Urban drivers spend an average of 20 minutes per trip looking for parking and studies have found that anywhere from about 30 to 60 percent of the cars you see driving around a downtown core are doing just that. The energy spent looking for parking burns 47,000 gallons of gas and generates 730 tons of carbon dioxide a year and in dense cities like New York City, can account for up to 40% of energy consumed by automobiles.
Urbanists have long seen the emergence of self-driving cars as the solution to problems posed by parking as well as other urban ills; as fleets of robocars replace the need for individual car ownership, the amount of parking needed will decline accordingly freeing up large swaths of space for other uses while reducing energy consumption.
Adding to this vision for new urban transportation, the Israeli company City Transformer has designed a self-driving car with an added bonus: it folds itself, shrinking at the push of a button to fit into a motorcycle parking space thus, freeing up even more space. Unveiled at the fifth annual International Fuel Choices and Smart Mobility Summit in Tel Aviv, the concept car is planned to launch as a stage 3 autonomous vehicle with computer-controlled braking and acceleration.
The low-maintenance, energy-efficient cars are intended for individual drivers as well as corporate fleets. The design is also well-suited for car-sharing stations because it takes almost the same amount of space as bike sharing. The basic model is expected to cost roughly $10,000, and the premium model $13,000, not including battery and taxes.
4 Comments
Looks like the CityCar.
https://www.technologyreview.c...
Is City Transformer's new folding car the answer to our parking problems?
Nope. Public transit is ... duh.
Exactly!
I read this as a homeless person sneezed on me on the D train.
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