All the cars, concepts, and wild ideas from the Geneva Motor Show 2018

In the tech industry, the theory goes that Apple doesn’t go to trade shows anymore because it dominates the news cycle even when it doesn’t show up. The same goes for Tesla, which — despite caving and bringing its shiny new Model 3 to the LA Auto Show last fall — predictably skipped this week’s Geneva Motor Show.

The difference with this particular show, more than others past, is that it was filled to the brim with clear, serious competitors to Tesla. And I don’t just mean direct comparisons, with cars like the Jaguar I-Pace, which matches up almost spec for spec to something like the entry-level Model X. The show was also dominated by cars that slot into the parts of the market that Tesla thrives in. More luxury EVs and hybrids are coming than ever before, and for the rest of us, there are now multiple cheaper options for something other than the Model 3.

Over the past 20 years, as the cellphone has transitioned from a buttoned-down soap bar to a world-conquering glass slab, one of the sad changes I’ve witnessed from up close has been the fading influence of Europe. Where once your choice of phone was among Nokia, Ericsson, Siemens, and others from the old continent, today only one of those brands remains, and it’s being operated under license. The truth of the mobile market now is that Europe is the flyover agglomeration of states between China and the US, who are the current industrial and economic superpowers. Three of the world’s five biggest phone manufacturers operate primarily in China, while the most profitable duo of Apple and Samsung both consider the United States their most important market.

The same is not true of the car industry. At least not yet. My experience of Mobile World Congress in Barcelona a week ago and the Geneva Motor Show this week showed the stark contrast between the phone and auto industries. Cars today are like phones were two decades ago: on the precipice of a fundamental change, led by big European companies, but surrounded by uncertainty about the exact shape and speed of change to come.

There were a lot of awesome and bizarre vehicles at this year’s Geneva Motor Show, but I think I found the one I want the most: this concept dune buggy / Jet Ski mashup from Hyundai.

Designed in partnership with the Istituto Europeo di Design, the Hyundai Kite is an all-electric four-wheeler that can also apparently double as a personal watercraft. It’s a true design concept, meaning there are no real specs to speak of, but the general idea is there’s an electric motor in each wheel powering the all-wheel drive performance on land and a water jet turbine that takes over once you’re out on a lake or ocean.

I have a fun confession to make: I photographed the entire Geneva Motor Show with my smartphone this year. No DSLR, no high-end mirrorless camera to function as my fallback — I literally flew in to Geneva with a Google Pixel 2 XL, my laptop, and the hope that my high esteem for Google’s camera wasn’t misguided. After taking more than 2,000 shots, publishing 303 of them (so far), and then collecting compliments rather than complaints about my photos, I can say that this experiment has been a resounding success.

Why try this at all? Three reasons.

When you think of concept cars, the inevitable images that come to mind are of exaggerated designs, impractical proportions, and profoundly self-indulgent experiences. Concepts are — usually — intended to titillate our most selfish desires. Except Renault, a company that prides itself on making cars suitable for all tastes and budgets, has come to the Geneva Motor Show with something altogether different: a robot taxi.

The autonomous EZ-GO concept car that Renault has brought to Geneva accommodates six people and is essentially a driverless UberPool vehicle. You invoke one via either a mobile app or a roadside station, and it comes along to sweep you off your feet and into a spacious and airy interior. It can be booked by individuals or groups, and if Renault’s vision comes to fruition, it will function like a new form of public transport for densely populated cities. Instead of jumping on a fixed-route bus or a less affordable taxi, you can send your ride request to Renault and the company’s EZ-GO car will integrate you into its existing route in the most efficient way relative to its other passengers.

At the Geneva Motor Show, there’s a constant temptation for companies to do something extra flamboyant or eye-grabbing. Why have regular wheels when you can envelop them in metal armor instead? And do mirrors and door windows really need frames and bezels? It’s a good venue to explore outlandish design ideas and concepts, but Volkswagen’s I.D. Vizzion concept car seems to have been caught in the middle between this freewheeling Geneva spirit and the brand’s traditional reputation for building highly practical automobiles. That’s led to a weird blend of luxurious features and cheap materials.

The all-electric I.D. Vizzion will have a production version with a steering wheel and Level 4 autonomy on board, but the concept being shown off on the Geneva floor was the one with full autonomy and no human controls. To look at the expansive opening created by the Vizzion’s vast doors and the carpeted interior and contoured seating inside, you’d be reminded of Aston Martin’s similarly grand Lagonda concept car. But where the Aston Martin is sumptuous and enticing, VW’s carpet is made out of an unpleasant synthetic material, and the entire interior feels cheaper than it looks.

