Ever wonder what cars will be like in the future? Maybe they’ll fly. Maybe they’ll roll around on spheres instead of wheels. But you probably never thought they’d be grown from seeds or be born from cocoons.

Those are just a couple of the ideas proposed for cars in this year’s Los Angeles Auto Show Design Challenge. The Design Challenge is sort of where the worlds of car lovers and sci-fi supergeeks collide, as the above Venn diagram demonstrates. At the competition, designers from big car manufacturers craft road machines with imaginary propulsion sources and fantastic technology. It’s always a treat to see, even if the cars will never make it past the literal drawing board.

So for this year’s competition (the theme: design a car that weighs less than 1000 lbs), we’ve pulled the most bizarre, freaky-deaky, James Cameron-worthy factoids from each entrant’s information and presented it with the car in our image gallery. Check out the pictures here. [via L.A. Auto Show]