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MIT Offers City Car for the Masses
MIT's stackable electric car, a project to improve urban transportation will make its debut this week in Milan. "The City Car, a design project under way at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, is envisioned as a two-seater electric vehicle powered by lithium-ion batteries. It would weigh between 1,000 and 1,200 pounds and could collapse, then stack like a shopping cart with six to eight fitting into a typical parking space. It isn't just a car, but is designed as a system of shared cars with kiosks at locations around a city or small community."
So every 18 months they'll come out with a newer model, which folds into half the space and cost less. At the end of 12 years it will be a skateboard. Got news for them, Santa Cruz is already there.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
talk about collapse
i\hbar\dot{\psi}=\hat{H}\psi
Its a shared car. Read the article.
RTFAS - Read the Fucking Article Summary
It wouldn't be YOUR car. It'd be a city-owned car rented at kiosks.
Personally, my fear would be more on the safety implications of a car designed to fold in on itself in the event of a collision.
Got to love people that don't RTFA and make inappropriate comments
I have mod points and I am not afraid to use them
I was thinking that until I read the article. These are being pitched as a service. You rent the car for a day or so, it's not something you purchase.
...a car that collapses like a shopping cart when I'm rear-ended.
from the top of this page:
"but is designed as a system of shared cars with kiosks..."
nobody owns individual cars, you subscribe to the service and grab a car from a kiosk wherever you need one.
When I was a kid I envisioned something similar except the cars would fly. I wasn't alone. What happened? Well, I also envisioned hooking up with a babe like Annette Funacello, and that didn't happen either ...
Gary Dunn
Open Slate Project
You don't own the cars, they are community cars owned by the municipality.
There are already C'ity cars out there
I got to see alot of the models and sketches for this at the Media Lab last January. I look forward to the final product. It could do alot to change urban traffic patterns and pollution in city centers.
Also they have more Lego's than God at the Media Lab...that is orgasmic.
Virginia is for lovers. EVE is for griefers.
Initialize a new stack. Pop cars from the first stack and push them onto the second stack until you find the car you want. Then, pop cars from the second stack and push them onto the first stack. This has the advantage of maintaining the original order of the stack.
RTFA. Neither of your objections is particularly applicable. They're putting this forth as a service model (swipe your card and take one of the interchangeable cars when and where you need it), not for individual ownership. And when they talk about "stacking," I believe they mean horizontal nesting. Nobody stacks shopping carts vertically either.
What happens when the all end up at the same place in town on a Friday night
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Before telling users to read the article.
we require 10' foot high SUVs modeled on military vehicles that can run over a compact car and not even feel it. the inside must be 500 square feet, of which there will be only one occupant. oh, and the vehicle must get 2 miles to the gallon
i don't understand what the point of this green environmental stuff is, just send more soldiers to iraq. problem solved
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Look, I came here for an argument! Oh, sorry, wrong story..
"A nation that forgets its past is doomed to repeat it." - Churchill
You clearly missed the point. This is not about YOUR car; its about a public transit system where you use a community car to get where your going, then plug it into a recharge/rental kiosk at your destination. They're trying to solve the issue of bus and train lines getting close to your destination, but not that close.
The issue I see is how has this solved the problem they're trying to address? If you have to deposit the vehicle at a kiosk to get your deposit back, then unless there's a kiosk on every corner you'll have the same issue of walking every time you take a one-way trip. If you used it like a commuter service, then you'd have to set up large parking lots tied to stations of the vehicles. They didn't mention this in the article so I don't tink they were trying to fix commuting.
I suppose if you HAD a kiosk on EVERY corner in say New York, NY, then it would be okay. But isn't that an awfully large adoption ratio to assume? I suppose you could augment existing train service with kiosks at every stop, but again they didn't mention that in the article.
I think its interesting, and certainly worth pursuing as a technology, but I think someone with a little marketing savvy needs to take a look at how this fundamental change in how we think about vehicles can be adapted into our various psyches.
DMCA - Chilling free speech since 1998.
Like the "village bicycle"?
So these are really more expensive and fancy ^stackable public golf carts?
Wonder how they plan for Lo-Jacking / Securing them... cheaper golf carts already have significant theft rates.
How long until there's grafiti everywhere, the seats are slashed, and the cars are rendered unusable by the public?
Not that this isn't a great idea. It's just depressing that people will purposefuly ruin things like this.
(Okay, so not exactly "Tragedy of the Commons")
You have a lower UID than me, let you still seem to be new here.