I came, I saw, and I took pictures of the Rimac Concept Two at the Geneva Motor Show, but I was left somehow unimpressed by this grandiose new hypercar. Unlike Lamborghini’s latest Huracán, which plucks heartstrings at first sight, the all-electric Rimac feels anonymous and unexciting. Every undulating curve, every design flourish feels like something I’ve already seen — the C Two’s headlights remind of the Ferrari Superfast and Koenigsegg Regera, while the tail lights seem inspired by the BMW i8. The Rimac goes crazy fast, and I’m sure much of its design is motivated by the exigencies of aerodynamics, but it lacks the visual appeal of the world’s most evocative supercars.

It just feels like supercar fan fiction.

Faster than an F1 car and named after an F5 tornado, the newest Hennessey Venom is the kind of car that unquestionably belongs at the Geneva Motor Show. It is all about raw power and radical design. It’s also about as rare as they come, with just 24 being made — half of which the company says have already been bought for a cool $1.6 million each.

Much of what we know about the Venom F5 are the stats that Hennessey Special Vehicles, the small company behind the car, has already shared. Teased for nearly a full year at this point, the Hennessey Venom F5’s 1,600 horsepower twin turbo V8 is supposedly capable of pushing the car to 301 miles per hour. The company’s founder, John Hennessey, said in a statement, “It’s no question of if we will break 300 mph but a question of when.” (More on this in a moment.)

Sometimes mere photos don’t do justice to the striking nature of an object, and Aston Martin’s Lagonda Vision Concept is one such thing.

This concept car is a throwback to the old times when concept designers didn’t have to concern themselves with any measures of practicality or feasibility. It has lush carpets throughout, the seat backs are made of handwoven wool, and Aston Martin recruited Savile Row tailors to make sure everything was cut and shaped with meticulous precision.

Every year at the Geneva Motor Show, I fall in love with Lamborghini’s Huracán anew. In 2016, the Italian brand that’s most closely associated with the color yellow introduced a red Huracán. I swooned. In 2017, the color of choice was orange. I was enchanted. For 2018, Lamborghini is stepping up its cosmetic alterations by also making its latest Huracán convertible. The new Huracán Performante Spyder, painted a gorgeous matte blue, made its debut here in Geneva, and I’m once again delighted by it.

The truth about this car is that its proportions are basically perfect. It’s angular, yes, but not so much as to offend the human eye or the laws of aerodynamics. It’s also streamlined, but not so much as to look identical to every other supercar trying to hit the lowest possible 0-60 time. The Huracán has both character and performance, and that’s why it’s the perennial Geneva Motor Show car that I simply have to grab photos of.

Last year, Airbus unveiled a truly bizarre concept at the Geneva Motor Show: a car-drone-train mash-up with the effervescent name of Pop.Up. But if the whole thing seemed a bit half-baked and lackluster then, Pop.Up is back for this year’s show with an entirely refreshed look courtesy of Audi. I saw it in person here in Geneva, and it’s every bit as unbelievable in reality as it is in pictures.

Dubbed Pop.Up Next, this year’s concept is built around a two-seater Smart Car-sized monocoque, which Airbus calls the passenger capsule. The capsule can ride along on a base of wheels as a regular car or, with the help of a humongous drone module, be hoisted into the air for vertical flight. The modular capsules can also connect to each other to form a train-like vehicle. Audi is contributing its battery technology and automation know-how, the designers say.

Toyota Supra fans, you were not having visions. There really is a new Supra coming, which Toyota obliquely confirmed in the press release for the new GR Supra Racing Concept that’s being shown off at the Geneva Motor Show. Sad news is, it doesn’t look like Toyota brought the road version along for the ride.

If you booked a ticket or a hotel (or both), though, the Supra Racing Concept is a pretty decent consolation prize. (Plus, there’s... lots of other awesome cars there.) And besides, combined with the not-so-spy shots of the road-going version that have been spotted all over the world, it’s enough to get a rough idea of what the new Supra will look like.

The Bugatti Chiron Sport costs some stupid amount of money north of $3 million. The only people who might care about the precise figure are the accountants at the Volkswagen Group, Bugatti’s parent company. Those who can afford the Chiron Sport don’t trouble themselves with how millions are rounded, and the other 99.99 percent of us will never be so fortunate as to have to seriously consider buying this instead of, say, multiple mansions. The Chiron Sport, like the rest of Bugatti’s historic lineup, is the automotive equivalent of unicorn breeding.

