The Concept

The Cefalo is a four-wheel drive electric crossover that has the capacity to stretch its frame and increase its cargo bed on the fly. It mixes elements of four specific cars into one innovative concept.

The Background

In late August, Mahon Slattery from Terra Integra approached me to discuss an investment deal in the Eridanos project. Their vision is to create small modular production lines in Africa for 4WD electric vehicles. They would be designed and built to transport water to villages, crops to local markets, and sick people to dispensaries or clinics. The Eridanos project inspired me to revisit an old concept, hence I asked Industrial Designer Clark McCune to team up with Imaginactive to design the Cefalo concept.

How It Works

Pick-up trucks come in handy when you need to haul stuff around. Models with extended beds are perfect when you’re going out snowmobiling for the weekend, but riding with a 20-foot-long vehicle downtown during the week is less than ideal!

What if you could simply extend your truck or SUV at the touch of a button?

The Cefalo could have been designed to look like a car or even a minivan, but we definitely liked the form of the versatile Eridanos concept, so we decided to shape this vehicle to look like a futuristic SUV/Truck with the genes of an El Camino and a Rally Fighter .

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, revealing an extra row of seats, but we’re leaving that part to your imagination.

Will this make the vehicle heavier than a similar model? Probably, but not by much. The steering and suspension would be built to adapt to both wheelbases, and the shape and size would be driven by what the end user wants or what they will be doing with their vehicle.

What It’s Used For

With the Cefalo, you could have the best of both worlds to commute, easily park in the city, and to still be able to carry stuff around when you need it. Some versions could be designed to carry bikes, others to carry heavier or longer materials. The idea is to create an SUV vehicle that can change shape easily. Who knows—maybe one day this idea will evolve into a product line.

Acknowledgements

The Cefalo concept was developed in August 2016 by Charles Bombardier in collaboration with Clarck McCune, an Industrial Designer from Dallas, Texas, USA. Clark graduated with a bachelor’s degree from the University of Tulsa. He currently works as a design director.