Black Eyed Peas frontman William “Will.I.Am” Adams is a certified car guy. But unlike most singers and producers who love cars, he also likes to build cars, or at least attempt to. He’s slapped his name on everything from a V8-powered Volkswagen Beetle to a unique DeLorean. Most recently, he was seen slapping a Mercedes G-Wagen-like face on an AMG GT 4-Door. Now, there’s one more Will.I.Am creation out there. Will.I.Am is teasing the Trinity, a complex $30,000 trike with Tron Lightcycle-like wheels, an AI “brain”, and a promise to fix inner cities with robotics. Oh yeah, it’s a classic Will.I.Am ambitious project!
The Trinity trike was actually unveiled at CES 2026 back in January. However, it seems that most major car news publications missed it or skipped it. The trike is in the news again, not because of car websites or even the Automotive News wire, but thanks to reporting from Reuters and Axios. It’s a shame, because car media has seemingly missed out on a very weird vehicle.
Like all projects from Will.I.Am (he actually prefers that his stage name be written in all lowercase), the Trinity cannot just be a car. On the surface, the Trinity looks like the lovechild of an Elio and a Tron Lightcycle with its wheels in the wrong places. But it’s more than that. Will.I.Am is promising to build new inner-city factories to produce the Trinity, where nearby colleges will also teach young adults about robotics. Oh yeah, this is going to be fun and weird, buckle up!
From Music To Tech
If this is somehow your first time hearing about Will.I.Am making a car, golly, you’re in for a ride.
Will.I.Am was a pretty big deal during the first 15 years or so of this century. He was one of the founding members of 1990s hitmakers Black Eyed Peas, which went on to produce some real bangers of albums. I grew up practically wearing out my Elephunk and Monkey Business Black Eyed Peas CDs. As a teenager with an iPod Touch, the Black Eyed Peas’ The E.N.D (The Energy Never Dies) album was full of my high school anthems.
The Black Eyed Peas hit their peak in the 2000s, and depending on who you ask, the group has moved anywhere between 50 million and 80 million records and singles over their existence. The Black Eyed Peas were a massively successful group in the 2000s and parts of the 2010s. They’re still active today, too, but don’t quite get the airtime they used to. Where Is The Love? (embedded below) remains one of my favorite tracks.
Anyway, when Will.I.Am isn’t singing and writing, he’s a prolific producer and has worked with everyone from Michael Jackson and Justin Timberlake to Miley Cyrus and Lady Gaga. Will.I.Am even launched his own label, signing on LMFAO, Kelis, Fergie, Macy Gray, and others under his wing. Basically, the man is a music industry icon, and his career has afforded him a life that many folks dream of.
Will.I.Am started getting involved in tech endeavors in the early 2010s, falling in love with the FIRST Robotics Competition in 2011. He’d soon embrace all kinds of tech from smartphones and 3D printers to machine learning and wearables. Will.I.Am even has his name on some tech designs, like Beats By Dre headphones.
A pretty awesome byproduct of this is Will.I.Am’s support for STEAM Education (Science, Technology, Engineering, the Arts, and Mathematics) and desire to prepare underprivileged youth for the future of tech and robotics. He has a whole organization to support the education of youth, the i.am/Angel Foundation, which you can read more about by clicking here.
Will.I.Am Keeps Trying To Build Cars
But not everything Will.I.Am has touched has been nearly as successful. Back in 2012, Will.I.Am appeared on Top Gear for the show’s Star in a Reasonably Priced Car segment. It was there that he talked about loving cars and future tech so much that he was going to start a futuristic techy car company. IAMAUTO unveiled its first car in January 2012 and, probably to Will.I.Am’s chagrin, it quickly became a laughingstock.
Our very own Matt Hardigree penned a blog titled “Will.I.Am Launches Crappy Car Company” for Jalopnik in 2012. What was so crappy about it? Well, Will.I.Am said that he built a $700,000 supercar from the ground up using “OEM parts from Chrysler” and containing a Beats by Dr. Dre stereo. This car was later found to be a DeLorean that was heavily modified by West Coast Customs.