At the Geneva Motor Show, I got to pet the latest Bugatti unicorn, which was clad in a regal red-and-black outfit. Thanks to a diehard Verge fan on the Bugatti staff, I even got to step inside for a few minutes, and this is my account of what that most exclusive of experiences was like.

Say you’re a fan of the muscular-looking Mercedes-AMG GT, but it’s woefully impractical for carrying your two kids or any sort of cargo. There’s a solution now in the form of the Mercedes-AMG GT 4-Door Coupe.

Quite clearly a rival for the Porsche Panamera, the GT 4-Door is said to be the first “family” model from the performance arm of Mercedes-Benz, following the SLS and GT two-doors. Not that Mercedes is starved for sleek four-doors boasting huge helpings of horsepower, as the company announced the CLS 53 just last month, upon which this four-door GT is based. Yet the AMG 4-Door aims to be something more than a hotter Mercedes-Benz.

Aston Martin, like many carmakers around the globe, has pledged to add electric technology to its cars in the near future. After getting off to a rocky start, thanks to a busted partnership with sinking Chinese tech conglomerate LeEco, the British automotive company seems ready to refocus its effort around something new by resurrecting its Lagonda sub-brand and turning it into a marque for electric luxury cars.

Today at the Geneva Motor Show, Aston Martin showed off an initial concept that sets the tone for what it wants to do with Lagonda. Called the Lagonda Vision Concept, it’s a wild wedge of a car with a dazzling interior that’s full of fine materials and lavish touches. Aston Martin expects production of the first cars in this new line of Lagondas to start in 2021, with “potentially two” different models (likely a coupe and an SUV) being released by 2023.

Let’s dispense with the hyperbole: Croatia’s Rimac Automobili built a very, very fast car that they’d like to show you. It is an all-electric hypercar called the Concept Two that debuted today at the Geneva Motor Show. It claims to have a 1,914-horsepower engine that enables a 0 to 60 mph acceleration in 1.85 seconds. That would make it one of the quickest cars in existence, quicker than the next-generation Tesla Roadster with its comparatively sluggish 0–60 in 1.9 seconds.

These are crazy sounding specs and you would not be remiss if you read all of this with a healthy degree of skepticism. That said, Rimac’s Concept One, circa 2012, fed on 1,073 horsepower from its four electric motors, and could best most supercars on the drag strip. Which is to say, Rimac knows fast.

The Bugatti Chiron is a lot of car: 0 to 100 km/h in less than 2.5 seconds, 16 cylinders with four turbochargers, a total power output of 1,500 horsepower, and a $3 million price tag. But now Bugatti is saying less is more with the Chiron Sport.

Announced on Tuesday at the Geneva Motor Show, the Chiron Sport follows a typical pattern of introducing a variation of a product that’s been around for a couple of years, as the standard Chiron has. The Sport keeps the same engine (a “16” is embedded in the grille in case you forgot how many cylinders it has), but engineers found nearly 40 pounds to cut out from the car in a bid to better balance the car. Bugatti went to extremes to find those 40 pounds. It says the Chiron Sport is the first production car with carbon fiber windshield wiper arms, for a savings of three pounds. Hey, you have to start somewhere.

Hyundai is at the Geneva Motor Show with a concept that is supposed to show off the company’s future design direction. That future, apparently, includes a big stupid grille.

The car is called the Le Fil Rouge, which is French for “common thread,” a nod to how Hyundai is trying to connect its past, present, and future designs with this concept. The company says that the Le Fil Rouge is a “reinterpretation” of the 1974 Hyundai “Pony” Coupe Concept, which set the design for its earliest cars.

Automotive journalists love station wagons. It’s in our DNA. There’s something about their lithe forms, their dorky reputation, and their functional interiors that elicits emotional sighs from anyone who covers the auto industry professionally. Also, they’re often fun to drive.

The Volvo V60 made its debut at the Geneva Motor Show, and I’m very excited about it for all of the above reasons. Also, it’s supposed to have an upgraded Pilot Assist driver assistance system for “improved cornering.” The system supports steering, braking, and accelerating inputs at speeds up to 80 mph. We haven’t tested it out yet, but Volvo is a brand that takes safety ratings very seriously. I’m very interested to see how it stacks up next to Cadillac’s Super Cruise and Tesla’s Autopilot.

