Discussion on:

MIT's radical proposal for an ultra-compact, foldable electric vehicle

Although it seems that we actually buy the most expensive car we can afford in this country, if we instead motivated by price, we'd still have to buy the car that meets our most extreme needs. Am I ever going to have to take the car out of town? If so, I need that 300 mile range.

When calculating cost of transportation, those pushing for use of public transportation often ignore the fact that whether we use public transportation or not, we still have to own a personal car. For this concept to work, it would have to be significantly more convenient than other options, and I can see how in might be. If I worked downtown (instead of driving right past downtown like I do today) I might actually consider something like this, but even then I suspect it would be an added expense, depending on whether or not I had to pay for parking my personal vehicle.

The comment by AlanLaRue is a good illustration of the difficulty of changing mindsets. We think of cars as something we own rather than something we rent to meet the needs of the moment. Still, the MIT idea has merit as a component of a mass transit system that services a city core. There's lots of places where the commute from suburbs to the city core is quite bad & parking is expensive, but it's impractical to place enough rail stops within short walking distance of all locations within the core.

What about a ski-lift gondola type of approach? Platforms could be above street level, no parking issues, no battery recharging, no need for sophisticated folding geometries, individual gondolas would be much cheaper than these independent vehicles. Subway (mass transit) stops would be hubs, with lifts radiating from each. The issues of multiple stations and of acceleration/deceleration onto the main cable have already been solved.
BTW: 20 megawatts does not charge the city of Boston for two minutes. Perhaps 20 MW-hours is the average consumption in two minutes, but that translates to an average power demand of 600 megawatts. Please take care in distinguishing between quantities of energy and energy flow rates.

Why not just automate all vehicles, built 'em to last, and make 'em available to anyone that needs to get anywhere. Every vehicle would simple continually courier ppl around until it needed a charge - and automatically go charge itself.
wouldn't anywhere near as many cars in exstance, no accidents - due to computer controlled driving.
The Future As it Could be! TVP

LOL, just read the artical. So yeah they get the idea. I don't see why this couldn't be a FREE public service.

"...make 'em available to anyone that needs to get anywhere. Every vehicle would simple continually courier ppl around until it needed a charge - and automatically go charge itself."

So you want an electric taxi service without the driver? Now if this was a solid free market solution, then everything would be run by the taxi service. They are out to make money, so if this sort of idea would actually make money then they would be all over it. So if the free market doesn't already run some sort of gasoline version of this, then I suspect that this idea may cost more than the theory appears to be on paper. I am already taxed enough and can barely afford to feed my wife and kids. I don't want more taxes so I ride a car that I don't own, maintained by a government labor union. And my wife is mildly allergic to cigarette smoke, so does that mean I will have to accept that she'll have migraines every day she wants to travel out of the house? But then I suppose someone will just say that we should outlaw smoking....

Personally, I like this rental idea if it is a free market solution. We rent the carts at the airport to transport our luggage. We rent cars from the airport to get around town. Personally, I think you should keep government, both local and federal out of this. I would rather drive an Alamo ultra-compact, foldable electric vehicle, or National, or Avis, etc. They'll charge me a fee for local insurance coverage on the vehicle, or perhaps my current auto policy will cover it--my coverage already covers rental cars for personal use (not business) and we know that because we asked for a trip where we flew across half the United States to attend my cousins wedding so we then chose to opt out of the coverage the rental agency would have sold us to save some cash since we were already covered.

Over 50 years ago, Goofy had one of these cars in a cartoon I saw at the movies. Always did want one!

Dear Santa, YES please! Thank You

A variation on this: create "rail lines" that can be used by a specially built car which can also operate over city streets. The so-called rail line provides electrical power to the car when it is on the line. When the car reaches a station of sorts it drops off and travels around the city on battery. The batteries now available can supply enough power for the short trips around town. The driver drives from home on the battery to a station, enters onto the rail line, travels to the station nearest his destination and drops off, and uses the car for the short travel to his destination. The battery can be charged on the rail line. The rail line would cost far less to build than an expressway and take a fraction of the land. And, the rail lines need not be confined to commuters but could extend to distant cities. Cars could be built that could provide sleeping accommodations for long trips and the driver could sleep over long distances; New York to Chicago, sleeping most of the way or working on some paperwork, viewing the scenery, or whatever with a computer system alerting the driver when he nears his drop-off point.. The total cost to build such rail lines would be a fraction of the cost of expressways, as noted before, and the maintenance costs would likewise be a fraction of expressway maintenance cost. Two rail lines could fit into the mall between lanes of most existing expressways. Nearly all the technology for this already exists.

Looks cool, but 300w is barely more power than an electric bike
(max power by law limited to 250w). It'll be slow.

While I like the idea - I don't think computer controlled would be the best solution. Can we way Power Outage? Should the power go out at my place or work or my home - I can still get in a car and navigate. If the power goes out - the computer goes down - then what? Will the car operate manually?

The rail line also suggests that I will never vary from my path to run an errand - pick up dinner/dry cleaning/etc.

2 problems still arise: Those of us who do not live in the city but need to "commute" into the city - we would still need a car that can reach highway speeds for much more than 20 miles.

Second problem - electricity is not free - and it still has a carbon footprint, no matter which way you look at it. In places that rely on gas/coal fired power plants, all you are doing is shifting the primary CO emissions from a vehicles motor to the power plants.

In an ideal world, most families would need 2 vehicles then - one electric, mini, foldable and low powered, and the second, a mid-to-full-sized highway capable vehicle for those longer trips.

I think the MIT team is being too myopic with their announcements that only focus on the "inner city" aspects of transportation, and their so-called "first mile/last mile". While that may be true for core City-Dwellers, it still does not address a growing population that live outside any city limits.

We need something a bit more relevant to todays requirements, and not pipe-dreams.

antennamandan@...

And just who pays for this FREE SERVICE under you plan? I know most city and state governments and certainly the federal government are already borrowing too much money.

$40 out of every $100 spent by the feds is borrowed.