People like owning private property. In fact, they like it so much that given a chance to "borrow" a vehicle, they'll never return it. But if someone follows through on this idea, thefts will probably go down for a week or so when the same people who stole yellow bikes to support their drug habit do the same with the cars, at a much higher profit.
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
Does this guy look like he's peeing on the car?
The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
And this already exists, without the electric cars- lookup flexcar in Seattle. You basicly get a by the hour rental.
I still have more fans than freaks. WTF is wrong with you people?
Let's create a vehicle twice as complex as anything out there. Oh, and while we're at it, let's change the whole social structure of car ownership. Now, if this actually goes anywhere, super and good for them, but how many of these radical concept cars do we hear about once and never again?
Personally, I think simplicity is an important feature in machines; it means they cost less to make and cost less to fix. A beautiful example of this is in the form of some motorcyles, elegant minimalism. If you would add a cabin to one of these for foul weather, it should achieve 90% of what the technical side of this project hopes.
I remember watching a movie in which there are small and white public cars available to the public in a parallel universe. It is a pretty shitty made for TV movie though.
Don't worry, you'll still have yours parked in front of your mom's basement.
Linux Zealots: Smarter than Mac Zealots, but still zealots.
The problem with this is when you have to return the same car. The car is now in a stack. If you could grab any car at any time then it would work.
Anyways, there is a much more elegant soltution to the "Last Mile Problem" in the form of Personal Rapid Transit. These scholars should devote their energy to the study and advancement of this system.
Sounds like a great idea, but what about the journey between points A and B? Even at under 2,000 pounds, the cars look like they're too big for a sidewalk. Or are they designed to be street legal, with the requisite mirrors, lights, and safety features- and forcing you to fight for a position in rush hour traffic among the SUV-driving masses? That doesn't sound very safe.
For something like this to be a success, it seems like it would need to be limited to a small area, with it's own dedicated roads/lanes.
One thing I was thinking, perhaps it's rented out for the day and you return it to the spot you picked it up from? It doesn't really help with the parking situation though, at the destination that is, other than maybe they could make some smaller parking spots (and closer to the front to encourage using these.)
Repainting parking lots, while not a trivial endeavour, is relatively simple.
What I hated about the bus and train system here, in So. Cal., is not so much the stops, but the frequency. Where I'm at, the busses average a 30-40 minute stop cycle and some are an hour or more. (Miss the 6:15? Tough, wait til 7:30...). I could see this solving that problem.
Isn't a taxi already a great type of city car? It has several advantages over this contender: You can talk on your cell phone, get a bit of rest, it picks you up and drops you off exactly where you want to go, you don't have to spend any time parking it and if it gets dinged on your trip, you don't have to sit and wait for a police officer to come along and file a report.
Are there really enough advantages of this over taxis to overcome the status quo?
Make it flying and then we will have the Jetsons! It will even fit into a briefcase!
Do you understand the meaning of 'shared?'
Drill baby drill - on Mars
This is so simple. In order to drive, a valid credit card and driver's license is required, even if driving the car is free. Don't return it and the cops will be at your door.
Tone the cynicism down. Shared car companies already exist. It works pretty well and they make a profit.
I read about plans for a stackable "modular car system" uncannily similar to this MIT City Car proposal -- back in the 1970's!
:-/
Damn, I feel old....
"All hands, BRACE FOR IMPACT!"
How would you ensure that the credit card and driver's licence belong to the driver?
I still see theft as a potentially big problem for these cars. Abuse/vandalism even moreso.
... "On the ground, Engineers drive at breakneck speed on crowded roads without fear of collision, and upon reaching destination, will dismantle their cars so they won't take too much parking space."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Mote_in_God's_Eye#Motie_technology
Next thing that it should have an integrated autodoc with the proper spare parts.
CC.
TaijiQuan (Huang, 5 loosenings)
Also, any decent public transportation system should have much less than a mile between two metro/bus/tramway stations - leaving the maximum walking distance to half a mile. That is the case of many European cities.
On a related note, the ever-awesome Dutchs invented the Bike Dispenser, which I have yet to see in real life but which looks absolutely wicked. In my opinion this looks much more manageable than 1,200-pounds electric stackable cars.
Hello! I'm a disaster waiting to happen!
