Nissan's new "Teatro For Dayz" concept car is a multimedia tool on wheels
Nissan has been talking about young people falling out of love with the car for a while now, and yesterday at the Tokyo Motor Show it showed how it hopes to reverse that trend. Its latest creation, the Teatro For Dayz, is a boxy electric vehicle designed to woo younger buyers back to cars by turning them into giant smartphones that just happen to take people from A to B. Nissan Product Planning General Manager, Hidemi Sasaki, says young people look “beyond the car’s basic role of transportation ... They want a car to be a versatile tool for creativity.” The Teatro For Dayz concept is meant to simulate a small, battery powered mobile device on wheels with certain changeable features to suit the "mood" you're in; for example, customisable screens, exterior LED displays, different looking drive modes for the interior and 'play' and 'pause' pedals. Watch a video showing the concept here.

It's hard to stake a claim to silliest car concept at a show like the Tokyo Motor Show, but Nissan is probably, no definitely, the winner. What other car lets you play an RPG across almost the whole interior, or lets you splash the seats (and steering wheel) with grass, leopard skin, or adorably giant wooly patterns? There isn't one. Teatro for Dayz is the free-spirited step-sister of Nissan's serious, buttoned-down self-driving EV, and it's Nissan's hope that it'll convince non-auto fans to, well, take an interest.

Gallery: Nissan's Teatro For Dayz concept car at Tokyo Motor Show 2015 | 13 Photos























/13 Gallery: Nissan's Teatro For Dayz concept car at Tokyo Motor Show 2015 | 13 Photos























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Satoru Tai, Nissan's Executive Design Director posits it as a "canvas" for the owner. It's not a car, it's a high-end conceptual gadget you can also sit and drive around in -- it's pitched to customers that are still children. (For now). Tai adds, in the press release: "... through design we typically try to convey a sense of acceleration, power, or supreme quality. But these values do not resonate with share natives. If anything, such car traits just call to mind old-fashioned technology that bears little relevance to their lives." (If you weren't paying attention, share natives are Nissan's way of labelling younger customers that have grown up with the internet.) Accelerometers and other dash staples only appear on the surfaces when the driver wants them to be seen.

As noted earlier, Nissan wants to snag people that normally aren't interested in cars. A spokesman explains that because it's an EV, you could park up anywhere and then it's is no longer a transport vehicle -- it's an entertainment space. Taking a looking inside, the car is spacious, anonymous-but-modern-looking. (That said, the brightness of so many lit-up surfaces soon tired my eyes.)

Nissan is using projectors at this early stage to demonstrate the possibilities of a car interior literally covered in screens, but once the company has sorted out getting displays on all the surfaces seen on this early model, it aims to extend them to both the car doors and the windows, bringing it dangerously close to one giant interactive digital play-area powered by a giant EV battery. The name is ridiculous. The technology? Not quite there. But the idea? It's not a completely bad one.