At the Hanover commercial vehicle exhibition, in a hidden corner of a huge exhibition hall, I stumbled upon those three trucks. At first, I thought they were movie sets. They are so surreal and futuristic. But I was wrong. Kaiyun Energy is a completely real Hong Kong company that focuses on green energy and also incidentally manufactures trucks. Those small, medium, and large trucks made of stainless steel are not models nor individually modified show cars. Instead, they have already passed the prototype stage and are allegedly truly existing and purchasable products.
As I walked hunched over among the grey pictures, I slowly moved among the machines that were much more vivid and impressively shaped than the pictures. Gradually, the two guards of the booth, a Chinese man and a Chinese girl, came up to me. I told them how much I liked these things, and they responded to my compliment kindly. Later, I found out that the Chinese girl is the translator for the man who speaks English better than her. And this man is the genius who designed these shapes. They told me that these vehicles are actually just waiting for customers, and they can be manufactured with diesel engines, battery-powered electric systems and hydrogen power.
Kaiyun is excellent in design, but unimaginative in naming. The small machine is called “One Meter” because it is one meter wide. The medium-sized one is called “Ten Cubic”, which is very reasonable because its cargo space is twelve cubic meters. If the largest machine did not have a conference room facility and was brought to Hanover in its original towed design, it would be called “Tractor”.
(Kaiyun Tractor: As a three – axle tractor, it can be made with 490 – horsepower electric, 462 – horsepower diesel or 707 – horsepower hydrogen power, and its price is €95,000, €105,000 or €132,000.)
(Kaiyun Ten Cubic: The price of the battery – powered version is €33,000, that of the diesel version is €36,000, and that of the hydrogen – technology version is €39,000.)
(Kaiyun One Meter: Powered by electricity, it costs 4,000 euros, equipped with a 16 – kWh battery and has a maximum speed of 70 km/h.)
The doors of the vehicles could be opened, and it was also free to sit in the driver’s seat. Looking at the cars more closely, they were very simple and in some places quite primitive, but I saw practical, durable, and robust technology (at least in terms of the structure. I couldn’t disassemble the engine compartment of any of the cars), but surely in the eyes of many professional buyers, this rather increases than decreases the value of the concept.
The stunning overall effect is composed of extremely simple details.
Paint the primitive piping system red enough and it will be the coolest truck cab we can imagine. Even the speckled artificial leather carpet won’t spoil the effect. Moreover, this shoddy stuff makes the whole thing more desirable in some perverse way.
The interior of the smaller truck is raised by a red – painted reinforcement.
The shift – knob is the kind that was seen in Japanese cars twenty years ago (the appearance is very familiar.
The concept behind the unpainted steel plates can achieve the reduction of environmental pressure (load).
The eye – catching but actually very simple design that enables the manufacturing technology and the purist implementation are convincing: I believe that these commercial vehicles are indeed real products. According to the brochures obtained at the booth, Kaiyun can make its vehicles suitable for a variety of special tasks: from the open – topped sightseeing minibus, through the dump truck, all the way to the food truck, they can make anything. I wish them success in Europe, because I would be very happy to see this technically – edged, cool – looking form in its unadorned simplicity appear more frequently in the local cities and on the roads!
