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This weird blockchain car project has us baffled

The Veos Inoa sounds like a marriage between a Toyota sedan and a rice substitute

Looks like someone turned a Saturn Ion into an electric car and called it a day. PHOTO FROM VEOS

The worlds of cryptocurrencies and automobiles usually don’t mix very often. Apart from the odd story about bitcoin Lambos or a certain Elon Musk going crazy on Twitter, one is more at home on technology websites while the other is best reported about on VISOR. This story, however, has it all: an electric car, blockchain, non-fungible tokens, and more buzzwords than you could ever shake a stick at. Meet Veos, the maker of an ugly-looking battery-electric vehicle that promises so many world-beating features that we lost count. We also somehow doubt it will ever become a reality.

We’ll begin by pointing out that the little-known startup is seemingly working on a new electric car called the Inoa, and promises much and claims to feature things never before seen in an automobile. For starters, it comes with an operating system called Eva that utilizes a proprietary blockchain. Why would a car need to be on the blockchain? Even as someone who works with cryptocurrencies every day, I couldn’t tell you. It does mean, however, that you can do fancy-sounding blockchainy things such as turning the vehicle into an NFT. You read that right. According to Veos, every single Inoa will be a non-fungible token. Why? Again, don’t ask me. I’m as confused about this as you are.

Whoever put this cockpit together probably has no clue about automotive engineering. PHOTO FROM VEOS

As if that wasn’t enough, driving the Inoa apparently also mines Veos tokens that you can presumably use to buy things like trendier crypto buzzwords (maybe). Although looking at the firm’s website, I can’t quite see how you could cram any more of them on there. It honestly all reads way too good to be true. The people behind Veos claim that the car will be cheaper than those from the competition while maintaining high build quality, have superior range, offer fractional and fixed-cost ownership, have the world’s most efficient motors, and even treat young drivers to cheap insurance policies. The company proudly points out that these features are not available from any other car company—and any sane person should quickly understand why.

As for the actual vehicle, there are only a few low-resolution renderings of a prototype that looks more like Quasimodo’s company car than a modern EV you’d want to be seen in while doing the school run. Veos says that the Inoa will have bidirectional charging, improved autonomous operation, and even a quick-charge battery. All the talk about the various claimed features is simply baffling and borders on the nonsensical. It’s like someone Googled a list of crypto and EV buzzwords, loaded the result into a digital shotgun, and fired it at a website. If Veos truly is a real project and not just a pipe dream, then it certainly is the strangest EV we’ve ever featured on this site. If you want to feel puzzled and amused yourself, then check it out right here.



Frank Schuengel

Frank is a German e-commerce executive who loves his wife, a Filipina, so much he decided to base himself in Manila. He has interesting thoughts on Philippine motoring.



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