Walled Lake company built Hyundai walking car prototype

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The Walled Lake office of Sundberg Ferar is home to something very special.  

Look around the offices and you'll stumble upon a prototype of a walking car.  

"We happened to be the second-longest standing industry design studio in the nation," said Jeevak Badve.

That's a very big deal.  The industry design studio comes up with solutions that span coffee makers to cars.  
   
In this case, what they helped Hyundai design is going viral and catching a lot of eyes at these week’s Consumer electronics show in Las Vegas.
 
A car that can walk is catching the eyes of the world designed right here in metro Detroit. But it's begs this question.  

FOX 2: "Who would use this, who would want this?"

"The vehicle still operates like a vehicle as you would expect," he said. "But let's say you're at Michigan and there's a blizzard and just get off the highway, and there's a ditch the vehicle can just crawl off the highway and you're on back to the road. 

"Or it could be a search and rescue or I can be exploring different terrain. So we can really try to use it in plenty of other applications. It could be construction through a forest, it could be a place we do not need pavement as such.  

Military could use it to rescue soldiers too. The legs of the vehicle would only come out to get to an area that traditional set of wheels can't.  

"If we want to go right to the doorstep, not just the end of the driveway, how we can literally crawl over the flower bed and finally reach the front door," he said. "Whether or not the person is handicap or on a wheelchair, how can the wheelchair get right into the autonomous automobile?"

Sundberg Ferar designers take pride in the fact that their ideas are met not just with fanfare but with skepticism.  

Their ideas aren't all meant for market.  They're meant to bust through old ideas and think new with one goal in mind.  To make the world a better and easier place to navigate through. One step at a time. 

"This really has the potential to change the world and there are plenty of things in the world to solve," said Badve. "But this one can really solve that last 100 yard to kind of element and as a designer or a team of designers this is a fantastic thing to do."