http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFwX...ne-way-urban-transit/&feature=player_embedded
The stackable city car. Carbon free car!
Researchers at the MIT Media Lab envision a fleet of lightweight stackable electric cars that can help reduce congestion and urban energy waste.
By Robert Weisman, Globe Staff | February 18, 2007
CAMBRIDGE ? Will the car of the future be foldable?
That?s the vision of a team of researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology?s Media Lab. With backing from General Motors Corp., they are building a prototype of a lightweight electric vehicle that can be cheaply mass-produced, rented by commuters under a shared-use business model, and folded and stacked like grocery carts at subway stations or other central sites.
It?s called the City Car, and the key to the concept lies in the design of its wheels. Dreamers have been reinventing the wheel since the days of cave dwellers. But the work underway in ?the Cube,? the Media Lab?s basement studio, may be the most ambitious remake yet.
The MIT team has transformed the lowly wheel into a sophisticated robotic drive system that will power the City Car. Embedded in each of its four wheels will be an electric motor, steering and braking mechanisms, suspension, and digital controls, all integrated into sealed units that can be snapped on and off.
And under the hood . . . well, there won?t be a hood on the City Car. Just an eggshell-shaped glass plate ? part roof, part windshield ? framing the modular cabin and stretching almost to the chassis.
?We?re eliminating the internal combustion engine,? said Media Lab research assistant Ryan Chin , studio coordinator for City Cars. He said the four electric motors will enable a more efficient use of power by also dispensing with the transmission and driveline. ?We?re removing as much hardware from the car as possible.?
In its place will be software that sets passenger preferences, changes the color of the cabin, controls the dashboard look and feel, and even directs drivers to parking spaces. ?We think of the car as a big mobile computer with wheels on it,? Chin said. ?This car should have a lot of computational power. It should know where the potholes are.?
And like a computer, the car will start with the push of a button. Instead of a steering wheel, it has handlebars, akin to a scooter or motorbike. But the ride will be more like a traditional car, though smoother and quieter, Chin said. The body of the car will be made of lightweight composite material such as Kevlar or carbon fiber.
Among the car?s other design departures are its folding chassis, enabling it to be stacked at designated parking areas across an urban area, where it could also be recharged. It also has a zero-turn radius, courtesy of a wheel configuration that provides omnidirectional motion. For the City Car, the traditional U-turn will be replaced by an O-turn, ideal for fitting into tight spaces.
The concept of the City Car was hatched by the Media Lab?s Smart Cities group, as part of a strategy for reducing carbon emissions. The team is being led by William J. Mitchell , professor of architecture and media arts and sciences.
Some of the Jetsonesque design of the City Car was inspired by the researchers? work with pioneering architect Frank Gehry , a friend of Mitchell, and associates at Gehry?s architectural firm in Los Angeles. Gehry?s firm was initially a partner, but has since scaled back its involvement to an advisory role.
Media Lab researchers are planning to have their prototype completed by the end of the year.
?I think we?ll be driving it around the interior of this building,? Chin said, ?and hopefully ask the MIT police to let us drive it around a parking lot.?
The three-year-old project is moving forward under the watchful eyes of liaisons from General Motors, a Media Lab sponsor, and MIT researchers hope the automaker will build a City Car concept vehicle in 2008 to demonstrate at auto shows.
GM devotes a portion of its $6 billion-plus annual research-and-development budget on university projects such as City Car to help its own researchers think out of the box, said Roy J. Mathieu , a GM staff researcher in Warren, Mich., who visits the Media Lab twice a semester and keeps in close contact with Chin?s team.
?They?re a rich cauldron of ideas we can use to develop concepts for our future cars,? Mathieu said. ?They?re trying to imagine how the car will fit into the city in the future. Their ideas are interesting and intriguing, and we want to see if any of them fit into our technology road map.?
Rebecca Lindland , director of automotive research at Global Insight in Lexington, said City Car is one of a number of futuristic designs being developed by automakers and independent labs to demonstrate new technologies and concepts at a time of growing concern about global warming, traffic, and energy efficiency.
?The existing infrastructures can?t support the population growth that we?re seeing, so we?re going to have to find viable alternative vehicles like the one MIT is designing,? Lindland said.
Unless the cars can prove crashworthy and meet government speed and emissions standards, however, their applications may be limited to gated communities and entertainment parks, she said.
Chin said the design remains a work in progress, and if necessary the team will reinforce the car to make it crashworthy.
