People's car

Seventy years after the first concept car (General Motors' 1938 Buick Y-Job) Italy-based Pininfarina has unveiled the 'synthesis' of its ideals at the International Motor Show in Geneva.

Under the conceptual eye of Pininfarina's design director Lowie Vermeersch, the Sintesi fuel-cell-powered sports car is said to showcase a new approach to car design.

The designers claim to have built a vehicle around its passengers, rather than as a shape to cover the mechanical components, so the Sintesi's four doors open upwards to reveal a spacious, four-seater interior cabin.

A striking inside feature is the illuminated, semi-transparent dashboard (below) that looks like an insect egg sac, but actually has a more useful role in displaying information to the driver, such as hazard alerts, through a display of lights and colours. Pininfarina said all the information now provided by road infrastructure, such as traffic lights and road signals, will be displayed inside the vehicle.

Driving the Sintesi is supposed to be a 'fluid' and safe experience due to features such as telecameras, a proximity radar system in the headlights and Reicom's Clancast radio technology, which enables wireless communication with other cars.

When running at top speed continuously, the Sintesi reaches 191km/hr on Nuvera's Quadrivium Drive hydrogen fuel cell technology, distributed as four-wheel power modules.

Each wheel has a fuel cell input power of 20kW, and the maximum motor output power per wheel is 24kW in 'normal' mode and 32kW in 'sport' mode.