Seen in Frankfurt: Peugeot FRACTAL

This is the Peugeot FRACTAL, a concept car: What’s interesting to note about the vehicle—an electric-powered coupe—is that the greatest emphasis on this vehicle has less to do with the exterior design and execution and more to do with the fact that Peugeot’s StelLab research organization worked with FOCAL, a French sound system company, and Brazilian sound designer Amon Tobin to come up with an audio system that is said to make “driving more instinctive by enriching information through the use of acoustics.” There is also a heads-up display, so presumably there is a need for information that isn’t coming through one of the thirteen speakers (including bass systems that are built into the seats to provide tactile inputs to one’s posterior—SubPac, a U.S. start-up, developed the tactic bass system that has the sound waves travel though the seating material rather than through the air, so they reach the listener’s ear via the body rather than from the normal channels). That said, there are other aspects of the FRACTAL that are of note, like the use of 3D printing to produce much—on the order of 80%--of the interior trim surface, a considerable portion of which, as those who have ever gone into a sound lab, will recognize as anechoic in nature.