As the MIT researchers envision it, the City Car won?t replace private cars or mass transit systems but ease congestion by enabling shared transportation in cities. Commuters could use them for one-way rentals, swiping their credit cards to grab a City Car from the front of a stack at a central point such as a school, day-care center, or office building.
?What you?ll be buying is mobility,? Chin said.
I LOVE this car! It?s fast, it?s fully electric, and with the work of people like John Bedini and Tom Bearden, we will be able to extend the life of our batteries by 15-20 years!!!
Bye Bye Batteries & Internal Combustion Engines?
1996, General Motors introduced the electric car; in 2003 they killed it -recalling and systemically destroying hundreds of the test vehicles. This might go down as one of the greatest blunders in the history of the automotive industry. With a trillion dollars worth of oil still under the earth?s surface, the entrenched status quo mentality of the auto and big oil business prevailed.
But other, more farsighted visionaries believe the death knell for transportation as we know it may soon be ringing.
An innovative new startup company called EEStor is promising ?technologies for replacement of electrochemical batteries.? Basically, their invention would mean a motorist could plug in a car for just five minutes and drive 500 miles without gasoline. Traditional batteries haven?t progressed all that far beyond the basic design developed by Alessandro Volta in the 19th century. But a new patent has caused rising speculation that things are about to change.
?It?s a paradigm shift,? said Ian Clifford, chief executive of Toronto-based ZENN Motor Co., which has licensed EEStor?s invention. ?The Achilles? heel to the electric car industry has been energy storage. By all rights, this would make internal combustion engines unnecessary.?
Currently plug-in hybrids are in production that would require motorists to charge their cars in a wall outlet overnight and supply only 50 miles of gasoline-free commute. Hybrids now on the road today still depend largely on fossil fuels.
ZENN Motor company bought rights to EEStor?s technology in August 2005 and expects EEStor to start shipping the battery replacement later this year for use in ZENN Motor?s short-range, low-speed vehicles.
The technology also could help invigorate the renewable-energy sector by providing efficient, lightning-fast storage for solar power, or, on a small scale, a flash-charge for cell phones and laptops.
Skeptics, though, fear the claims stretch the bounds of existing technology to the point of disbelief.
?We?ve been trying to make this type of thing for 20 years and no one has been able to do it,? said Robert Hebner, director of the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics. ?Depending on who you believe, they?re at or beyond the limit of what is possible.?
Previous attempts to improve ultracapacitors have focused on improving the metal sheets by increasing the surface area where charges can attach.
EEStor is instead creating better nonconductive material for use between the metal sheets, using a chemical compound called barium titanate. The question is whether the company can mass-produce it.
EEStor?s says its secret material is sandwiched between thousands of wafer-thin metal sheets. Charged particles stick to the metal sheets and move quickly across EEStor?s proprietary material, resulting in an ultracapacitor, a battery-like device that stores and releases energy quickly.
Batteries rely on chemical reactions to store energy but can take hours to charge and release energy. The simplest capacitors found in computers and radios hold less energy but can charge or discharge instantly. Ultracapacitors are the best of both by stacking capacitors to increase capacity while maintaining the speed of simpler capacitors.
Hebner said vehicles require bursts of energy to accelerate, a task better suited for capacitors than the batteries used now.
?The idea of getting rid of the batteries and putting in capacitors is to get more power back and get it back faster,? Hebner said.
Researcher Joseph Perry at Georgia Tech has used the same material to double the amount of energy a capacitor can hold. Perry says EEstor claim would be an improvement of more than 400-fold, yet increasing a capacitor?s retention ability often results in decreased strength of the materials.
?They?re not saying a lot about how they?re making these things,? Perry said. ?With these materials (described in the patent), that is a challenging process to carry out in a defect-free fashion.?
Perry said nothing close to EEStor?s claim is known to exist today. Until EEStor produces a final product that can be verified, energy professionals and enthusiasts alike are waiting to see if the company can live up to its six-word promise and banish the battery to recycling bins around the world.
?I am skeptical but I?d be very happy to be proved wrong,? said Perry.
Burn rubber, not gasoline - TESLA MOTORS
The Tesla Roadster will be featured on the upcoming Discovery Channel special, ?FutureCar,? starting February 7. Catch an interview with Tesla Motors executives in the episode, ?The Fuel.?
Learn more
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We could have had these years ago. Why did GM back off this ?
Big Oil
And now look where it got GM . Stock selling for less than a buck.
