POP (Republic of Korea, 2010)

The Kia POP is a concept car presented by Kia at the 2010 Paris Motor Show. Created and developed by the company's European Design Centre in Frankfurt and an irreverent vision of future urban electric transport. In charge of the POP’s project was Guillaume, under the direction of Peter Schreyer, Kia Motors Chief Design Officer.

According to Guillaume the POP design is true to the challenging essence of the brand. The objective was to “stir things up in the automotive world, to surprise people even more. We wanted this car to act as a loose nucleus, a wild atom.”

With its chrome-coloured, three-metre-long three-seater with an electric drivetrain, oblong-shaped side windows and front-hinged doors, the Kia POP certainly surprises everyone.

"The POP doesn't point at the style of the next generation of cars, but looks even further into the future.  There are a lot of new things, for example the side-window graphic is like a signature, unique with its own character," says Peter Schreyer.

Schreyer explains that many of the elements that feature in the Kia POP design have received inspiration from other areas rather than the automotive world. Schreyer points, for example, the side-window design, the high-tech feel of the dot-pattern grille and taillights, the full-length glass roof, and the simplistic, clean look of the wheels.

"We were looking at lightweight, aerodynamic things, such as gliders and high-speed bicycles.  We realised that the automotive world wasn't inspiring us to achieve what we wanted to achieve," explained Guillaume.

The designer explains that the design of both the interior and the outside of the car were made together. Designers worked on a very short footprint, trying to give passengers the best view, just like in a helicopter.

"The seats are designed to be non-automotive.  They're very pure, very simple, almost furniture-like.  The front bench is sculpted, with interesting, flowing lines and, because it's an electric car without a conventional engine, we were able to push the firewall far forward," Guillaume explains.

Thanks to the positioning of the rear seat at an offset angle, the Kia POP is able to offer a quite remarkable legroom, having in consideration that it is a car with 1,740mm-wide and with a wheelbase of just 2,055mm.

As for the purple colour scheme, Guillaume explains that the inspiration was taken from the picture of a space ship, as the design team was willing to create a calm and peaceful environment, with just one colour.

Other two elements were inspired on the space travel theme. One of those is the small piece of plexi-glass in front of the steering wheel sits a Transparent Organic LED (TOLED) display that shows a speedometer, battery charge gauge and the other main readouts when the car is running, but is otherwise totally transparent.

The other one is the secondary control displays. Guillaume is very enthusiastic about it and explains why: "You get so used to designers trying to make things look overly ‘techy', with lots of buttons and switches.  But in the POP there is only one button.  Everything else - audio, sat-nav, climate control and so on - is controlled via the animated touch screen and the dot animation creates a warm feel for the driver."

As its look surely dominates everything rest, we can easily forget that the POP is also a fully-electric, zero-emissions vehicle with a 50kW, 190Nm motor and a single-charge range of 160km.  Its power is handed by highly efficient, compact lithium polymer gel batteries.