GM Wins LA Design Challenge with HUMMER O2

1 December 2006

HUMMER O2.

GM Advanced Design has won the Los Angeles Auto Show’s Design Challenge for the second year in a row. This year’s winning entry is a two-dimensional rendering of a 2015 Blue Sky Concept that addresses environmental sustainability, called the HUMMER O₂. (Earlier post.)

The 2006 Design Challenge theme is Environmental Sustainability, a challenge for design studios to transform the future of driving into an environmental experience. Contest guidelines also required that vehicle entries be 100-percent recyclable and have a maximum lifespan of just 60 months. GM presented its entry—a fuel-cell powered vehicles with hydraulic drive and algae-filled body panels that convert CO₂ to oxygen—as a series of two-dimensional images, not as a 3D model.

The panels essentially function as the “leaves” of the HUMMER O2 and effectively clean the air in the surrounding environment. Used algae are recycled as biomass for the further production of energy.

—Frank Saucedo, director, GM Advanced Design

The HUMMER O2 uses four fuel-cell stacks, each associated with a hydraulic motor in each wheel.

GM used the Los Angeles Auto Show as the venue to unveil an expansion of its hybrid drive efforts, including the introduction of the Aura Green Line sedan and the announcement that the Saturn VUE Green Line would feature an application of the advanced two-mode hybrid drivetrain in 2008 with a plug-in hybrid configuration coming in 2009. (Earlier post.)

The GM West Coast Advanced Design Studio won the 2005 Design Challenge competition with its GMC PAD Concept, a mobile urban loft designed for the LA environment.