Nissan Hyper Urban Concept Previews Hardware Upgradable Cars

Through them, the systems embedded in our cars get new or improved functionalities and they overall make our lives easier. But what if cars would be hardware upgradable as well?

It's an idea so simple and exciting it kind of makes you wonder why people haven't thought about it before. I mean, wouldn't be a lot easier (and cheaper) to swap different components of a car for newer and better ones, instead of swapping the car altogether?

That's kind of the principle the custom car industry operates on, keeping car models that are decades-old relevant by gifting them with new hardware. To date however, no carmaker that we know of supports vehicle hardware upgrades on an official level by actually releasing new gear that can be used instead of the old one.

The Japanese from Nissan might, though, as they hint after they've revealed the Hyper Urban Concept. It's an electric car idea that will be shown later this month during the Japan Mobility Show in Tokyo and comes as a machine that can handle both hardware and software updates.

In the case of the former, for instance, Nissan talks about the possibility of changing the car's instrument panel to reflect "the latest technologies and trends in graphic user interfaces." That's something you can already do at an aftermarket level but again, not so much when it comes to an official one.

This being an electric concept and all we can go even further and dream of a time when the electric motors of a vehicle could be swapped for new and improved ones, also supplied by the cars' makers. And who knows, some may get so insane as to allow upgrading the car's body parts…

The Hyper Urban concept was not presented with any details regarding its vehicular and road-going capabilities, meaning we have no info on the electric system that drives it. We do know a thing or two about its techy capabilities.

The car is a fully connected one, allowing it not only to be a means of transportation but also act as a source of energy for the home, or as a supplier of electricity to the local grid. We're told it's an AI system that dictates the way the concept feeds back power to where it's needed, but that hasn't been detailed either.

Access to the car's interior is done by means of scissor doors, revealing a futuristic space the likes of which we're used to from concepts such as these. Of note is the way the front seats collapse to merge with the rear ones and become something akin to a sofa.

The Nissan Hyper Urban concept is the first in a series of such builds the Japanese carmaker has prepared for the Tokyo show. We expect to see all of them over the next few days and weeks, so stay tuned for more.