To Help Families Spend Quality Time
Hyundai Motor Co. has designed the Hyundai Soapbox ride which parents can build together with their children and groups of friends can create.
The soapbox was developed by engineers and designers from the Hyundai Motor Europe Technical Center (HMETC) using affordable and easily-available materials. Intended to promote quality time for customers, families and friends, Hyundai has made the instructions available to download so the vehicle can be built at home.
“In recent months, spending time together as a family has become more valuable to people. We wanted to create a fun project that would give families and friends an enjoyable project that brings them together,” says Andreas Christoph-Hofmann, vice president of Marketing & Product at Hyundai Motor Europe. “Of course, the Hyundai Soapbox had to stay affordable, so our designers developed it using materials that can be easily found in a local DIY store.”
The soapbox is made out of wood, metal rods, and connecting materials such as brackets and screws. The wheels are from a wheelbarrow. It has joysticks for steering and a simple mechanism for braking. The Hyundai Soapbox is made primarily from environmentally-friendly materials such as wood and metal.
Though the soapbox is built for the size of a child, due to clever engineering, it can also carry an adult’s weight.
The color of the HMETC prototype is bright yellow, meant to capture the optimism and joy of childhood, as well as a nod to one of the launch colors of the original Kona.
When fully assembled, the Hyundai Soapbox is 1 meter wide and 1.76 meter long. It was important that the soapbox could fit into a regular passenger car, so that families could transport it to different locations as they look for hills to roll it down. The final soapbox design fits into an i30 Wagon.
True to the concept of a soapbox, there is no powertrain. Customers can either push the soapbox up a hill or ride it down, or have two people push each other around in it – which is what the HMETC team did during testing.