Students from Coventry University will be showing off designs for vehicles built to deliver goods ordered on the internet at a prestigious trade show tomorrow.

Eight students on the BSc Industrial Product Design course have been invited to take part in the Commercial Motor Show at the NEC by Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles and have been given a display stand to show off their ideas.

The designs are based around a brief to produce a vehicle design for the domestic delivery of shopping on-line products.

An increase in home deliveries is predicted with the growth in on-line sales, and commercial vehicle manufacturers are looking at ways of meeting those demands.

In the past students have designed domestic cookers, trucks, cars and planes and worked with famous names such as Richard Noble and Edward Iveagh as part of industry-sponsored projects.

Principal lecturer Roger Perks has worked with VW on three occasions, including a previous design for a motor home, but the work has never received such a high profile reception as tomorrow’s show.

The university has also been working with BOX3, a company which produces large rotational mouldings, and the students have incorporated this into their designs.

During the Motor Show the students will have models of their designs on display and a plasma screen will show the various stages of the design process and the animation of creating the vehicles.

Volkswagen Commercial Vehicles will also make a presentation to the students as recognition for all their hard work and creativity.

The two groups involved in the exhibition are:

• Industria Design Group: John Abrahams, Sachin Chauhan, Benjamin Smith and Richard Toften.

This design looks at the need to make the most of space in delivery vehicles for frozen and cold food.

Present vehicle designs have separate compartments for frozen, chilled and ambient temperatures, which means all the space is full from load to load.

This design uses insulated boxes, which means the whole volume can be used for every trip.

• DOJO Design Group: James Hooper, David Hughes, Nicholas Avery and Matthew Ford.

This design addresses the same issues and again uses the insulated box approach. Boxes are colour-coded to differentiate the temperature requirements of their contents.