Visteon's Concept Car: C-Beyond

Although concept cars are generally in the purview of vehicle manufacturers, automotive supplier Visteon has developed one, the C-Beyond, which is being displayed at the Paris Motor Show opening this week. Although it has shown the car elsewhere in Asia and Europe, it isn't scheduled to appear in the U.S. until 2011.

Based on a C-segment body—which probably goes a long way in explaining why it has been shown in places outside the U.S., as that body side is only now really gaining serious attention from U.S.-based OEMs—the vehicle, not surprisingly, is chock full of electronic enhancements.

Among the technologies are cockpit electronics that provide the means to tailor the interface to the driver. It has a Visteon-developed infotainment and Internet platform that includes audio, navigation, media management, rear-seat entertainment, and voice activation.

There is an interesting approach to HVAC: rather than having vertically oriented vents, there are roof-mounted registers that provide four distinct zones of heating or cooling. As most vehicles in this segment have four seating positions, another benefit is that if there is no occupant in a given seat, that zone can be deactivated, thereby saving energy. Another advantage is that by removing the ducts and vents from the instrument panel, there is more room for things like the aforementioned infotainment.

Another zone-oriented approach used in the C-Beyond is for things like interior lighting and storage spaces.

The vehicle is equipped with a Visteon-developed high-intensity headlamp LED projector module that deploys a camera-driven lighting system: the camera determines if there is on-coming traffic and activates shutters that switch from high-beam to low-beam, depending on traffic.