VW Space Up! Blue: A Very Cool Car

 

Love this car. I’m buying it regardless of what it will look like off the production line. Shown at last week’s LA Auto Show. Gov. Schwarzenegger just had to sit in it, but he still won’t back down from their lawsuit served to the EPA and automakers:

“We understand the way the corporate world works, and we understand the way lawyers work. They will do everything they can to stop it, and we will do everything we can to move forward,” Schwarzenegger said during a tour of the Los Angeles Auto Show.

Beautifully designed, it features an interface that was probably designed by Apple. More than likely this was why VW’s CEO paid a visit to Steve Jobs back in September. The editors at Engadget think so:

Nice interior huh? And how ’bout that 7-inch touchscreen display slapped onto the center console. Pretty sweet right? You’re looking at the inside of VW’s third iteration of their Space Up! — the Space Up! blue — just revealed at the LA auto show. Now try this on. Reader Joona wonders if this is the result of recent collaborations between Apple and VW. After thinking about it some, we’re starting to wonder too. As Autoblog describes it, the concept touchscreen monitor "controls all conceivable functions" and is meant to demonstrate how future human-machine interfaces might look and operate. The touchscreen (no mention of multi-touch support) uses proximity sensors to react to gestures, apparently, without actually touching the display. The user can simply touch the "main menu carousel" to navigate to the desired category or manipulate the system with simple hand gestures near the display. Autoblog says, "Visually, this control is just as spectacular as it is intuitive." Now, chew on this for a second. VW announced earlier this week that all new VW models in 2008 2009 will have touchscreens. Is this what Apple has in store for us at January’s MacWorld?

 

Check it out — it’s coverflow, thanks to Edmund’s CarSpace:

 

Nice photo gallery on Autoblog:

Here’s a video clip showing details: