Codename “Thistle” · Accessible luxury EV
One SUV. A family van, a limousine, and a sports car — electric, and only one when it needs to be.
SpaceNoneSuch is space like no other. This is an EV like no other.
A living design brief, captured from our conversations. The through-line: one flexible platform, many personalities, and dignity built in from the floor up. Nothing here is a production spec — it is a place to think out loud and refine the birds as we go.
A lounge that happens to have wheels
Air suspension and silent torque give that gliding, unbothered ride. The bolsters soften, the cabin lighting warms, and the miles disappear underneath you.
The elegant part: the whole vehicle re-characterises together — suspension, throttle, seat bolstering, even the cabin light — so the three never fight each other.
Front and rear doors part with no vertical post between them, and the middle (second-row) opening is the widest of all — the easiest possible aperture for a transfer. The safety bracing lives inside the doors, latched top and bottom into roof and sill.
The seat rotates out toward the open door and powers down toward curb height, bringing the seat to the person. No hoist, no climbing over anything.
Air-plus-hydraulic suspension drops the whole vehicle at the kerb, so the seat's travel is shorter and gentler — suspension and seat working together.
A matched companion seat sits beside the accessible position at the same eye level — alongside, never relegated behind.
Seats sit higher than a typical EV — a command position that hips-level with a wheelchair for an easier sideways transfer, and lets you rise to your feet without dropping down first.
Getting in behind the driver, there is always a grip within reach: a slim vertical grab pole at the door edge, an overhead assist handle on the roof rail, and a rail on the seat frame. Three-points-of-contact ingress, not a scramble.
A single horizontal display spans the whole dashboard: driver instruments on the left, function and climate controls in the middle, navigation on the right. Three clear zones on one seamless glass panel — everything where you'd reach for it, nothing buried in menus.
Slim laptop trays glide out from the back of both front seats on soft-detent rails, with a wireless charge pad and a lip so nothing slides under braking.
The seats speak the vehicle's language: squared, upright architecture with the same crisp facets and chamfered edges as the bodywork, not soft blobs dropped into an angular shell. Boxed shoulders, a faceted headrest wing, taut wool over defined planes — furniture that belongs to this structure.
No sunk-in luxury-sedan crouch, and no knees-up huddle. The hip point sits high so thighs run level to the floor — never knees crowding the chest or chin. You start squarely upright on a proper high seat, good for the spine and easy to rise from, with a full plush recline still there whenever you want it.
Each seat sits on a boxed base with a drawer of storage underneath — that's what raises it to chair height. Bags, chargers and kit stow out of sight while lifting you to an easy transfer level.
A deeper seat base carries the femur the whole way from hip to just behind the knee — the long cushion armchairs get and car seats usually miss. It cradles the whole thigh so weight spreads evenly, with a power-extending front lip to match any leg length.
Front seats get a deploying ottoman for calf and heel; the middle chairs get a rising footrest and a zero-gravity recline for a full stretch out — and both fold flat to aid a transfer, so comfort hardware doubles as accessibility hardware.
A full three-row SUV that seats the family. Choose the second row your way: a folding bench for maximum seats, or two captain's chairs with a walk-through aisle to the third row — the aisle also clears the path for the swivel-and-lower transfer.
Stretched a foot and a half to two feet — mostly wheelbase, not overhang — for limousine legroom, a flatter floor, a longer battery tray, and an easier seat swivel.
The EV9 borrowed Range Rover's squared-off dignity but sat too low and short. This restores the full command presence — standing roughly 5'9" to 6' tall, with a taller roof, taller upright glass, and a higher seating position over the stretched length.
Integrated roof bars run the full length of that flat roofline — low-profile rails that sit near-flush for quiet aero, then take a cross-bar, a box, bikes or a kayak for the family trip. They draw the eye along the level roof and earn their keep on holiday.
A single unbroken horizontal plane runs from the front wheel, flat across the top of the bonnet, straight through to the rear wheel — the old Land Rover clamshell honesty. It's what makes the box read as one continuous surface, not a collection of pressings.
Composed, not stiff, in the turns
The stiffness in big EVs is compensation for mass. Adaptive dampers plus air springs stay soft for ride, then firm only the outside wheels mid-corner — flat turns without the constant harshness. Rear-axle steering sharpens a long wheelbase.
Magnets guide, steel holds
Magnets do the elegant work — alignment, a rattle-free seat, that satisfying pull shut. Mechanical latches into roof and sill carry the crash load, recreating the B-pillar's path through the doors.
A next-generation pack
Today's best packs are the floor to beat, not the ceiling. Designed around a denser, cold-tolerant next-gen battery — with the door left open to solid-state as it matures.
Big rims, quiet wide tyres
A 23- to 24-inch rim base on low-profile wide tyres — think Hankook Ion evo AS, 285/45R23 (or R24) — with foam-lined acoustic cavities to hush road roar, so the big wheels look planted without shouting into the cabin.
Wraparound glass, for Vision Zero
Curved windscreens that wrap around the corners front and rear — the old Saab trick — with slim A-pillars. It sweeps the blind spots off the glass so the driver sees the pedestrian, the cyclist and the kerb, not a thick pillar. Safety through sightlines, not just sensors.
No axle — four motors, one at each corner
No driveshaft, no solid axle beam. Four compact motors, one at each corner of the skateboard floor — that's what keeps the floor dead flat and draws the long clamshell line uninterrupted. Independent torque at every wheel gives true torque-vectoring grip, a limp-home reserve if one ever drops out, tank-tight low-speed turns for the city, and it feeds the rear-wheel steer on that long wheelbase. The Kia EV9 GT-Line already runs quad-motor with no real penalty — so this is production-proven, not a stretch. Crank-handle to this, in one lifetime.
This is a concept sketch, not a product — a living page we grow as the ideas sharpen. The exterior and the interior will get structural adjustments as we go; consider this the first pass on the ramp.