At Astheimer Design, the lead partner of the consortium for the Aura Concept, we combine design excellence with engineering innovation to bring concepts to life in a way that’s unique, relevant and desirable. In short, we make it real.
At Astheimer Design, we combine design excellence with engineering innovation to bring concepts to life in a way that’s unique, relevant and desirable.
In short, we make it real.
Founded in 2009 by Carsten Astheimer, the studio has grown into a multidisciplinary team of designers and design engineers, with state of the art hardware, software and facilities.
Specialist focus on sustainable mobility has allowed the team to build up extensive knowledge and experience within the sector, helping the team create more holistic and unique products as a result.
Aura is an opportunity to publicly showcase our tried and tested design process, the same process we use to develop future mobility vehicles of all shapes and sizes for our international OEM clients.
To ensure relevance - we need to understand the user, the use case, the competitors, and the brand identity to determine the positioning of the product.
To ensure uniqueness - we need to explore the concept options, pushing the boundaries to find a direction and distil the theme to its purest synthesis.
To ensure confidence - we thoroughly detail and engineer each element of our design both inside and out to be suitible for our chosen manufacturing routes.
To ensure success - we build our designs for real, using our clean 100m^2 workshop and our network of trusted suppliers to bring your dreams to reality.
A long range EV sports car designed for nature
The Aura Concept is a long range electric vehicle built topublicly demonstrate the skills and capabilities of a consortium of British businesses, recognised as leaders in the development of zero emission vehicles.
The ambitious 6 month programme to design, develop and build a fully working road legal prototype was undertaken despite a global pandemic, two national lockdowns, and severe supply chain disruption.
Lead by consortium leaders Astheimer Design, the multidisciplinary teams focused their energy on developing innovations within 4 key pillars of excellence: Efficiency, Design, Technology, and Sustainability.
Carsten Astheimer - “Aura is a vision for a sports car in this new electric age, a visceral driving experience to go out and enjoy nature, where performance equates to range. A pure, simple, low-drag, efficient design that has been expertly developed and built by the Astheimer design team. Aura expresses our design principles, our commitment to developing sustainable mobility solutions, and our can-do attitude in bringing a concept to reality under tight constraints of time and budget"
The design of the exterior surfaces were driven by a natural purity, featuring pure confident surfaces built around two key tear drop lines which run tip to tail. Smooth bodysides, covered rear wheels, and careful optimisation of aerodynamic air curtains helped create a unique and slippy low drag design.
From the vibrant pops of red in the aero vents and the single piece double seat bucket, to the complex multi element blade head andtail lamps, we used a theme of digital vibrancy throughout the design to compliment the sophistication of the technologies embedded within the vehicle.
To highlight BAMDs sustainable composites, we incorporated a high contrast colour split to the exterior bodywork. No matter where you stand around the car, you can always see our dark pigmented visible weave BCOMP, finished in a brilliant gloss, including on the striking rear bumper.
The Aura concept was developed on a tight budget during a pandemic which shook supply chains across the world. Our thorough design engineering process helped ensure the project remained feasible as we saw costs and lead times increase dramatically. Part by part optimisation was the key, prioritising areas critical to the design and function of the car, and tackling them in an order that minimised potential delays to the programme.
Development of an A-Class CAS model is the make-or-break translation of the design intent sketches onto the vehicle package. Working with our in house design engineers, we iteratively refine our surfaces whilst respecting manufacturing constraints, mechanical packages, kinematics, road legalities and more. The result is a beautiful model that can be engineered without risk of change.
Translating a CAS model into a manufacturable set of parts requires careful body engineering. After creating an initial part split and BoM, we work with our network of prototype and production capable suppliers to optimise the manufacturing parameters for each individual part, ensuring they reach their performance targets whilst remaining cost effective.
We believe that good design requires consistency across the vehicle, right down to the touch points. Using off the shelf body systems limits this, which is why we package critical electronics from our partners within our own custom weather sealed designs, usually supplemented by some of our own custom in-house designed electronics, to ensure an uncompromised user experience.
At Astheimer Design, we don’t make vanity concepts, we make it real. We provide turnkey services from sketch to production ready vehicles by investing in our tenacious and agile multidisciplinary team. Development of the Aura Concept has been a unique opportunity to showcase this ability in a non-confidential way.
Tom Strong, Lead Designer – “Working on Aura from design to manufacture was really exciting. My favourite part of the vehicle is the sculptural single piece double seat bucket which wraps around the driver and passenger. When sat in the car, it made me feel part of the vehicle, really enhancing the visceral driving experience. The seating position, unique driver focused steering wheel display and innovative live aerodynamic feedback from the central display all help contribute to a truly immersive driving experience.”
Alex Stewart, Lead Design Engineer – “Aura has been a particularly challenging project, punctuated by the pandemic and two national lockdowns. Optimising the engineering of the car as the supplier landscape changed dramatically brought opportunities to refine the design to its purest form. My favourite part of the car is the front sub-structure, which is a large single piece which sits under the bodywork and is responsible for jigging and supporting the entire front end of the car: a single low-cost part serving many jobs.”
While most of our work remains confidential, we are proud of our portfolio of products which we have developed for leading OEMs around the world, within the mobility sector and beyond.
Astheimer Design is a design consultancy sepcialising in future mobility solutions.
We have a proven track record of developing vehicles for land, sea and air, from sketch all the way through to production.
If you would like assistance with your next challenging project, get in touch and together we can build a cleaner and brighter future.
Email us:
carsten@astheimerltd.com
Call us:
+44 (0) 1926 842 354
Website:
www.astheimerltd.com
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