It was disappointing even more because Will.I.Am pitched to produce the car as a vehicle to give jobs in the low-income neighborhood where he grew up. See, Will.I.Am didn’t just want to make a car company, but he wanted to do philanthropy through building weird cars. But IAMAUTO went nowhere.
Undeterred, Will.I.Am later appeared behind the wheel of a supposedly all-new custom car (video above) that took four years and $900,000 to build. This car was modified by The Garage in Stuart, FL, and was an old Volkswagen Beetle underneath, rather than a scratch build. But Will.I.Am pitched it as a STEM project, from TMZ:
I build the cars for a project that I’m doing in inner cities, where I round up a whole bunch of people that are qualified to teach kids science, technology, engineering and mathematics. And through the course, they build vehicles. So I have to build the vehicles that can be used in the tutorial.
In 2016, Will.I.Am was at it again, this time showing off a modified Tesla Model S (video above). So, despite Will.I.Am’s ambitions, IAMAUTO never actually became a real car manufacturer, and the cars that were slapped with the IAMAUTO label were one-off personal cars for Will.I.Am. Will.I.Am even had a bizarre custom Corvette in his fleet.
While it seems that Will.I.Am has given up on IAMAUTO, he’s still trying to sling really weird, futuristic cars. In 2022, he partnered with Mercedes-Benz to modify an AMG GT 4-Door into the WILL.I.AMG.
Weirdly, this car was refreshing because Will.I.Am wasn’t trying to pitch it as a whole new car company. We also know that the car was made to be auctioned off to fund 50 to 100 STEAM programs. That’s great!
Will.I.Am also found a way to capitalize on the COVID-19 pandemic by partnering up with Honeywell to make the $299 XUPERMASK. It was marketed as the world’s first “connected mask” with Bluetooth, three-speed fans, HEPA filters, active noise-cancelling audio, and a microphone. Amazingly, Will.I.Am wasn’t the only one who thought this was a good idea, as Dyson also made an equally ridiculous mask.
The Trinity
Well, now Will.I.Am is back into the automotive space again, and this time he’s dusting off his old idea of launching a whole car company. Behold the Trinity!
What is this thing? Well, it’s a trike, to start. But notice that it’s a standard trike rather than the superior reverse trike configuration. Reverse trikes like the Polaris Slingshot, the Can-Am Spyder, the Vanderhall Venice, the Morgan 3 Wheeler, and others are known for their stability thanks to having two wheels up front. They also tend to have better handling than standard trikes and usually carry less of a risk of tipping under extreme conditions.
Thankfully, the Trinity is not rigid, and it’s designed to lean into turns like a motorcycle and some other standard-style trikes. It’s not too different than trikes like the Carver. So, it should be stable enough. There’s also a self-balancing system onboard that was designed by DEKA Research & Development.
Will.I.Am doesn’t say what the slick body is made out of, but it definitely appears to be something like plastic or fiberglass. In the shots showing the door open, the futuristic vibe breaks, and you can see that the actual side windows are rudimentary, like the ones you’d find in a kit-built trike.
The drivetrain is fascinating. The Trinity is powered by a pair of Yasa P400R hub motors offering up 300 HP or 400 HP each at 400 volts or 600 volts, respectively. Trinity is projecting that its trike will have a total of 800 HP, 176 miles of range, a 60 mph acceleration time in 1.8 seconds, a top speed of 120 mph, and a charge time of 1.1 hours.
At the heart of the Trinity is its AI “brain,” which Will.I.Am says is using NVIDIA DGX Spark AI. Apparently, instead of using apps on an infotainment screen, you’re supposed to have a conversation with the AI in the vehicle to achieve tasks like navigation, send emails, and plot business strategies. Will.I.Am also sees the AI as being like your “workforce,” whatever that means. Oh, and you get all of that for the princely sum of $30,000.
