10 Quirky Products Carmakers Make (That Aren’t Cars)

The Audi R18 Ultra Chair was inspired by Audi?s successful Le Mans prototype of the same name. While it lacks wheels and thus has a top speed of 0, this is an admittedly impressive piece of lightweight auto engineering. Design duo Clemens Weisshar and Reed Kram fashioned the chair from the same carbon fiber composites and sheet aluminum found on the R18 ultra racer. The pair then collected load data from more than 1500 "testers" at the Milan Furniture Fair in April (yes, furniture builders collect "load data"). Using that massive amount of information about sitting down, the designers teamed up with Audi?s Lightweight Construction Center and altered the chair?s geometry and carbon fiber weave bias to shave off another two pounds of weight. The final version of the chair, now on display at Design Miami/, weighs in at just under 5 pounds. (For reference, Ikea?s minimalist steel-and-plastic Jeff folding chair tips the scales at 6 pounds.)

Source: http://www.popularmechanics.com/cars/news/industry/10-quirky-products-carmakers-make-that-arent-cars-14853686?src=rss

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