Peugeot HR1 concept car packs gesture controls and tablet PC

Peugeot's already wowed us with the incredibly gorgeous EX1 concept car and the world's first diesel hybrid, but the French company isn't resting on its laurels. Here at the 2010 Paris Motor Show, it's also churned out a new HR1 'urban concept', which comes with a built-in tablet PC.

The car isn't as attractive as the EX1 -- it's tall, chunky and ever so slightly odd-looking. But it does have some interesting tech additions. The most notable of these is an Archos 9 PC Tablet mounted in a tray on the passenger side of the vehicle.

Peugeot says the tablet can be used to while away the hours on long journeys. It has an 8.9-inch resistive touchscreen and runs Windows 7 Starter, so it'll do just about anything you ask of it. It'll play movies, basic games and let you surf the Internet via an optional 3G broadband dongle.

The driver gets some funky tech to play with, too. The HR1 has a gesture-based user interface that lets you scroll through and select menu items in the infotainment system by making hand gestures, rather like in Minority Report. The car also has a head-up display and some rather beautiful instruments, flanking a colour display behind the steering wheel.

The HR1 has a set of odd-looking, electrically operated, gullwing-style doors. These are attached to the car not by a hinge, but by a single horizontal rod that slides out from the chassis and rotates to spin the door from its normal resting position to a vertical one.

Inside, the car has modular seating. You set it up to offer four seats or, if you want to save weight or increase the amount of luggage space, just three.

Power comes from a 1.2-litre petrol engine linked to a rear-mounted electric motor. They work together to provide 147bhp and four-wheel drive.

The HR1 is a concept vehicle, but our sources at Peugeot say it's a definite possibility that the technologies featured in the car will find their way into production models. Have a gander at the pictures we've snapped and tell us what you reckon in the comments section below.