Like Will.I.Am’s other car efforts, this one is supposed to help fix inner cities, from Axios:
Will.I.Am envisions Trinity helping revitalize inner cities. Manufacturing the vehicle in urban areas is just the start, he says, outlining a world in which nearby community colleges teach related robotics skills.
He even imagines that residents could contribute their own ideas that get turned into skills that the onboard agent can perform.
“How do we have our inner cities transform like Shenzhen was transformed during the mobile internet,” he said in an interview last month, where his Trinity prototype was parked prominently at the entrance to the San Jose Convention Center. “In the agentic internet, how does Watts change forever? How does Oakland change forever?”
Yes, the Trinity logo is similar to the Atari logo, but inverted.
The prototype Trinity is a real vehicle, and was built with DEKA and West Coast Customs. Will.I.Am’s goal is to have it built in inner cities and to use the vehicle to teach youth about tech, AI, and robotics. All of that is great! Honestly, no snark or joking, but Will.I.Am’s desire to teach generations of kids is awesome. I wish the world had more adults like that! It seems like he’s a genuinely great guy who wants to make the world a better place, and actually spends his money helping kids.
A Long Way To Go
But, as just about every failed car company can tell you, building cars is hard. It’s one thing to have West Coast Customs build a one-off; it’s an entirely different ballgame to build factories, marketing departments, engineering departments, sales departments, and to actually put real production vehicles on the road.
However, in building a trike, Will.I.Am will be skipping lots of regulatory red tape. He won’t have to be concerned about crash testing, complying with FMVSS for cars, or complying with EPA regulations for cars. Unless Congress has its way, this thing will be classified as a motorcycle, which makes reaching production easier. However, the fact that you cannot buy an Elio or an Aptera yet is proof that even getting a trike into production isn’t easy. That’s not even talking about the AI stuff that the Trinity will supposedly have.
Regardless, Will.I.Am says that he plans on putting hundreds of these on the road next year. As of now, Trinity exists as a Kickstarter campaign that hasn’t even started yet. Time will tell if Will.I.Am is successful this time, or, like with IAMAUTO, he learns the hard way that building an entire car company from scratch is a huge endeavor.
Story pics and top graphic image: Trinity
Hid.ee.us
800 hp drag trike. with ai.
Will.i.am is always looking ahead, for… Will.i.am
Even verified, it was posted on April SECOND.
NO TRIKES
I love the Will.I.AMG it’s so stupid it’s fun. And it looks better than a gt4 door
Sure his automotive projects have been underwhelming at best but he has done a lot of great work.
I was there in the dome in St Louis when he uttered the now well known words, at least in the FIRST community, This Shit Is Mother Fucking Dope. As a employee of FIRST at the time I did even get to talk with him back stage. One of my friend’s daughters and former client actually worked for the i.am/Angel foundation which has done a lot of good work over the years. He was actually involved with the foundation and my client actually sat down at the table with Will more than once when working for the foundation. Most of it to empower inner city youth out of poverty. From supporting many FIRST teams in all programs, to flag football leagues to his i.am College program he helps many youth find their community, purpose and provides actual funding to allow those students to realize their dreams.
Laugh at all of his automotive projects all you want but the fact is we need more people like him who actually care about kids, their future and puts his money where his mouth is to make their lives better.
Glad he’s actually putting some of his money where his mouth is. I’ve been skeptical ever since the Top Gear debacle, and just assumed he was saying how much he was helping with little evidence of that actually happening beyond spending millions on vanity car projects.
Was this from Top Gear, it had the Gyro to keep it up right
https://youtu.be/GRFTJVNIf3o?si=82mA6WTcNLaWAFP6&t=332
grifter bullshit.
….but then it was discovered that underneath, it was a heavily modified Reliant Robin.
“Will.I.Am’s desire to teach generations of kids is awesome. I wish the world had more adults like that! It seems like he’s a genuinely great guy who wants to make the world a better place, and actually spends his money helping kids.”
