Geneva 2009, EDAG show: "Light Car" with OLED Technology

EDAG Light Car has been announced by EDAG as a environment-friendly, future-orientated car for everyday and leisure use. With a basalt fiber as first ever used material for building a car, the company says the car looks like it was made from glass. Basalt fiber is a lightweight, stable and 100% recyclable.

EDAG Light Car is powered with electric drive systems that are placed in the wheels.

EDAG Open-Source Light Car

Geneva 2009: EDAG Light-Car Open-Source

EDAG Light Car also equipped with a new LED lighting technology that’s used as an individually adaptable design and communication element. EDAG has presented its new "Light Car – Open Source" concept here at the Geneva Motor Show, and while it outwardly appears to look like any other nondescript electric bubble car, there's a lot of innovative content on the inside screaming for attention.

It's hard to know where to start: The use of (O)LED technology as both driver-configurable exterior lighting units and as a television screen-like safety feature that alerts those behind of road conditions; its 100% recyclable basalt fiber chassis (said to be at once lighter and cheaper than carbon-fiber or aluminum); or the fact that this is an open-source effort, with EDAG taking the lead but freely opening up the car's technologies to outside developers for improvement and modification.

In any case, the fact that the lithium ion-powered compact car utilizes in-wheel motors that help maximize interior space is a neat detail, but we're actually most intrigued by the (O)LED technology, which gives the Light Car an egg-smooth exterior. Out back, the (O)LEDs are used to show trailing vehicles not only the LCOS' strength of braking, but also road conditions ahead – a pedestrian crossing the road, say, or whether there's a speed or construction zone ahead. We imagine this sort of tech would be murder to legalize (at least in the States), but it does have us thinking in new ways about vehicle safety and car-to-car communications.

EDAG Light-Car Open-Source