On February 20-21, 2017, the representative concept car OFFSPACE developed by the Beijing Automotive Research Institute won the ‘Best Concept Car Award’ at the Second Chinese Brand Car of the Year and Best Designer Contest 2016. The award was presented by CAR STYLING, a world-leading magazine of its kind.

The judges of this contest included representatives of professional automotive design media, OEM automotive design directors and senior automotive designers; they were:

Incumbent Global Design Director of Nissan Mr. Shiro Nakamura (one of the top design directors worldwide)

Consultant of CAR STYLING and first Japanese car design reporter Mr. Akira Fujimoto

Editor-in-chief of CAR STYLINGMr. Hiro Matsunaga

Former Global Design Director of Toyota Mr. Hideichi Misono

Former Chief Designer of Mitsubishi and Mazda Mr. Arakawa Ken

The shortlisted corporate design leaders and chief designers held exchanges with the judges and presented their design ideas. The judges commented on the interior and exterior trimmings of the cars, and determined the relevant award winners. The whole selection process was both rich and transparent, a challenging task.

OFFSPACE was launched by BAIC at Auto China 2016. In July of the same year, Auto & Design, another world-leading magazine of its kind, made four reports on this concept car and pictured it on the front cover. This was the first time a Chinese brand concept car had been covered by a world-class magazine.

Senova OFFSPACE is a unique crossover concept car which displays the innovative design and exploration of BAIC in new fields. Representing the innovative idea of the young c brand, OFFSPACE features an SUV’s strong appearance and various functions. With regard to the interior, it has the super-large space of an MPV. The long wheelbase and forward-leaning front windshield maximize the internal space, and the large ground clearance and high water tangent design give full expression to its off-road performance and solid protection performance.

In addition, Senova OFFSPACE is committed to providing consumers with the highest quality driving experience. With increasingly improved auxiliary driving and automatic driving technology, a complete ‘cabin life’ is available in the car. You can contact those you love and even the whole world at any moment. The built-in sensor can be used to monitor your health, and films and music can be enjoyed during long traffic jams.

In this way, Senova OFFSPACE is not a concept car in the traditional sense but reflects the research and thinking of BAIC on future automotive design trends, as well as its attempts and explorations in intelligent technology and forms of human-computer interaction.

OFFSPACE also has far-reaching guiding significance for the new generation products of BAIC. Against the backdrop of its automotive development upgrade, BAIC developed OFFSPACE with a typically advanced design by extracting the genes of Senova so as to define the design language of new generation Senova products and apply it to cars in mass production. In the future, BAIC will conduct in-depth and meticulous research into human-computer interaction.