At the Geneva Motor Show, a show that’s traditionally about hot sports cars, Renault decided to emphasize its driverless future. The Renault EZ-GO is an electric autonomous car that people can flag down from a fixed or mobile location in small groups of up to six people or on their own. The EZ-GO is envisioned to be available on demand via an app but also at permanent stations throughout a city.

EZ-GO has Level 4 autonomous driving capability, meaning it’s able to change lanes, turn at an intersection, and manage its distance from the vehicle in front of it. The car has a sleek cocoon structure, which Renault says was designed to maximize the autonomous sensors’ field of vision. Passengers enter via a hatch through the front, and the car features lights to show where the ramp platform will land for easier access. The seats are arranged in a U-shape, so passengers all face each other, making the car ride more sociable. The vehicle has a panoramic glass roof and is wheelchair accessible with a flat floor and boarding ramp.

Honda’s pugnacious Urban EV Concept made its second auto show appearance ever here at Geneva this week, and it’s just as adorable and retro as it seemed when it debuted in Frankfurt last year. Not to worry, you will be seeing a lot more of this tiny heartbreaker when it goes into production in 2019.

Most electric vehicles without a Tesla badge aren’t really head-turners. The Chevy Bolt and Nissan Leaf may have decent range and affordable price points, but their function-over-form designs don’t inspire much joy. Honda seems to be trying to rectify that with the Urban EV, which is scheduled for release in Europe next year. It’s a Japanese plush toy come to life.

The biggest racing series in the world that exclusively uses electric racecars is about to undergo a massive redesign, even though it’s hardly more than three years old. When the fifth season of Formula E starts later this year, the series (and its teams) will have an entirely new car that’s faster, lasts longer, and looks radically different from pretty much anything else out there. After getting the full reveal treatment at the Geneva Motor Show today, we finally know just how much different the car will be. It’s also our first time seeing it on a track.

First off, the new Formula E car features a big maximum power upgrade, from 200kW to 250kW (about 335 horsepower). This pushes the top speed to about 174 miles per hour, which is more than enough considering Formula E almost exclusively competes on tiny, twisty street circuits. That extra power will help the new cars shave the 0–60 mph time down to 2.7 seconds, too (which should make the start of each race even more exciting than they already tend to be).

We’ve learned a lot about Jaguar’s first all-electric SUV, the I-Pace, during the company’s slow-drip rollout of information before its full reveal at this week’s Geneva Motor Show. We know, on paper, it stacks up well in some performance categories (like range and initial speed) against its closest analogue, the Tesla Model X. The one thing we were still missing was the price, which Jaguar finally announced today: the I-Pace will start at $69,500.

Yes, that’s $10,000 cheaper than the base level Model X, and even $5,000 less than the most affordable Model S. It’s an aggressive, competitive price when you consider that the I-Pace has 240 miles of range, all-wheel drive, DC fast charging, and a slick infotainment system — all of which arguably match up well with the kinds of features found in the base level Model X or S.

Last year, Porsche unveiled the production version of the Mission E — an all-electric four-door that looked like a worthy rival to Tesla’s Model S. The Mission E isn’t going on sale until the end of 2019, but that isn’t stopping Porsche from iterating on the design. Today at the Geneva Motor Show, the German automaker is showing off its answer to Tesla’s Model X: the Mission E Cross Turismo.

The Cross Turismo is a so-called concept study rather than a production-ready design, and it’s full of fanciful design touches. LED lights dance around and across the illuminated Porsche logo at the back. The Porsche badge up front is rendered in monochrome, the wheels are styled out in a deep blue, and the interior is replete with futuristic patterns and decorations. A wireless charging pad sits in between the two rear seats. The headlights, or rather the LED array that constitutes the headlights, are also a mix of familiar undulating curves and more angular neo-futurism. All of which is to say that Porsche is more exercising its design muscles than offering us a concrete look at its future plans.

Range Rover has become such a popular division of Land Rover that it seems to overpower the parent company. With the new Range Rover SV Coupe, Land Rover gives the impression it’s trying to return a little more exclusivity to its top-tier SUVs.

Shown Tuesday at the Geneva Motor Show, the SV Coupe takes the normally four-door Range Rover (not to be confused with Range Rover Sport, Range Rover Velar, Range Rover etc.) and removes the two rear doors and some inches off the height to sacrifice some space and practicality for more style.