Art Project: Renault IKEA Höga Deserves To Live

June 2, 20213 years ago Jo Borras 0 Comments

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Have you ever wandered through one of IKEA’s massive stores and thought about what it would be like to buy a car there? You wouldn’t daydream about just any car, either. You’d want an IKEA car to be like an IKEA home. Tiny, but packed with clever, Scandinavian simplicity and fun, poppy colors. Maybe one that was electric, made from recycled or up-cycled materials, and — of course! — you’d want to build it yourself. If that sounds like you, we have got something you absolutely have got to see. Meet the Renault IKEA Höga Concept, by Ryan Schlotthauer.

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If that name sounds familiar, it’s because we’ve covered Ryan’s work before — most recently, his Rivian-branded A16 flatbed commercial truck concept back in March. Back then, we acknowledged that Ryan’s work was “just” an art-project and not officially connected with Rivian, but we let it slide on the justification that, “if there isn’t something like this being talked about as an upcoming Rivian model, the A16 is so well-realized that it makes you think that there probably should be.” There’s a lot of that same kind of thing going on here, with the Höga. It’s an incredibly well-realized and thoroughly conceived concept that it really feels like something that should be real … alas, unlike the A16, the Höga will never, ever be real.

That’s not because it couldn’t be real, of course. Instead, it’s because something being built on-site by the end user is probably going to be a little bit of a death trap? Lefty-loosey, righty-tightey notwithstanding, it just sort of feels like maybe we shouldn’t all be driving around in homebuilt microcars, you know? Not until we have some better drivers on the road, at least!

And that’s too bad, because the Höga seems like a perfectly capable little urban runabout for apartment-dwelling urbanites to get around in, with room for luggage, a bike, some big plants — all the things people living in cities might need to make a small apartment feel like home. It’s a little like a Fiat 500, if the Fiat had floorspace.

That’s probably enough from me, though. What do you think of this compact little electric microcar? Do you think some kind of personal-mobility autocycle deal like this is a good addition to city streets, or are you as worried as I am about running over one of these things in your hulking, 6000 lb. SUV? Scroll on down past the pretty pictures and let us know what you think of Ryan Schlotthauer’s latest project in the comments section at the bottom of the page.