Because if it is to avoid the problems with journeys on public transport where you're a walk away from the final destination, where exactly am i supposed to park the car? At a 'park stop' as opposed to a bus or train stop? What indication is there that there will be more space for 'park stops' as opposed to density of bus stops?
imagine a beowulf cluster of these
This seems like the natural progression of a couple of existing ideas: http://www.smart.com/ Smart cars are popular in uk (I don't know about elsewhere). Small, efficient and comfortable. Yeah, everyone thought they looked stupid at first but they are immensely practical. http://www.streetcar.co.uk/ A similar hire a car by the hour type scheme with no human interaction. This has been running for a few years in uk and appears to be growing steadily.
[most reviled conservative wind bag]
Efficient? Our cars gets great mileage! It's those damn terrists who are to blame for high gas prices!
Parking? That's why God invented valets!
What is it with these liberals who think we need all this socialized transportation? Next thing you know they'll have affordable personal computers for impoverished nations. Which will only help the terrorists win!
[/most reviled conservative wind bag]
Got Trader Joe's? friendwich.com RSS feeds work now!
Another approach for the cleanliness and vandalism issue would be to make the whole thing out of super hard plastic or something (no comfy seats, sorry; bring your own cushion) and have a pressure washer at the return end. Then at least we keep it automated.
Still not sure how to keep the automation and prevent use by stolen CC/identification. Maybe the kiosk could tie in with the CC companies' online verification systems that are already in place?
public transportation -- buses, underground trains (tube) etc.
bicycles -- have lanes on the road for bicycle use only and have some dedicated pedestrian/person powered vehicle zones without cars. Will also help improve people's health and cut down on pollution.
zip wire transport -- system of 'zip wires' between tall buildings which people could use to move about with. Fast, cheap and fun! Also doubles as a good method of escape from tall burning buildings (esp. for those paranoid of terrorist attacks).
air tubes -- like in Futurama. Or maybe some sort of roller-coaster type system based on conversion of potential->kinetic energy by use of tall buildings and a large spring.
These alternatives would seem to be far easier and cheaper (well, maybe not the underground tube trains) to implement than the proposed 'collapsible car' sharing scheme.
How does this service change when the cars become completely autonomous? Would there even be a need to park them?
It is the roads that are too crowded. In fact you could argue it will make it worse. Now more cars can be jammed into the same static area, but when the cars begin to move, i.e the system goes dynamic, the traffic will be much worse because the cars need to occupied full size while moving...rush hour...it will be rush day, as it is necoming already in many major cities.
"The problem with mass transit is it kind of takes you to where you want to go and at the approximate time you want to get there, but not exactly. Sometimes you have to walk up to a mile from the last train or subway stop,"
Yep, that's a big problem. Walking up to a mile? Unthinkable! I'd get all sweaty and stuff.
Seriously, it's funny how fast food is always blamed for increasing obesity in the western world. I'd say we Europeans on average eat about as much fast food as Americans, but we also travel by train and bus a lot more. But riding the bus just isn't as hip as doing Atkins...
"said Franco Vairani, a Ph.D. candidate at MIT's school of architecture".
Well that explains it then.
There is already a US system designed by a transport researcher (J. Edward Anderson) who's actually thought about the whole problem of transport, instead of just how to make a car a bit more environmentally friendly.
http://www.taxi2000.com/
And the UK system, Ultra is actually being implemented at Heathrow Airport:
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/
Deleted
A key passage from the article:
"The existing Zip Car rental system has shown that people are willing to be part of a service that rewards members who are good custodians, according to Lark. He said the City Car could create the same type of community feeling of responsibility."
Your example of car-sharing is a good one. Hopefully if this project or one like it comes to fruition it will be more like car-sharing and car-rental and less like shopping carts and community bicycles (in North America anyway. Other commenters have pointed out that some cultures are more respectful of publically available resources).
My pessimism comes from assuming that the kiosks will be automatic and insufficient to monitor damages and that someone will eventually ruin it for everyone. I hope that such a project will sucessfully come to fruition, but I remain skeptical that people will find a way to screw it up.
I already see this sort of parking-as-incentive thing where I live (Auckland). The council-owned parking buildings have green-painted spaces, closer to the exit, set aside for drivers of small cars (by weight, I think) and hybrids.
=w=
"Seriously, it's funny how fast food is always blamed for increasing obesity in the western world. I'd say we Europeans on average eat about as much fast food as Americans, but we also travel by train and bus a lot more. But riding the bus just isn't as hip as doing Atkins..."
:)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/science/hottopics/obesity/
Maybe want to check the facts some...
You can walk in the rain or the snow for miles to stay slim.
Ill stick to just going to the gym. Much less chance of frost bite. Oh and ill keep driving there in my old lincoln with its heated seats
I have to return some videotapes...
