Based on the coast of the Baltic Sea in Estonia’s capital, Meelis Lillemets is a talented concept artist and designer with a particular knack for delivering futuristic race and supercar renderings. And while thus far the focus of Lillemets’ personal projects has almost exclusively been on high-performance track-weapons, the Tallinn-based designer’s latest work sees him venture into markedly more novel territory with an urban-focused all-electric utility vehicle concept dubbed the Cargobox.
Engineered from the ground up exclusively for short-range use in major metropolitan areas, the Cargobox features an ultra-boxy — yet somehow fairly sleek and futuristic-looking — aesthetic that aims to maximize storage space in relation to the vehicle’s footprint. The open rear flatbed design of the concept also enables it to accommodate an enormous amount of cargo. At the heart of the vehicle is a fully electric powertrain that draws from a floor-mounted battery pack, keeping the concept’s center of gravity relatively low and preventing it from tipping while cornering when fully loaded with a heavy payload. The use of skinny wheels and tires also mean the vehicle’s wheel-wells take up very little space inside the bed’s interior.
Equipped with lightly flared fenders, the concept features a caged flatbed and a sealed two-passenger cabin with square seats and headrests and square mirrors that match the rest of the Cargobox’s boxy design language. What’s more, because the apply-named concept is only intended for short-range use at low speeds, it was able to be designed with little to no consideration for its aerodynamics. However, while the Cargobox may not have been penned to achieve a particularly slippery drag coefficient, it was designed with a major focus on practicality as well as being as on being as economical as possible, with Lillemets taking the vehicle’s simplicity, modularity, and production and upkeep costs into account when formulating its design.
While thus far, Meelis Lillemets’ Cargobox Concept merely exists as a digital rendering, it nonetheless just might provide a unique glimpse into the possible future of urban mobility in what’s quickly becoming a world of all-electric transportation.
