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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.'"
this was only on here a few days ago, nice going ZONK
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
http://hardware.slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=07/11/05/2055234
appleguru.org
I couldn't find any pics, but by your description Europe is filled with such cars. Sometimes the European "cars" even have bike handles used to steer them with. I don't know how safe they are, but they're certainly prevalent in Europe where space is at a premium (I'm sure they have a nice price tag that doesn't hurt either).
Link to pictures here. (from the original post here on slashdot)
I don't know which cars you're talking about.. Being an European myself, the only car I can think of that closely resembles the MIT's prototype is the Smart. And even then, only the basic model, the Smart Roadster, for example, has more of a buggy look to it.
Anyway, while I've certainly seen plenty of them around, there even seems to be a tuning cult around them (Smart with a Lamborghini Diablo engine beating a Ferrari), I've yet to see a single one with a bike handle instead of a driving wheel.
But the City Car concept reminds me of the city bike system many European cities have adopted. The idea is basically the same: you have some sort of a sign-up procedure, community card or something like that. With plenty of bike "parks" spread across the city, all you need to do is pick one up from a park near the start point, cycle to the bike park closest to your destination and drop it off.. And it works! The number of people using them in Lyon, for example, really blew my mind. It also raised some issues when, at about 3am, I saw a couple of teenagers driving them while obviously intoxicated.. But I suppose they're bound to get into a lot less trouble than if they were driving a car.
As far as safety is concerned, they were meant to be driven within a city, ie, I seriously doubt they were built for speed, what with those pesky speed limits being the lowest and all. Overall, I've seen some vehicles (a couple of models specially designed for the handicapped come to mind) that seemed way more unsafe/weak than the MIT's prototype.
It might be a really good idea, as long as people don't treat them like crap just because it's not theirs..
Both the Smart Roadster and the Smart ForFour have been discontinued. They only make the ForTwo now.
Ahhh...the great dumpster continuum. Many a free computer will be found there. -- sowth (748135)
In England a lot of people from the south-east (around London) travel by train to London every day (over a million people travel to London from outside the urban area, the urban area is 40 miles across). If you live in a town the fast trains (that only stop at big towns) are fine. If you live in a small village, the train to London is likely to stop at several villages between the two nearest towns, then miss out all the small villages after that (there will be a different service that stops at these stations). The only time this is annoying is if you want to go from one small village to another some distance away, since you'll probably have to change trains.
There are some car-sharing schemes (like this one) in London, every so often someone gives me a flier in the street. I don't know if they're clean (I don't drive!).
The trains here are generally clean (they're cleaned at least every day, probably more often). The mess is usually just the free newspapers.
Bikes? Cars as well:
http://new.greenwheels.nl/
Quite popular in Amsterdam, as I've been told. I've seen quite a few around.
They do have this in the U.S. too. Philadelphia at least.
Philly Car Share
Interesting program, never tried it myself, but I did live a block away from one of the car parks at one point, so I was curious enough to look into it.
Touch everywhere, even when inappropriate.