Although I do commend MIT on their efforts, I can't help but think that this is another vastly impractical academic pipedream (a la those who predicted the Segway would change the world. It's a masterpiece of engineering, but let's be realistic here...).
On the other hand, tiny cars are nothing new. They don't even need to be electric... if you're getting 100MPG with a petrol engine (and in a city car at that), the expense of making the vehicle fully electric seems rather silly. You'd probably also do more damage to the environment by manufacturing the batteries as well...
Like the Segway, the MIT concept looks expensive. Impractically so. You're not going to see these things adopted at all unless they're considerably cheaper than a motorbike. In fact, if you lowered the price down to about what a plain old bicycle costs, you'd be even better.
Such a vehicle actually exists. The Peel P50 made in 1962 sold for about £200, gets 100mpg, and was (and still is) street legal in the UK.
The guys from Top Gear did a hilarious review of the car last week, and proved that you could indeed drive it TO work (in the elevator, down the corridor, and to your desk). It's even got a handle on the back to pick it up with.
Yeah, it's hideously impractical, but then again, so is MIT's proposal.
Still, it's nice to dream.
-- If you try to fail and succeed, which have you done? - Uli's moose
So what happens when you hit someone in one of these things? Or run in to another car?
Who's insurance gets to pay for damages?
I have to return some videotapes...
No offense, but I don't know why repeating 6 cliches right in a row gets you modded insightful. But congratulations ;)
There are parking problems and traffic jams. Last time I drove to the airport along the 101 it took me at least 30 minutes longer than I expected. When I got there it took me a while to find parking- a long distance from where I wanted to be. Independent transport is not as reliable as some would make out.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
One thing this category of solution doesn't address is that people use their cars for transportation and temporary storage of...stuff. Boring stuff like an extra coat and an umbrella, work-related files or equipment, books, food/drink, maps, groceries, not to mention children.
Rented vehicles of any kind, or small vehicles meant to only carry people and not much else reduce the abilty to carry stuff around. Riding a bike while carrying a briefcase can be a challenge, let alone hauling a network switch or linux server from train to bus, bus to rented folding car, rented folding car to bike, bike to building. The plain fact about public or shared transit is that storage or transfer of even the most trivial item throughout the day becomes a nightmare.
It's easy to treat this as an irrelevant issue but it's a vital part of everyday life and urban planners need to stop ignoring it if they want to find solutions that people can actually live with.
Bikes have no cargo capacity, which means they're no good for getting groceries or hauling laundry. Bikes have no foul weather capacity, so you're back to square one during the winter half of the year, or when it's raining. Bikes have no distance capacity, or hill climbing power (granted, this is the cyclist rather than the cycle), so this is going to be a problem in most North American urban sprawl environments. What's the point of walking half a mile to a bike dispenser just to bike for half a mile to get to transit? It is not a practical last mile solution.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
GM Built a similar modular electric car a while ago. The entire battery + drive train was in a thin rectangular brick upon which different "mission modules". So you could have a crossover shell, a sport shell, a pickup shell, and swap them in and out. Of course, the economics of the car were so prohibitive that dealers laughed at it, but it points the way to future technologies.
Such a thing would obviously radically redefine cars.
This is my sig.
there are thousands of assholes, right now, driving around in their hummers, thinking the oil is going to last forever, and that it doesn't hurt the environment, and doesn't hurt their children/ neighbors/ parents they send to the middle east
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Can you imagine the smell? It would have to be worse than any plane or bus smell.
Do you understand the meaning of 'shared?'
Sure - it means some **AA will sue anyone using it.
-- Put crudely, the world is an extremely large problem instance. (Russel/Norvig Artificial Intelligence)
six to eight fitting into a typical parking space
Imagine the dog who gets to pee on 6 to 8 cars in one stream..
Aw hell, forget the dog. *I* want to pee on 6 to 8 cars in one stream.
I'd love MIT to demo a car like that which rides on NYC subway rails, rolls out of buffers (stocked by trend analysis) on demand, is routed point to point the best route, links up with other cars through their common pathways for increased mutual efficiency, and overall acts like a timeshared private car with autopilot.
In short, convert circuit-switched subways to packet switched rail networks. With better supply fit to actual demand, better energy and routing efficiency strategies, better redundancy, and less room for crooks to hide in unobserved.
The NYC subway switching and signaling systems were last really overhauled in 1937, and still retain major incompatibilities between what was once 3 independent, competing subway companies (and their different tracks/routes/stations). The whole thing should be renovated for the 21st Century, including the update to packet-switching as modern as was the circuit-switching back in the early 20th Century when it transformed New York life into unprecedented convenience, safety and efficiency.
