The Gadgets Page

I’ve talked before about the idea of Car Sharing. You don’t actually own a car, you own a membership in a car sharing program, so you can pick up a car when you need one, but not have to deal with all the ownership problems of autos.

MIT has taken the idea one step further with these stackable City Cars.

MIT is working in conjunction with GM on these cars:

The City Car is a stackable electric two-passenger city vehicle. The one-way sharable user model is designed to be used in dense urban areas. Vehicle Stacks will be placed throughout the city to create an urban transportation network that takes advantage of existing infrastructure such as subway and bus lines. By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility. The stack receives incoming vehicles and electrically charges them. Similar to luggage carts at the airport, users simply take the first fully charged vehicle at the front of the stack. The City car is NOT a replacement for personal vehicles, taxis, buses, or trucks; it is a NEW vehicle type that promotes a socially responsible and more effective means of urban mobility.

You can see a video of how they might work here:

I LOVE new ideas for transportation and I’m sure Walt Disney would be just giddy with excitement if he was alive to see this video today.

Via: Popgadget Personal Technology for Women: CityCar paves the way for smart parking