Renault Design India recently sponsored a project by designer Ramesh Gound that focuses on urban mobility called the Plug-In. The vehicle is actually composed of two two-wheel bikes snapped together to form a unified car that sacrifices nothing in the way of sports car cool. The project came about during Gound’s studies at the National Institute of Design in Ahmedabad, India. While Renault hasn’t committed to bringing the concept vehicle to market, we can expect to see more eco-friendly designs like this to dominate future forays into the world of concept vehicles.

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Look what Sony’s done with an OLED display. This 4.1-inch screen is so thin and flexible, it can wrap around a pencil-sized cylinder. Its 432 x 240 resolution still shines bright, albeit not quite perfectly, with some funky horizontal and vertical lines. Even so, it’s so much better than any others that came before, it represents a breakthrough. We’ve seen rollable displays before, but never with such apparent contrast and color. And, unlike any previous attempts, this one can keep showing video even as it’s being rolled up. Sony says the screen has a contrast ratio of [...]

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Flying cars are always perpetually a few years away in the future. But the thing is, we have the technology to make them now. They’re just insanely impractical. I mean, think about it: how many car accidents happen every day? What would adding another axis for people to worry about do to those safety numbers? But despite that, people still keep designing these things as if they’re ever going to exist in our lifetimes. The latest is the YEE, a car that can transform into a plane at the touch of a button. I’ll give it to them: it’s cool looking. But really, guys, it’s [...]

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Ten years from now, flexible OLED touchscreens will be commonplace. Here’s a design concept that incorporates that technology in a most delightful way. Designer Hiromi Kiriki taps Sony for this spectacular Nextep wrist computer that does just about anything full-sized computers can do today. Notice the handy pullout keyboard, and augmenting that OLED touchscreen is a holographic projector for large-scale viewing. Sure, it’s a design concept, but just look at the gorgeous pictures,keeping in mind that all of this technology is almost ready. We so want this, but it’s probably [...]

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Samsung just started showing off a 19-inch AMOLED screen that’s 30% transparent, allowing you to see right through it. It’s super thin and looks straight out of the future. Of course, no one would actually want a TV that was transparent like this. It certainly doesn’t do the picture quality any favors. But for a neat trick that shows off all the stuff their researchers are working on, it sure is impressive. And really, I can imagine this sort of thing being used in public places for advertising and that sort of thing in the not-too-distant future. But unless there’s a way [...]

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A team at the University of Tokyo has found that using titanium oxide could mean discs with storage capacities more like hard drives. The best part? The material is cheaper than what’s used in the likes of Blu-ray discs.

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You might think this is some kind of solar array, but high-end designer Philippe Starck tells us this is the lamp of the future. He’s named it Light Photon, and this limited-run lighting fixture is made of high-grade stainless steel with strips of OLEDs positioned on its panel. The only difference between this lamp and the one the rest of us will be using, say, five years from now is its price: $5,900. On some future date, remember when you first saw this precious design as you tote that $10 lamp home from Wal-Mart that looks just like this.

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Now you can transmit digital signals with flickering lights. Chinese researchers have learned how to stream data using the imperceptible flickering of blue LED lights mounted in the ceiling. In their testing, they were able to stream digital video using these fast-blinking diodes. Because it uses light, it’s limited to line of sight, but this smart LED lighting can send its data at a relatively pokey 2Mb per second (2Mbps), while also functioning as room lighting. That line-of-sight limitation might be a bit inconvenient, though, when someone stands between your computer and the light source. Don’t [...]

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Our eternal lust for an affordable OLED screen might finally be satisfied. Dupont Displays figured out a cheap way to print the ultra-thin, sharp and efficient screens, and solved one of the nagging problems of OLED displays: longevity. The secret is a new and sophisticated multi-nozzle printing process. These Dupont geniuses improved the erstwhile unreliable technique, which used to result in poorly-performing screens with short life and astronomical prices (try $2,725 for the biggest OLED display so far, and that’s only 15 inches diagonal). Now these guys can print a 50-inch screen in [...]

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Let’s jump 40 years into the future with designer Victor Uribe, and look at that, it’s just about time for his Airbus A350H airliner to lift off from the center of Frankfurt. In the crowded world of 2050, Uribe says there won’t be room for conventional airports any more, so that’s why he’s designed his hydrogen-powered aircraft to take off vertically. In this design concept, the aircraft’s hydrogen fuel is synthesized from water drawn from a nearby river. That fuel is pumped to the awaiting jets, refueling as they perch high atop their mid-21st-century runways, [...]

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