--
make install -not war
Otherwise this would be a non-issue. $10/gallon of gas would help. For more on this and judgment based on discount rates, see the excellent paper at http://www.theoildrum.com/node/2592#more.
So the price is too low. How we adjust the gas tax to cover carbon output and military spending?
==>Lancer---
Is walking.
Seriously.
The fact that the idea is unattractive comes from the fact that development in most cities is not planned in a way that makes it feasible. I don't necessarily mean literally walking for a mile, I mean putting things people want into cities with sufficient density that most of the time you can walk from one place you want to be to another place.
Manhattan was designed this way by accident; New York was founded at the tip of a narrow island, and island that had good bedrock for anchoring tall buildings into. Consequently, they built up, which means that it is always feasible to walk from work to whatever kind of place you want to eat lunch, which isn't true in more sprawling cities. Furthermore, it's efficient and convenient to build a denser transit system, because each stop still serves as many people and businesses. My casual observation is that New Yorkers are generally less obese than people in more car-centric cities.
If you weather is bad, you can simply extend more of your city's commerical life underground, rather than simply transit. For models, try Montreal and Toronto. You can visit Montreal in the dead of winter and seldom if ever have literally go outside.
In the end, it is the horizontal scale of cities that make them inhospitable, not the vertical scale. More time is wasted getting from place to place, more resources are wasted in making it possible for people to use their cars to do so. Cities should build up, rather than out. It's a proven model: limit horizontal sprawl, make the city pedestrian friendly (Manhattan's sidewalks are HUGE, two or three times wider than most cities), tie the whole thing together with mass transit for when you need to go from downtown to uptown.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
So does the village prostitute...
and the village idiot for that matter.
I know NYC is looking for a Manhattan solution and the MIT project should be strongly considered.
Just imaging the taxi drivers fire bombing the little cars at night while parked and empty.
NYC taxi passenger pay the driver an extra large tip for accidentally (like a tank) running over the little MIT battery car.
Oh, the passenger might be an oil company CEO, or a rich-bit (P.Hilton) riding around for entertainment late Friday night.
THANKS MIT, I think the local news will be getting far more entertaining in America. The police chase eye in the sky will be over, next up Broadway BatCar attacks caught on cell-phones.
Unaccountable leaders are masters, and unrepresented people are slaves. How do US and EU fare?
You end up with the same problem with renting from Uhaul. Well, we were supposed to have a truck returned, but it hasn't shown up yet. You can wait several hours and hope or drive crosstown where we have one.
I do not see the City Car working in the US. Maybe Japan or Europe. The City Car is a people mover. Zip Car is a different idea that is working (not without complaints) in the US. There are 20 vehicles to choose from. Besides fun cars like convertibles, minis, and BMW, there are a larger vehicles (xB, Element, Escape, supposedly pickups) that would allow you go shopping, maybe pick up some smaller pieces of furniture. I know a couple of people in Chicago without vehicles that occasionally wish they had a vehicle, but can't justify the expense.
I don't live in no damn city, never plan on moving to one, and never ever plan on getting into a car that small. I'll keep my GMC Sierra, thank you.
an attempt to excuse shortsighted stupidity?
yes, the usa is not as densely populated as asia or europe
and it was allowed to do that on cheap oil and the internal combustion engine
those days are ending
please try to locate your local railroad station on a map, or buy a good bike
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Who says that there isn't going to be a deposit for renting the car high enough to deter stealing and reselling it? People would pay the multiple of its actual value for the sheer convenience of using it. Furthermore there would obviously be staff hired to keep those cars maintained.
This is a business model very susceptible to problems. Say, a group of 20 terrorists goes to 20 of these stations and puts one bomb on one of these cars. Because of the 'sharing,' people would very quickly stop using these. I'm not saying it is going to happen, just that it could.
The successful public library is identified with a particular neighborhood or community.
Ours is housed in a restored 19th Century Red Brick School, where it shares space with the cub scouts, a village museum, lecture hall, teen center, gymnasium and so on.
Kids have been playing basketball here for 100 years.
The library's core users own a great many books and the annual book sale is a reliable fund raiser.
Sounds like the Sinclair C5 which was permitted to go on the roads.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
We all know that this will never see public use. Cars will remain largely unchanged. Ethanol is already failing (see the article in the WSJ about VeraSun canceling its ethanol plant construction), hydrogen still too unsafe, fuel cells still too inefficient and hybrids still too expensive. Every fucking week we hear about some brand new gee-whiz auto concept (a hundred mpg! runs on water!), never to be heard from again.
