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Urban Wheels of the Future: Why Fight Over Parking?
This week we hit the road, along with the 250 million other cars on America’s roads. We all know how bad traffic can be, and parking is often much worse. In order to accommodate all of the cars, experts say we’d need a parking lot the size of Connecticut!
Fear not, this new innovation from MIT has the potential to solve our parking woes! Developers have created City Car, an electric car designed to meet the needs of people in cities. The car would be part of a sharing program, similar to bikeshare programs popping up across the country.
The car has a maximum speed of 30 mph, but can go the equivalent of 200 mpg. It can also help alleviate congestion in parking lots, as it folds into 0ne-third of the size of an average car!
Developers removed the drive frame and car frame, and what you would find in a normal car’s hood is divided up between the four, self-contained wheels.
The creators say the car’s design make parallel parking a snap–the car can rotate in all directions!
Trials of the City Car are beginning in Hong Kong and other European cities and the starting price is $16,000.
What do you think? If you have an idea about how to make navigating a city easier, let us know! Submit your idea today!
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On September 18th, 2012 at 10:54 am jerry dycus Said:
I just drive my personal transport module with the same speed, range as this one right into any building as has the same footprint as a wheelchair. It can be driven from home directly or hop on a bus, train or plane!!
If one stays below 20mph in many states it requires no DL, tag, etc.
On September 18th, 2012 at 1:08 pm Miastrada Company Said:
The neighborhood electric vehicle has a place in a compact living space such as a large city, where there is no need to use roads built for more speed than 30 mph. The idea is quite well established in the City of Coronado, where EVs are commonly seen having this capability. Even tighter compacting as represented by this concept could be useful.
However, they will not function to get people to airports that are mostly served by high speed roads.
A very good try at the same notion, only built for high speeds as well, is the Tango. That concept seems to be not taking hold.
It should be kept in mind that short vehicles are not at all efficient when it comes to speeds where aerodynamics matters. Most of us require vehicles in this category. As we try to find better ways forward, we should take care to be not misled about EV efficiency on the basis of the false calculation of ‘MPGE’ that is the official EPA rule.