While I do appreciate it’s STEAM rather than just STEM I gotta ask: why focus so much on STEAM? If anything I think the STEM in STEAM may be getting too much attention now.
What about history, languages, speech&debate, law, media, political science, underappreciated sports, and so on too?
None of those are taught anymore. Except language.
Which labors the point.
If you can’t do/know those things, you can’t stand up for yourself and your community in a meaningful way. It’s 100% intentional, and its been going on since the DOE was established (over 40 years of decline, measurable and real). Surprisingly, most can’t make that connection and want to keep dumping money into it.
“just a few billion more for new learning systems that don’t work to replace ones that do, and we’ll be smart again I promise!”
STEM programs kicked off decades ago as a way to try to get kids in to technology industries. As an engineer I’ve been to hundreds of STEM events in schools to promote engineering, and try to get quality students to pick a low-paid, low-respect career, rather than be a lawyer or a dentist. It helps if you turn up in half a million quids worth of prototype sports car.
Then they added “the arts”, seamlessly blending in like half a broken beer bottle jammed in a cake.
So yes, they might as well add in all the other subjects and bury the technical ones again.
“As an engineer I’ve been to hundreds of STEM events in schools to promote engineering, and try to get quality students to pick a low-paid, low-respect career, rather than be a lawyer or a dentist.”
Oh so YOU’RE the one to blame! 😉
Many, many years ago when I still half believed the dire STEM shortage might be real beyond the illusion of temporary gross surplus I signed on to participate in an ACS sponsored round table discussion with our local congressperson. The topic was the funding of STEM programs. It’ll be great networking and fodder for your CV and resume they said.
Riiiigghhhttt……
It was myself, a couple of other graduate students, a rep from the ACS (whom I later realized was a lobbyist) and the congressperson.
Oh we covered the usual talking points; staying competitive on this world stage and all that crap. The congressperson listened politely to our drivel and when we were done she responded that she had other priorities with educational funds like special ed. That was it, we were done.
I felt like shit but the experience opened my eyes a bit. Graduating into an employment void opened them the rest of the way. It turned out the dire STEM employee shortage was a myth then as now after all. That round table discussion was a line item on my resume but that didn’t save my resumes from the shredder.
I still think a solid education in STEM is important but more as a defense against the dark arts of advertising, marketing, the entertainment industry and political manipulation rather than promoting it as a career.
In my defence: I did all my STEM promotion in the UK.
I was also very clear about the constant threat of redundancy, and that automotive engineering was great if you wanted to borrow a flash car from your employer, but terrible if you wanted to earn enough money to own a flash car.
My experience of the “engineering shortage” on the job market is that employers have unrealistic expectations of what an engineer can do, and that HR departments have no idea what engineers are or how radically different the various types of engineering are (including the HR department that made me redundant despite not having a copy of my job description, and pooled design, development and project engineers together). I’ve seen the same vacancies open for a year and yet had no reply from my applications.
That said, I was only actually unemployed for a week when I got made redundant last year.
Will.I.Am is a terrible designer. Terrible.
He has the worst taste in cars. Everything is gaudy and just heinous. It all says look at me, but the same way people look at a fat guy in a speedo.
He has a good heart, delightfully Torchinskyan taste in cars and terrible business sense.
I have a feeling he could use his money for charity in a maybe more realistic way. Clearly no one has figured out trike cars; people that actually understand cars can’t do it. will.i.am probably genuinely loves cars, I dig it, but I don’t believe he understands making them. Or most tech, for that matter; just look up all his tech products that no one remembers and it’s kind of a wonder how people keeping investing in him.
Missed opportunity to start with “I’ve got a feeling”?!?
I still don’t understand how you could spend nearly a million dollars just to put a hideous neoclassic body on an aircooled Bug chassis. That’s insane money to build something that looks like a 1970s kit car “updated” with a bunch of billet parts and LED lights.
You grift 90% of it. Honest people can’t function in the modern world, because its impossible for you to imagine people could live like that. But they do, we are run by them.
Will.i.am has a weird eye for design that I kind of like.
