Even at age 79, Giorgetto Giugiaro is not done designing cars. In 2015, he and his son, Fabrizio, started a design and consulting firm, GFG Style (the initials stand for Giorgetto and Fabrizio Giugiaro), in Turin, Italy. The company’s biggest project to date was the China-sourced turbine-powered Techrules Ren supercar. For their newest design, however, the Giugiaros steered toward practicality with a four-door electric four-seater called the Sibylla.
Set to make its debut at the 2018 Geneva auto show, the Sibylla concept is the result of another partnership with a Chinese company. This time, it’s the Shanghai-based energy company Envision, which claims to own the world’s largest Energy Internet of Things (IoT) platform, EnOS, with 100 gigawatts of global energy assets. Envision also claims to be China’s second-largest wind-turbine company. It makes sense, then, that this concept aims not simply to be an electric vehicle, but one that can be integrated into the electric grid. GFG Style and Envision said in a joint press release that the Sibylla is a “breakthrough in embedding the car into a larger energy system,” but details are scant beyond a general ideology that sees a car not just as transportation but as a portable energy source for the home that also can feed the electrical grid. EnOS is a platform with access to numerous charging companies, and with cars integrated into the system, artificial intelligence could help determine...