Is there a truck that could take us any­where on Earth?

There was a rumour that when the direc­tor Christo­pher Nolan was mak­ing his sci-fi epic, Inter­stel­lar, he decid­ed to live in a giant win­neba­go parked up on the stu­dio lot. But this wasn’t just any, store-bought win­neba­go, this was pur­pose built for the man in the process of putting togeth­er a gigan­tic stu­dio tent-poll movie and attend­ing to a wife and chil­dren at the same time.

Of course, this apoc­ryphal tale tells of Nolan’s ded­i­ca­tion to his craft – that he wants to remove him­self from the nine-to-five rat race in order to focus on the cre­ative mat­ter at hand. But it also speaks of inno­va­tions in tech­nol­o­gy that sug­gest we’re on the cusp of an era where hous­es, flats, bun­ga­lows and apart­ments all come with giant wheels.

Jour­nal­ist Ben Fer­gu­son heads to Bur­bank, LA for a new video piece made pos­si­ble by kayak​.co​.uk – the trav­el tool that helps you find the best offer for the flight or hotel you want – to look at the future of vehi­cles which have been built with a larg­er pur­pose than head­ing to the shops for gro­ceries. Bran Fer­ren is one of the design­ers behind the famous Imag­i­nar­i­um at Dis­ney World, and he’s divert­ed his expert capa­bil­i­ties towards cre­at­ing a truck which can with­stand any and all ter­rains. He works as part of a cre­ative brain trust known as Applied Minds in which the best and bright­est design­ers and engi­neers pool their vast knowl­edge base into – hope­ful­ly – mak­ing that next giant tech­no­log­i­cal leap.

In this video, we get to see a work­ing pro­to­type of the Kira­Van – an over­sized beast of the road which has been designed with the aim of it being able to with­stand all ter­rain. Fer­gu­son test dri­ves the vehi­cle and dis­cov­ers that it has still got some way to go before it’s ready for the road, but the real dis­cov­ery here is that there are peo­ple with their eyes on the future, antic­i­pat­ing trends and build­ing prod­ucts for a world that isn’t quite here yet. Christo­pher Nolan would be proud.

This series was made pos­si­ble by kayak​.co​.uk. Check it out now if you’re about to book a trip.