Switzerland may be a small country – around 340,000 new vehicles sold annually before the pandemic – but it has had one of the major international motorshows, the Geneva Motor Show. It is also home to a number of specialist companies in auto design and engineering. One of them is WayRay which describes itself as a ‘deep-tech’ company and it is the only company capable of designing and manufacturing complex Deep Reality Display technology. It also has expertise in rendering the AR content in real-time around the car using a proprietary True AR Rendering Engine software.
Metaverse device on wheels
It has now applied the advanced technologies to Holograktor, is the first car designed around True AR technology and a new ride-hailing business model. WayRay calls it the very first ‘Metaverse device on Wheels’.
Backed by early investments from companies like Porsche, Hyundai, and Alibaba, WayRay is using the Holograktor car to emerge from its ‘Deep Tech’ automotive supplier status into the world of new mobility models.
“The idea is that you can choose Uber Black, Uber SUV, or Uber Holograktor. And if you choose the Holograktor, your ride will be subsidized by sponsored content, so the price will be much lower,” said WayRay Founder & CEO Vitaly Ponomarev.
Connecting virtual and real worlds
With the seamless connection of the virtual and real worlds, there can be greater safety, comfort, services, and entertainment. The 3-seat Holograktor can either be driven conventionally or by remote control via a 5G and satellite internet connection to a qualified driver. That left the question of what to do with the disengaged steering wheel in the remote mode. WayRay solved it by sliding it forwards and simply fitting it into a groove in the dashboard.
The interior has been designed around a novel 2+1 seating arrangement. The front seats are pushed wide apart to provide all three occupants with a clear view of holographic displays engineered around WayRay’s technology. Its unusual single rear seat ‘throne’ layout was inspired by data showing that more than 80% of Uber trips were for one person only
The entire car was also designed to showcase the holographic technology. Each passenger will have access to several holographic Deep Reality Display HUDs in front and on the side, with each seat fitted with joysticks for gaming and interacting with the content.
The AirKnife system creates a barrier that separates the air between passengers and cleanses the air throughout the cabin. It works together with the air-conditioning system to control the climate, filter the air, and keep passengers safe. That’s something which will be most welcome in these times.
Exterior design
The Holograktor was designed by hypercar designer Sasha Selipanov, Head of Design at RAW Design House and chief designer on the Holograktor project in collaboration with WayRay’s in-house team of designers. Selipanov’s design work includes the Lamborghini Huracan, Genesis Essentia, Bugatti Chiron, and Koenigsegg Gemera. He was trained at the Art Center College of Design in Pasadena, California, before being taken in by the Volkswagen Group.
Selipanov came to work on the Holograktor car in an appropriately modern way — via an Instagram message. “I saw a message from Vitaly on Instagram in my Inbox that said: ‘Hey! Would you like to catch up and brainstorm about a potential collaboration? Outside of being obsessed with sportscars, I’m a science geek and a bit of a physics nerd, and the fact that his company was playing around with deep-tech ideas and bringing them to customers around the world was hugely exciting. I thought that as far as non-lap-time-setting cars were concerned, this project was probably as exciting as I was ever going to find!”
At the core of the Holograktor’s design was the challenge of combining the concept car’s enormous interior space with a well-proportioned exterior, all while staying in line with all current and approaching regulations.
“We wanted to create a visual language for WayRay that took Russian constructivism as the base. If you have those early Soviet posters in mind, you can see those brightly coloured geometric shapes of triangles and blocks. Coincidentally, the triangular form is reminiscent of a prism, like the Pink Floyd “Dark Side of the Moon” album cover,” explained Selipanov.
It is a light-ray aesthetic that comes with the triangularity and the prism-like effect, which is just perfectly appropriate for a car built to highlight holography. Beyond that, the strong triangular shapes and solid stance are nods to the Russian backgrounds of WayRay’s founder and the designer.
That triangular theme is integrated everywhere, from the 22-inch wheels to the laser headlights and taillights and even to the shrink-wrapped form of the roof itself. While the front doors of the futuristic car open conventionally with a slight upward angle, the rear doors contain an integrated B-pillar and open rearwards and upwards, providing easy access to all 3 seats.
The Shrimp
The boxy shape on the roof of the Holograktor has been nicknamed ‘The Shrimp’ (though why that name was chosen is not explained). The shape makes it clear that the car is very different from any other car on the road and houses the holographic system for the rear passenger.
‘The Shrimp’ in its current location is, in fact, inevitable, as packaging and ergonomics constraints have led the design team to place it on the roof. It needs to be there because it contains an enormous amount of high-end technology, and it has the ideal focal length for the rear-seat passenger.
Even with the holographic system needing less than 3 litres of volume instead of the 20+ litres required by conventional HUDs, it was decided to prioritize the ride-hailing capability over hiding the technology. There is no Shrimp for the front passengers, though, as the True AR technology sits within the dashboard, aiming up at the windscreen, where the Shrimp’s projections aim down from the roof.