It can be much more than a mile.
You need solutions for the community as a whole - not just the twenty-something adult more or less in his physical prime.
You need solutions that work as well in Buffalo as they do in Key West.
"Another version might be faster or have longer ranges for sprawling cities like Los Angeles where people would need a top speed of maybe 70 mph so they could safely enter highways, according to Vairani."
Hahahahaha! When I was in LA, the traffic went like 3MPH for a while, and like 90 the rest. I'd hate to be in something that tops at 70 there in the fast bits.
I don't live in no damn city, never plan on moving to one
But pretty soon you'll have to -- at the rate all of you backwater hicks breed, eventually we'll all have to live in skyscrapers just to make room for all of your borderline-illiterate offspring.
Maybe you should all just start being homosexual now, and spare us both the trouble, eh?
So MIT is spending/making how much on this boondoggle?
If you want to get about a city get a four stroke motocross bike or scooter, cheap, light, economical. I ride a large sports bike but that's preference and the fact I have a freeway commute. A push bike is good alternative if you like the exercise.
All the electric cars/bikes currently coming out of the startups/labs are crap. Neither fish nor fowl. Basically elitist thinking on how working people should commute. The average US city dweller is ready for small economical car, they're not going to ride in some plastic POS that looks like a child's plaything. Here's a simple reason the commute car is the same car they use at the weekend for much longer trips.
Or a car that won't let you leave your neighbourhood when homeland security/fema starts screwing it up.
while the concept is extremely interesting and very laudable i cant help but feel that real life was not taken into account here.
wont stacking the cars scratch the paint?
wont stacking the cars mean the car in the middle cant move until the cars in front or behind that car has moved out of its parking spot?
plus, where's the bumper? that car wont last a day in cairo traffic
_ In Egypt Networks: Network Solutions with a Twist
Is that for me to drive to City Wok and get and order of City Beef before I drive to the City Wall or City Airlines?
Seriously. It is. I live a mile (almost exactly) from a train station, and there's absolutely nothing wrong with spending 15 minutes walking to the station in the morning. If I'm in a hurry I can jog it in less than 10. Of course I drive most of the time because I'm lazy, but if (as is the case now, my fault for owning a borderline antique
When did brief periods of physical exercise cease to be an option? The amount that we, as a society, would save on heart medication alone is probably reason enough.
Rampant carbon sequestration destroyed the Dinosaurs' tropical paradise. I'm here to help repair the damage.
Do you hear that?
That's the sound of the sarcasm flying over your head.
Learn to read (between the lines) before you comment.
It depends on your culture.
We have shared bikes in Munich/Germany for years and they work. The company already expanded to other cities and is now owned by German Rail.
See http://www.call-a-bike.de/
k2r.
there are a larger vehicles (xB, Element, Escape, supposedly pickups) that would allow you go shopping
I drive an Audi TT, my wife a Mini. Hardly cars that are known to have much space. However grocery shopping is not a problem. You don't need a truck for that.
The transition of parking methods might be painless, but what this technology will do is increase the number of cars on the road. As the cars have to be 'unstacked' to be driven, they will take up the same amount of room (width x following distance) on the road as an ordinary Fiat Punto or similar. So, dumping more cars in the centre of Milan will not be painless in the long term.
or an even better idea, is a stackable cheap form of transport which has the nice side effect of improving the fitness of the user: that's right it's the bicycle! This obsession with 'clean' electric cars - which use up lots of resources, and have golf-buggy performance is completely stupid. Whilst everyone is obsessed with obesity, we should be changing our lifestlyes to include more excercise. Already in london I see lots of these electric cars which take up space on the roads and are slower than my bike. The real answer to city traffic is to make it safer to cycle and encourage everyone to do it - a good example of where this has been part of the culture is in Copenhagen. There are cycle lanes everywhere, cyclists who obey red lights and ample, safe cycle parking. The taxis even have attachements to carry bikes when the cyclist is tired / has shopping to carry home. Compare this to London, where you risk your life cycling anywhere, have to chain your bike up with a dozen locks so it doesn't get knicked (and when it does the police don't really care) have to contend with insane cycle lane layouts, and would never dare ask a cabbie to carry your bike on the back of his cab! - and guess which city has the worst congestion...
Yes, it means I can give it to other people if I want to.
