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MIT reinvents the wheel with foldable, stackable car

By Sharon Gaudin , Computerworld , 11/08/2007
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Ever wish you could drive around the city but not worry about parking?

If so, several MIT researchers may have just the thing for you. A team at the Cambridge, Mass.-based university is working on a design project for the City Car, a foldable, stackable two-seater vehicle. No, that's not a typo. The frame of the car is designed to fold in half so the cars can be stacked up eight deep in one city parking space.

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.

The City Car, a foldable, stackable two-seater vehicle.The City Car, a foldable, stackable two-seater vehicle. 

Time magazine recently named the project one of the Best Inventions of the Year.

According to Vairani, the team is trying to rethink the relationship between cities and automobiles.

"At one point, I was having a conversation with Will [Lark], and we wanted to find a solution to parking," said Vairani. "There's a huge number of cars in parking garages, on the side of the roads. They don't do anything for eight hours a day, and then they go a few miles, and then they don't do anything again. What if people didn't own them? What if they used them and then folded them up and stacked them away?"

The City Car team is in the process of having a prototype of the vehicle built. Vairani said General Motors sponsors the Media Lab where his team works, but it doesn't have an agreement with any manufacturer to buy the plans.

The two-seater is designed to weigh 1,000 to 1,500 pounds, according to Vairani. Right now, it's expected to cruise at average city speed limits and may even be capable of topping 100 miles per hour.

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Comments (9)
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It also addresses the issueBy Ellen Kranzer on November 16, 2007, 12:53 pmIt also addresses the issue of people who keep a car in the city primarily for short local trips like driving a child to school or the doctor's office or doing the...

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Read againBy Anonymous on November 16, 2007, 9:57 amThe article states that the passenger cabin itself does NOT fold.

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MIT stackable CarBy Anonymous on November 12, 2007, 12:19 amIt solves the problem currently solved by taxis and subway not for the suburban commuter who drives in and parks in those garages and on the streets

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ThanksBy Anonymous on November 10, 2007, 1:03 pmThanks for the pic links, I wanted pictures too

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no pictures -- seeBy Anonymous on November 10, 2007, 12:39 pmhttp://www.engadget.com/2005/12/30/mits-stackable-concept-car/ http://www.treehugger.com/files/2007/02/mits_stackable.php http://www.news.com/2300-13833_3-6216805-1.html

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