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MIT Reinvents Transportation With Foldable, Stackable Car

alphadogg writes "Parking in a downtown area is one of the least enjoyable elements of driving. MIT researchers may have found a solution: a car you can fold up before parking. The boxy conveyance folds in half, and the plan is for the vehicle to fit eight in one conventional parking spot. 'Franco Vairani, a Ph.D. candidate at MIT and one of the original designers in the City Car project, said his team is taking a vending-machine approach to city travel. In his vision of the future, people would find a stack of electrical-powered City Cars on nearly every block in the city. When a user would want to drive somewhere in town, he would swipe a smart card or cell phone across an electronic reader and take a car out of the stack. When he gets to a business meeting across town, a shopping mall or their doctor's office, the driver simply leaves the car in a stack at his destination. The drivers don't own the cars. They simply rent them. It's fully self-service. The next person takes a car out of the stack, and off he goes.'"

10 of 158 comments (clear)

  1. /. invents stackable stories by kooky45 · · Score: 5, Funny

    /. invents identical stackable stories. Take one, and the next identical one is available in line. The idea was copied from MIT as reported on /. some days ago.

  2. A car that folds up *before* parking eh? by mrjb · · Score: 4, Funny

    Seems ingenious. But remember to GET OUT of the car before parking it.

    --
    Visit http://ringbreak.dnd.utwente.nl/~mrjb/growingbettersoftware to download your free copy of the book
    1. Re:A car that folds up *before* parking eh? by Triv · · Score: 2, Funny

      But remember to GET OUT of the car before parking it.


      Who is driving? Oh my god Bear is driving HOW CAN THAT BE?

  3. Re:less dupes please by MillionthMonkey · · Score: 5, Funny

    This is a foldable dupe so it doesn't take as much room on the front page. You can fit six more dupes about this story in the same space that a regular article would take.

  4. It'll never work by Bloke+down+the+pub · · Score: 4, Funny

    I had an idea for these things like a car but bigger, with maybe 20 or even 40 seats. The plan is that they'd circulate around or maybe go backwards and forwards between two points. You get on, pay some money, and then get off when it's close to where you're going.

    --
    It's true I tell you, feller at work's next door neighbour read it in the paper.
  5. Re:Dupe, dupe, dupe! by Rogerborg · · Score: 5, Funny

    Further evidence that "Slashdot editors" are neither editors, nor do they even read Slashdot. The only reason that I believe that they haven't been replaced with very small shell scripts is that I find it hard to believe that a script could do such a bad job.

    --
    If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
  6. Wow, Zonk is popular by FoolsGold · · Score: 2, Funny

    You know you're doing well as a Slashdot editor when your article's tags are:

    zonkcantread, zonkisanidiot, zonksucks

    So much love!

  7. Re:The American educational system; by Culture20 · · Score: 2, Funny

    Known: Women hover over toilets
    Hypothesis: Men could use this special hovering power by riding women over a line of toilets...
    Testable? No, at least not by slashdotters.

  8. Re:52 other states by Dare+nMc · · Score: 2, Funny

    with all our military action and spending, you would think we could have 2-3 more by now.

  9. Re:less dupes please by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Funny

    Boy, wish someone could post a car analogy...