20th-century vibes it tapped for the Prototype 9, which the company unveiled at Pebble Beach last year. While both cars look like something out of the 1930s, they exist as a reminder that Infiniti has plans to switch its entire lineup to electric power of some kind by 2021.
Mercedes-Benz followed Infiniti with an early-1900s grand prix style car of its own, named the EQ Silver Arrow. Meant to promote Mercedes-Benz’s upcoming all-electric EQ sub-brand of cars, the concept employs an 80kWh battery, which the company imagines would get about 250 miles of range, all with about 738 horsepower.
Far away from the breezy cliffs of Pebble Beach, Kalashnikov — yes, the company behind the AK-47 — unveiled this week a tiny all-electric retro car of its own. The CV-1, as it’s called, supposedly makes almost 300 horsepower and has over 200 miles of range thanks to a 90kWh battery. Those are respectable enough specs (provided Kalashnikov is able to get the car into production) that are made even more palatable by the throwback exterior, which Jalopnik says was borrowed from the 1970s Moskovitch Kombi.
These companies are hardly alone in trying to mix the new with the old. Honda wowed attendees of the 2017 Frankfurt Motor Show with an adorable EV concept car that paid homage to some of the earliest Civics, and then followed that up with a sportier (but still decidedly retro) version at the Tokyo Motor Show a month later.
Read more: The Verge