iSAVE: Airbags for Your Car's Exterior

Hey look! It's a bird.  No, wait, it's a plain.  No, it's an iSAVE! A what-save?  You know, an iSAVE.  It fit's in your pocket and it plays music, edits videos, and makes phone calls... oh wait. It doesn't do any of that.  An iSave is Japan's way of saying the airbags for your car go on the outside.  No more will you have to worry about little annoying key scratches on your car. The nice airbag exterior will protect you.  Now a whole other world of problems are coming your way. Like if someone wants to take their iKEY and poke it through your iSAVE airbags!

Dubbed iSAVE (sigh…), the airbags deflate rapidly upon impact, just like conventional airbags, to soften the effects of a crash for pedestrians. The prototype car equipped with iSAVE that you can see on the pic above was shown earlier this week and is said to be the first of its kind. iSAVE can be used with electric cars only.
The research team behind the airbags says it expects to sell up to 50 units by year end for 3-wheeled cars before fully commercializing them in 2011 for four-wheeled vehicles. The iSAVE system for 4-wheeled cars will likely be priced at $17,800.

Via CrunchGear (Linkage)