To most people, building your own car means hours of labor stretching out over weeks, months or even years. Condense this time span down to about an hour and you’d have enough to build the TABBY, an open source electric vehicle.

Italian alternative vehicle company OSVehicle is the creator of the TABBY. The company’s website describes TABBY very simply as “an open source framework for vehicles.” Its short assembly time doesn’t mean you have to completely sacrifice car building’s freedom to customize. The TABBY’s engine is available in traditional combustion, hybrid or fully-integrated electronic form.

Making your TABBY street-legal, however, does require special instructions. That’s where the Urban TABBY comes in. Called “the road legal evolution of TABBY,” it’s a special kit that you would apply to the chassis. OSVehicle’s website includes downloadable building instructions and a forum where you can upload and discuss your personal mods. Fully-built models run anywhere from $5,445 to $8,168, a reasonable price tag when you consider what some people will put into an old junker.

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The Volvo V60 is the world’s first diesel hybrid plug-in car. To celebrate this, the company held an architecture competition called “Switch to Pure Volvo.” The winners have been re-tooling their design and have finally unveiled an interesting, not to mention cool-looking, portable car charging station.

Synthesis Design + Architecture, the winners of the competition, built what they call the ‘Pure Tension’ pavilion. It’s a beautiful awning with a shape like a warped circle and the ability to generate enough solar power to charge the car. The original goal of the minimum amount needed to charge the car was 300 watts; the current model produces 450.

Flexible photovoltaic vinyl tiles, 252 of them to be exact, cover the surface of the mesh for optimal sun exposure. Since the flaw behind solar absorption is that it’s only as powerful as its weakest link, Pure Tension disables the parts of the pavilion that don’t receive enough energy, thus providing maximum efficiency.

Only slightly more impressive than the design is the Pure Tension’s portability. It was built from 24 parts, and along with the CNC bent aluminum frame, the skin folds into ‘B-cases’ that are a tidy 65″ x 15″ x 15″. The membrane, which does the absorbing, comes in two sections that zip together. The pavilion weighs a totals of 150 lbs.

The post You Can Take it With You: New Volvo Charger Fits In Trunk first appeared on Gajitz.

They may not be the standard way to get around (yet), but functional hovercraft have been around for lots of years. One of the reasons they aren’t more popular is their poor handling and turning; the hover-navigation just can’t compare to that of wheeled vehicles. Designers (and cousins) Michael Mercier and Chris Jones are doing their part to create a hovercar that is both stylish and maneuverable.

What you will probably notice first about the Mercier-Jones hovercraft is that it looks a lot like a sports car. The very sleek and modern shape seems like something you would see zipping around a racetrack. Its steering and braking systems are similar to those found in a traditional car, so “pilots” won’t have a severe learning curve when they first climb aboard.

The craft’s patent-pending control system will offer as much control as that of a traditional car, but it will have the added benefit of being able to glide right over basically any terrain effortlessly. The Mercier-Jones hovercraft will be a hybrid vehicle, boasting both a gasoline engine and an electric motor. But unlike other hovercraft, this one will be quiet enough to drive without a set of earplugs.

The team also wants to make the hovercraft an affordable vehicle, expecting the initial model to sell for $19,900 or less. They are raising funds for the initial production run on crowdfunding site IndieGoGo. If everything goes according to plan, the first hovercraft should start their first flights by May 2013.

The post Hovercraft Float Into the Future: Sporty 21st Century Design first appeared on Gajitz.