New eco-friendly car coming from IKEA?
Details are sketchy at this point, but the interwebs are abuzz today with news that IKEA might be entering the automobile world with a new environmentally friendly car called the LEKO. We'll resist the temptation to make a joke about how you'll be directed by some cheezy stick figure drawings to assemble the car yourself with nothing more than a five-page word-free manual. Whoops, sorry. The source of the news is a fairly official-looking website from France, which is odd considering that IKEA is based in Sweden. The supposed unveiling of the LEKO is scheduled for... wait for it... April 1st.
At this point, we're content to assume this is an elaborate ruse and that there won't be an actual car unveiled on April Fool's Day. On the off-chance that the LEKO is indeed real, we wonder if the machine could have anything to do with the ongoing T25 city car project from Gordon Murray, which is said to be fully flat-packable and intended for non-traditional retail outlets.
[Source: LEKO via Jalopnik]
Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
Thomas 5:26PM (3/23/2009)
This has to be a fake. Look into the Whois information: http://www.whois.net/whois/roulez-leko.com. Great viral campaign to trigger traffic and gather emails... not very ethical though.
IKEA would not get into the Automotive industry, unless they have a car you put together yourself... DIY car. It would be interesting but very unlikely.
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emdee 6:24PM (3/23/2009)
Well, I found this:
http://www.wwf.fr/content/download/2326/18437/version/1/file/Présentation+partenariat+Ikea+et+WWF-France.pdf
The agreement between WWF France and Ikea and it has this line in it at the end (badly translated, perhaps someone who knows more french can figure it out):
"The company recherche enpermanence denouvelles solutions pourletransportdans all areas (transportdes goods, transportdes employees transportdes
clients)."
TBQH it kind of looks like a pile of furniture under a tarp.
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Davide 2:48AM (3/24/2009)
In the PDF they say the 1st of Avril the will organize a chat about sustainable development... no car...
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Kelly Erin O'Brien 3:05AM (3/24/2009)
Well, the verb "to play" - as in a game - is "att leka" so it's not a big stretch to guess that it might be a joke.
Most product names at IKEA refer to some Swedish word or concept (sometimes mysteriously so!), so LEKO fits right in with the possible ruse!
I guess that it will "ett stort, jävla, förbannade överaskning" (a big f**king surprise) for all of us if it's true!
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Erkki Kirjalainen 6:21AM (3/27/2009)
Seems that the whole thing has already leaked out: http://www.ikealeko.com/first-real-images-of-ikea-leko-leaked/ :-D
But serioisly, my guess is that Leko will be a car-sharing concept including indeed real automobiles. For example Mercedes is already testing it's own car-sharing concept in Germany. The idea is, that people can register to the service, and they receive an rfid-card which together with pin-code gives access to the shared cars. You can either simpy hop an a car you find from the street, or reserve a car over the interned. Every car has a gps chip, so they are easy to find realtime. As a user, you only pay for the driven kilometers and even the gasoline is included.
So my guess is, that Leko will be a similar concept like this.
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