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Segway, GM Partner On Two-Wheeled Electric Car
Slartibartfast was one of many readers sending in news of GM's partnership with Segway to develop a two-seater urban electric vehicle. It's called the Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility, or "PUMA." This is just a prototype, so don't get your credit card out yet. Its total cost of ownership could be about 1/4 that of a traditional car, GM says. The prototype runs for 35 miles, at a top speed of 35 mph, on lithium-ion batteries. It features the now-familiar Segway balancing technology, though fore-and-aft training wheels are visible on the prototype. Some commentators have likened it to a high-tech rickshaw, others to a golf cart. Engadget describes how the ride feels.
Their weather (if you can call it that) is just a wee bit different as well. One of those little SMART cars would be the dumbest choice you could make for winter driving here.
My friend has a smart. My boss has a mini. We live in sunny Montreal. Here we hit 30 degrees in summer and -30 in winter. That's a 60 degree c swing yearly and in 2007-2008, we had 3 (three) meters of snowfall. In winter they put on winter tires and driver very comfortably through snow. Moreover, my boss had a jeep explorer beforehand, and he had a harder time driving it on ice than the mini.
I think countries like Norway may actually know what snow is, ice and black ice are. I understand that from an intuitive point of view, it looks weird as it seems natural that a hummer with huge tires would get a better grip on the street than a dinky little car, but the issue of sliding is more a question of friction, and these car were designed to grip the road. Their wheels are placed "SMART"ly and the weight is "SMART"ly distributed.