I predict that this will have about as much success as the Segway, as in, no success. This car would ONLY be useful for short commutes in a big city, where you don't have to haul anything like lots of groceries, golf clubs, etc. In my city, virtually no one actually LIVES in the city, everyone commutes via freeways. No one is going to take one of these on a 55 mpg freeway with large trucks flying by.
Where? You guys lie.
FAQs are evil.
And the very next thing after mentioning shopping is furniture, for which a truck would indeed be mightily useful. He also didn't mention groceries before 'shopping', he could have been talking about a visit to the hardware store to pick up lumber for some project.
Heck, I'd consider signing up for it - I have a small car that I use for daily commutes, but there are occasions where I have had to scramble to borrow/rent a larger vehicle.
To put it another way - I'm running an occasional use vehicle subscription service - should I only offer Honda Civics? Minis? Or would also offering a few full size SUVs and trucks improve my service, even if there's an additional surcharge for the larger vehicle?
I don't read AC A human right
What if your car is in the middle of the stack and you come out of Starbuck's and want to go home? Not a good selling point.
StoneCypher is Full of BS
Oh, yes, I saw the furniture. How many times a year do you go shopping for furniture? Besides, most companies will have a delivery service. Everything that means "hauling large stuff" is *by definition* not "classic shopping". Shopping for me involves buying food and/or clothes. Anything else is exotic.
I hate it when people say "I need a big car for shopping". That's bolloks and you know it.
What could be more fun than having my car collapse when hit from behind and simultaneously ... ,,,
catapulting me through the air
[cue Carnival Trapeze Music]
with the greatest of ease
like that daring young man on the flying trapeze.
Whoo hoo this is better than bungee jumping off the Empire State Building...
"The problem with mass transit is it kind of takes you to where you want to go and at the approximate time you want to get there, but not exactly. Sometimes you have to walk up to a mile from the last train or subway stop,"
It only takes 15 minutes to walk a mile. I just walked a mile in a light rain from my train station to work. It was not an undue burden on me, and most able-bodied individuals shouldn't need a 1,000 pound electric device to pull it off. A good system of bike lanes and parking would solve the same problem, be substantially less expensive, and be more than adequate for all trips under 2 miles.
I'm all for electric vehicles, but the "city car" is an oxymoron. Amsterdam does it right. Make the city safe and convenient for bikes and people will bike. Use buses and rail for longer hauls. This doesn't take any new technology, but the political will isn't there to pull it off.
For the record, I'm a zip car member, and I hate it. It's expensive and inconvenient. The last time I went to pick up my car, it wasn't there, and I spent half an hour walking around the neighborhood in a downpour looking for it. I've been a member off and on since they started, and every time I've gone to pick up a car it's been a hassle. Every time I've used the car it would have been cheaper to rent for a full day. The only reason I hold on to it is for emergencies.
How many times a year do you go shopping for furniture?
About once. Maybe twice if you count book shelves. As a guy I'm not obsessed with 'matching' furniture. Of course I live in a rural area and do my own house work. It's much cheaper for me to borrow or rent a vehicle than to pay to have something delivered.
Anything else is exotic.
Thing is, exotic uses happen. Here we have a car subscription service where you pick up a vehicle when you need it and return it when you're done. You're not limited to a single vehicle, or even a single vehicle type.
Maybe I want one for a couple days to go camping or hunting. Maybe somebody is moving aparments and needs a truck for the bed/sofa.
It ends up being a simple question: Does making a pickup truck availabe to check out improve the system or not? I'd tend to say yes, it can help the system, as if you have a few thousand people subscribing, there'll be somebody looking for a truck at least some of the time. Kinda like how there might be a party or visiting relatives to make a multipassanger van or SUV make more sense than trying to deal with two or three subcompacts.
Look at it this way: At least the truck is going to be used for truck appropriate uses 50% of the time rather than 1-10% of the time like the truck bought to haul a boat trailor four weekends out of the year. It doesn't really matter that you can't think of a reason you'd need a truck, they still sell like hotcakes, so there has to be reasons that they're popular.
I don't read AC A human right
I think we agree... We just focus on different things. My main gripe was with the fact that the old "shopping argument" was once again used. The addition of some larger cars to the system is okay, unless people start to take them because they are larger just for being larger and not for actually hauling things. So, if some guy thinks he needs a truck to do his grocery shopping, he really should get a bit education first and then take the Mini.
Exotic shopping happens but delivery also happens and is cheaper than owning a big car. Camping must be a big American thing. I haven't been camping in the last 20 years, and I don't feel like doing it either.
