Get ready to have your concept of how a car is manufactured flipped upside-down and turned inside-out.
Picture a production process that has plenty in common with agar jelly (used to culture organic materials in laboratories) and little in common with what we would normally think of as production-line automotive manufacturing. You are starting to get close to what the people at Mercedes-Benz have spawned with the BIOME – one of the most outlandish and ambitious concepts in this year’s Los Angeles Design Challenge.
In short, the BIOME would be grown in a lab rather than built on a production line.
“As the inventor of the motor car, we wanted to illustrate the vision of the perfect vehicle of the future, which is created and functions in complete symbiosis with nature. The Mercedes-Benz BIOME is a natural technology hybrid, and forms part of our earth’s ecosystem. It grows and thrives like the leaves on a tree” Hubert Lee, head of the Mercedes-Benz advanced design studios said.
This vision includes growing a material called BioFibre which would be lighter than metal or plastic, yet stronger than steel. The resulting car would weighs in at 875.5 lbs (around 394 kg). The entire vehicle would also be completely biodegradable.