Nothing kills the landscape like the eyesore of a rusty, automotive carcass. No matter if it's a whole junkyard full of rotting cars or a single car abandoned in the middle of the woods, dead old cars aren't pretty. And with millions of cars on the road, there is just a ton of future garbage driving around waiting to pollute the Earth.
But, if our cars were as biodegradable as leftover salad, the world would be a little prettier. And that world is the inspiration behind the biodegradable car concept built by designers Kenneth Cobonpue and Albrecht Birkner. The body and main components of the car are built entirely out of bamboo and rattan, and the car's outer shell is designed to begin breaking down after its useful life--about five years for industrialized nations and 10 to 20 for other countries. So instead of being a rusting hunk of metal for decades and centuries, it will break down into the Earth that birthed it.
Five years seems rather short for a car that might be bought as opposed to leased, so there's a potential problem with your car degrading while you're still driving it. If that's the case, Cobonpue and Birkner envision the skin being replaceable, letting owners reskin the car at an affordable cost. Since its basically just a model, maybe they should just envision a shell that lasts 10 to 20 years for all nations.
Outside of the predictable fact that they aim to power the car with green technology, the designers didn't detail what type of powertrain would motivate the car. It would have to be pretty light in order to be contained within a wicker chassis.
A production version of this car likely would fail about every safety regulation that the U.S. has, but it's always good to see the design world rethinking the modern automobile and crafting new paradigms that could drive the future of the industry.