Will.i.am is looking to bring some boom, boom, pow to the car market. The rapper, producer, and serious auto enthusiast is looking to bring a new vehicle to the market. It focuses on AI and micromobility, but the specs are absurd. Think sub-2 seconds from 0 to 60 in a three-wheel electric car.
Trinity Is a Tiny Three-Wheel Monster
It’s called Trinity, and the new company was founded and is owned by Will.i.am. He and the company introduced the car as a prototype at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas last week, and the idea is like nothing we’ve ever seen.
Ultra-narrow, three-wheeled, and with seating for one, it’s designed to be an urban transport vehicle — perfect for zipping around town, and hopefully letting you skirt traffic.
Two 400-horsepower motors make sure it will have incredible amounts of zip — more than any town can handle. The two motors come from Yasa, a company owned by Mercedes-Benz that has developed extremely power-dense axial-flux motors. Its motors power the 1,300-horsepower AMG GT XX, delivering mind-bending performance. Because the car is small, it’s also light. Trinity claims 2,000 pounds and 176 miles of range.
AI Is the Focus From the Start
The focus, though, is more on the use of AI in the car than the car itself. It uses Nvidia’s DGX Spark compact AI supercomputer to power its AI system. From there, it’s a bunch of buzzwords about how the car has “AI inference of real-time vision language model workloads.”
It promises AI agent feature assistance, like helping you find parking or log travel expenses. Or sending messages. The company also claims it’ll turn normal radio into “conversational audio experiences.”
Who is responsible for this wild design? West Coast Customs, of Pimp My Ride fame, built this Tron Lightcycle for the road. It looks even wilder at night, when the hubs illuminate, along with a trim ring that surrounds the entire top panel.
Look for the Trinity on Kickstarter Before the Highway
Three wheels with the two at the back so close together (the exact opposite of a stable Polaris Slingshot) inspire memories of the Reliant Robin. You know, the car that Jeremy Clarkson loved to flip over oh so very much?
The Trinity prototype takes care of that problem, or at least in theory. It was designed by New Hampshire–based DEKA Research and Development to be self-balancing. DEKA is the company founded by the guy who invented the Segway, so he knows a bit about balance.
Will.i.am is launching a Kickstarter campaign to help fund the project. It hasn’t gone live yet, but it expects to soon. The company says it hopes to bring the vehicle to market for under $30K, which will probably mean it will be licensed more like a motorcycle than a car.
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