Last time I moved, I rented a truck. 250€ for the weekend... That's not that much, is it?
So, yes, allow 10% bigger cars, but I think people wanting those should prove that they need them for hauling/camping/etc. Otherwise, it's going to get abused.
Walking is fine. But I'm glad that you bring up trains. PRT is trying to replace trains not offer doorstop service. PRT still has stations so you still have to walk the last few hundred feet. The thing is PRT is more cost effecient, better for the environment and when built in a network can serve more people because it can have more stations in more various locations. Plus you get non-stop service from your source station to your destination station. I really don't see why you would want to take a train when this service was an alternative. The only thing trains work well for are longer hauls. For that trains can stay around. And of course for freight in which trains should be preferential to Trucking.
and freezing rain. I know this because the last time I dropped my Kz400, there was snow on the ground. If you add a third wheel to your cabin cycle, you get a Reliant Robin, which was so successful they closed down years ago.
unless people start to take them because they are larger just for being larger and not for actually hauling things
I mentioned having an additional fee for the larger vehicle... If they feel the need for the larger vehicle, let them pay for it.
Lately many of my purchases have been for big things - power tools, lumber, appliances, plumbing supplies(like 3 meter sections of pipe). A truck, while not absolutely necessary, would have made getting a number of those purchases home easier.
Last time I moved, I rented a truck. 250 for the weekend... That's not that much, is it?
Even assuming $1=1, it's about double what I'd pay for a big diesel Uhaul type panel truck for the weekend.
So, yes, allow 10% bigger cars, but I think people wanting those should prove that they need them for hauling/camping/etc. Otherwise, it's going to get abused.
No need to do that, simply charge more for the larger vehicles. Make it a profit leader, IE 5% of small car rental is profit, 10% for large/cool vehicle. If a car is $10 for a day, and a truck is $20, it'll control most abuses.
If the large vehicles don't have enough availability, buy more.
Do you mean a car that's 10% larger, or have 10% of the fleet be larger vehicles?
I don't read AC A human right
Even assuming $1=1€, it's about double what I'd pay for a big diesel Uhaul type panel truck for the weekend.
I live in an extremely expensive country. Just for comparison: my rent is 1300€/month for a 80sq metre apartment (861 square feet according to google). I won't say, I swallow 250€ like that, but it's not the end of the world for something you planned (like moving, you don't do that on a whim) [Sidenote: to have a visible euro sign on slashdot, use html entities: € = €]
Do you mean a car that's 10% larger, or have 10% of the fleet be larger vehicles?
I was talking about the fleet...
As said, I don't disagree with anything you say... I just find "shopping" a very lame excuse for justifying a large car.
Agreed. I think it depends on where you live. I bet all the points listed above would go off very well if a program like that were implemented in Japan.
After moving to Japan, I had a lot of assumptions that I thought were universal turned upside down. One of the surprises was that people here tend to take much better care of public/semi-public property. Shopkeepers often clean the sidewalks in front of their businesses, people don't generally throw trash on the ground (even though in the cities I have lived, trashcans have been mostly removed), public transportation is clean, vending machines are not vandalized, etc.
No place is perfect, but the particular assumption I used to have about people trashing public/outdoor property is not generally true here.
oops, didn't preview enough, I simply copied and pasted your euro. € € €
my rent is 1300/month for a 80sq metre apartment (861 square feet according to google).
Youch. My house payment is $240/month. For something like 1200 sq ft, not including the attached 2 car garage or unfinished basement.
I don't read AC A human right
No worries about the Euro sign. Guessed as much, and I didn't know if you knew about HTML entities. I like to point them out on geek sites like slashdot.
I wish I could have a house at 250€/month. Heck, I'd pay 4x more for a house like yours and be happy. A mortgage payment would most probably swallow my whole salary and a part of my wifes salary for a house the size you have.
Not only was the concept on a tiny car already reused, but the fact that the vehicle folds-in on itself was taken from a several-years-old Toyota concept vehicle (Personal Mobility) too.
Karma: NaN
is the usa still in iraq?
do people still deny climate change?
you're right, it's not a good joke
it's a sobering reality
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Comment removed based on user account deletion
The guys from Top Gear did a hilarious review of the car last week, and proved that you could indeed drive it TO work (in the elevator, down the corridor, and to your desk). It's even got a handle on the back to pick it up with.
They cut the bit with risk assement, health and safety impacts, modifications to the car to remove the exhaust, and the fact it needed 6 blokes to lift it up to the news 24 studio because there wasn't a large enough lift
Pwnt. Me like.