In related news, I’ve got a bridge to sell you.
Money down the drain. He would do a lot more good for those inner city kids by just giving all this money directly to a school or something.
My impression of Will.I.Am’s vehicle projects is that he is a less offensive Mansory. I expect this hyped up Carver to be every bit as vaporous as his previous projects
So teach kids how to build cars for sale to the public? Anyone else getting a Ebenezer Scrooge vibe here? But on the other hand a trike is a great idea. I understand it makes hitting the inner city pot holes in the middle of the street easier than zig zagging.
I think that was a top gear idea.
Well, I’m glad he keeps trying things I guess. His heart seems to be in the right place, but there’s probably better ways to kick off an inner city manufacturing/skills enhancing revolution.
Q: how are Black Eyed Peas and Manchester United similar?
A: both became useless after Fergie left.
It’s great that he’s helping kids and all that…but here’s my rant about AI in general: It’s Artificial Stupidity! It’s fucking useless. It’s not something I want at all. All these companies everywhere trying to shove it down our throats are fucking stupid. It’s ruining journalism, fucking up pictures of cars and accuracy, creating fake bullshit, and making up shit that people actually believe, so it’s making people a lot dumber too. AI? Get a life…take a hike (yes, maybe literally get out in nature, take a walk and actually get some fresh air for once)
It’s frustrating how unavoidable it is lately. Like, I didn’t ask my for phone to suddenly have a bunch of AI bullshit in it that is constantly bothering me, I wasn’t given the choice!
It has effectively wiped any true information from the internet.
Unfortunately, one thing it does well is regurgitate stuff it thinks people will search for. It can spit out hundreds of websites perfectly optimized for search engines that will make it impossible to find what you’re actually looking for.
It’s not really surprising. Each version of the ‘net past 1.0 has been a step in this direction.
So much this. I’m trying to search up project vehicle stuff and there’s so much crap to sift through. This wasn’t so much of an issue 10 years ago. Yeah search optimization was a thing but never this bad. And Facebook absorbing lots of stuff that used to be found on forums hasn’t helped. Now get off my lawn!
And it has created layers of grifters ruining as much as they can by generating avalanches of AI slop they claim they make a ton of money off of (but with reading in large decline, IDK WTF is actually buying all these shitty no-effort books they have AI “create” for them). Music, videos, illustration, all the same thing. It was bad enough for anyone trying to discover new works or have their works discovered by others with the massive piles of stuff that flooded the market after the democratization of access and tools allowed anyone to get their creative work out before AI, but now it’s somehow immeasurably worse. I never thought I’d long for the days of corporate gatekeepers, but now we’re all unpaid agents sorting through slush piles looking for gems or throwing blind submissions into a slush pile so immense that it puts the comic warehouse at the end of the first Indiana Jones movie to shame. I used to make fun of people who seemed to freeze their taste in music or movies at a certain age, but now it’s such a daunting task to discover something new that doesn’t suck that it seems almost too much work to bother. Also, the AI training was legalized theft. These companies are criminal organizations and I wouldn’t feel bad about anything that happened to any of the people behind this enshittification big bang.
Yup! It’s a total shit show and I want no part of it. It’s just total trash that I don’t need or want at all. It’s completely useless
Does this guy need business losses for tax purposes?
I saw a YouTuber interview him at the Nvidia show with that contraption maybe a week ago. He seemed very confused about what the thing is. Just kept saying things like AI and transportation and what isn’t it. This whole physical AI trend the ai bros are pushing will only go so far then crash and burn like everything else they are touching.
The kids on their e dirt bikes, scooters and 2 wheel hoverboard things seem to be the way of personal transport. China has ebikes everywhere. We could have ebikes everywhere. The Chinese have taken their proven ebike platforms and built a cab around them like this thing. I can see it just especially for under $5k. But once you are doing whatever he is doing with AI and 300hp motors and a $30k price tag you loose your demo and create a new one that won’t buy the thing and use it as transportation. It will just become a toy.