Pick-up trucks come in handy when you need to haul stuff around, until you roll into the city and start the fruitless hunt for a parking spot to accommodate all 20 feet of truck. And a little two-seater is great for parking, not so good for that weekend snowmobiling trip.
What if, instead of choosing one kind of car, you could simply extend your truck or SUV at the touch of a button?
That's the idea of the Cefalo. It's a new take on Terra Integra's Eridanos, a project to create modular, electric 4WD vehicles to to transport water to villages, crops to local markets, and sick people to dispensaries or clinics in Africa.
Industrial designer Clark McCune and I kept the SUV-look of the Eridanos, and added the genes of an El Camino and a Rally Fighter to make it more distinct.
To extend the Cefalo’s frame, the driver would simply activate the ‘stretch’ mode and the vehicle would extend its cargo bed by approximately three feet. It would also be possible to extend the cabin instead to reveal an extra row of seats, but we’re leaving that part to your imagination. Designing the steering and suspension to work with two wheelbases would probably add weight, but hopefully not too much. The final specs would be driven by how the customer plans to use the Cefalo.
