Tackling urban gridlock with foldable car
Mon Mar 10, 2008 8:53am EDT
SphereBy Allyn Fisher-Ilan
CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts (Reuters) - Wouldn't it be nice to drive a car into town without worrying about finding a parking space?
Scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have devised just such a vehicle, a futuristic "City Car" that could even drive itself.
Once at your destination, the vehicle's computers would, at the press of a button, look for a parking spot behind others like itself, then fold roughly in half so you could stack it there as you would a shopping cart.
"We have reinvented urban mobility," said Bill Mitchell, a professor in architecture and director of the project at an MIT think tank in Cambridge, just outside Boston.
The vehicle hasn't yet been built. But a miniature mock-up version has gone on display at a campus museum, and there are plans to build a full-scale model this spring.
The dozen or so engineers and architects on Mitchell's team are confident their computer-generated work is on target.
They feel their golf cart-sized vehicle could provide a novel solution to the chronic traffic congestion afflicting cities across the United States, Europe and Asia -- not to mention pollution and energy use, since it would run on a rechargeable battery, the researchers say.
On the drawing board, their two-seater is roughly half the size of a typical compact automobile and a little smaller than the Smart car made by Daimler's Mercedes-Benz. Continued...
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