What is a concept car?

No international motor show goes by without unveiling yet another concept car. Every self-respecting company is ready to present visitors with its latest developments in car engineering, given the shape of a new concept car. And in turn, every visitor to a motor show eagerly awaits the new concept cars.

A concept car is an experimental vehicle intended for display to a wide audience of visitors. The main purpose of today's concepts is to showcase all the modern technologies and refined design solutions that a car company is capable of realising at that moment. But it's worth remembering that developing a new concept car is a fairly expensive undertaking, which is why only very large car companies get involved in developing them. Just imagine, the cost of a single concept car can range anywhere from one to ten million dollars. Which immediately raises the question: what's a concept car even for? After all, you can't sell it after the motor show, and at best its destiny is a car museum at the company itself. And that's not because the company wants to preserve its concept car, but because most of them simply can't fulfil their basic purpose, namely, they can't move under their own power. And you can't put a concept into mass production either, not because of its futuristic, unusual design, but because of how impractical and unsafe it is.

From everything said above, you could conclude that a concept car is a very costly and, essentially, not particularly needed vehicle. And yet every one of the world's biggest car manufacturers, year after year, shows off its latest developments in the form of concept cars at international motor shows. Because these seemingly futuristic machines are really just an attempt by car companies to peer into the future and work out what buyers will need down the road. That way they anticipate what buyers want today, so that tomorrow they can fully satisfy the demands of future buyers.