.

the "foldable" city car surely IS an original idea (good to have a large press coverage...) but can't solve the REAL problem of that kind of cars

the electric city cars need to have a VERY LOW COST to succeed

the "foldable" system adds some mechanical complexity to that cars (and to its maintenance...) so, it can only increase its price

save a three feet of space on parking is not a so big advantage that can justify the increase of complexity and costs

.

I just think that "Peter Schmitt, designer of the wheel," is a really great line to take out of context. :)

2 issues:
1) Crash survivability - would it even get
one star? Its not allowed on streets with speed
limits over 30mph?

2) Nice of them to export the pollution to the suburbs.  The electricity comes out of this socket and does not pollute. How BLONDE!
Push for building some Nuclear power plants, or
perhaps make the Kennedys allow wind mills of the Boston coast (MIT students).  When this is powered by coal fires in the suburbs, it is classic city dwellers exporting problems to the countryside.
  Maybe add solar panels to them all.

A little more on nuclear:
http://www.theconservativevoice.com/articles/article.html?id=29003

I'm sat with a Japanese colleague here and he immediately saw the advantages. OK, so the US might not be ready to accept this, but nor was Britain and Europe ready for the Smart car when it was first released....now, one of the most popular cars on the road - why, because the eventual advantages and the foresight of at least reducing some of the disadvantages of personal transport were recognised and addressed.
I see this as the perfect commuter transport and as for crash protection - again, I point you at the Smart car. The misconception that you need weight, inertia and thumping great sheets of steel to protect you in a crash is just plain wrong. The NCAP statistics show this over and over again. Good design, good quality control on the product and clever use of materials can win. OK, there might not be much left of the vehicle, but the safety compartment is left in tack and as with Race cars these days, the more energy that is dissipated through crumpling, the less energy is absorbed by the occupants.
Also put this into context with regards fuel prices. People don't drive SUV's in the same numbers in the rest of the world (bar probably Australia and Canada to a degree) so there is a reduced chance of impact in the first place (look at the stats for crashes in SUV's vs cars)
Anyway, I'm all for this, I think the addition of stackability is very interesting, especially when you see the eyes light up on my Japaese counterpart. As for me, living in South Boston and  parking up to a mile away from my home - I'd sign up for one today.

Say you rent the thing for the day, park it somewhere and you get boxed in?

I assume there would be some mechanism to just grab the first car in the line? What if you were shopping and had to leave some items in your vehicle?

Lots of logistical things to be worked out, but looks like a step in the right direction.

I've seen a company recently called ZipCars (www.zipcar.com) that does something like this - they have very small cars (Minis, smartCars, etc) set up in lots all over the city.. Make your reservation online, and pick up your car.

On paper, cars everyone shares and are all willing to stack are as good an idea as any.  Can we find any real-world sociological example from a post-iron age society of 50+ individuals where similar principals of sharing and communialism have succeeded?  I prefer development on the flying car myself.

Having a vehicle you can pick up and leave at the transit station is a neat idea, but one look at the back of most people's cars will show the problem with it.  Most people prefer their private vehicles because they have too much STUFF:  Shopping stuff, kids stuff, emergency stuff, sports stuff, even leftover dinner stuff.  Families have minivans for a reason - and it's not to impress the neighbours.

For example, you go grocery shopping... how do you get the groceries from the parking stall to the train/bus/subway and then back at the other end.  If we didn't have any stuff to carry, the "last mile" would be a pleasant walk.  We typically have so much stuff with us, 50 yards is an ordeal.

Get a private lockable vehicle, that can hold all our stuff, that we can take with us on the train, or link together to form a train, and you'll have something.  In our materialistic society, private cars are not really for transporting us - we're easy to transport - they are for transporting all the things we "need" with us.

    David...

I don't know why the Lyon experience with their velo-v service got so much publicity.  We have such a system here in Barcelona, Spain and the issue of redistribution of the bikes is really a tough one. 

I live outside Barcelona and go downtown perhaps once a week.  When I arrive about mid-morning, there is not a single bike to be found in none of the bike racks several blocks around the train station, even though there are several large racks just nearby.  On the other hand, once I  find a bike and take it, it is often hard to find an empty slot in any of the racks close to my destination, whichever that might be.

The system is, indeed, quite a success and the number of bikes, bike racks and slots within them was greatly increased from what was planned at this stage.  I don't know whether (and would doubt) the number of shuffling trucks have been increased. 

With bikes, the redistribution is quite easy.  A van, which also carries an air compressor for the tires and other items for maintenance (when it's not shuffling bikes around), pulls a small trailer which can carry about two dozen bikes, almost a full parking rack at once.  Even with this, bikes are not evenly distributed.

The central system knows at all times the state of the racks.  Each customer has an RFID card and each bike also has an RFID chip close to the hook that latches it to the rack.  The bike has no other electronics, it is the racks that check the customer, unlatches the bike and then, on return, reads which bike was it.  So the central system knows which bike is in which slot at which rack, unless it is on the road.  It is not a matter of statistics, like occupancy rates and such, the central system knows exactly how the bikes are distributed, and still it can't quite cope.

While the bike shuffling van can carry two dozen bikes at a time, I can't imagine the size of a truck capable of carrying any number of small cars, foldable or not.  Actually, I wouldn't fold them and load them but just tow them. (folded if you wish).  A towing vehicle should be planned that can pass by the side of a line of parked cars, stop just ahead and have the cars join at the end of the line autonomously and fast and, likewise, be able to drop them at other pick up stations fast and with minimum driver intervention.  The towed cars don't need to be able to drive themselves in traffic, the parking stations might have some guidance system the cars could use for this maneuvering and a traffic light may hold the traffic while the cars are joining or dropping out of the line.  The towing vehicle would not pull the cars but guide them through traffic, each under its own power.  Unless the pick up stations have recharging capabilities (coils under the pavement?), the tow vehicle might also provide recharging from an otherwise too expensive source to put one in each car (fuel cell, gas turbine burning some bio-fuel?).

So, the car by itself is no solution if it is not within a system which can offer enough cars where they are needed.  Letting them pile up in the business district during working hours and at train stations at night is no good.  Redistribution is essential.

Whilst technically clever, I think the ability of to spin a car on the spot might result in a certain degree of carnage!

We have tried for years to mitigate congestion by building wider roads - and it has never worked.  Won't making cars smaller simply allow more room for other cars to enter the roads?  There will still be people with sedans, suv's and trucks.  I can't see how a smaller car will alleviate congestion in any way.  I do like the idea of sharing cars and possibly reducing parking lot areas, but I wonder... are there people on this group examining policy proposals that would go hand in hand with this new technology? What if parking space costs were scaled with the size of the car? 

I really hope MIT people read these, because I want the to hear what I'm going to say.

A couple of problems I found were that the "last mile"problem may still exist, and that you can't leave stuff in the car.  To the former, have the racks electronic and mobile.  Look at it this way: when you call an elevator, you press the button and wait for the elevator to come to the floor you are on.  Put a button in the car that calls a rack to you.  That way, you can drive the car to your house/apartment, push the button, and a rack comes in a minute.  Take your stuff out of the car, and watch it fold up, and drive away.

To my latter problem, expand the back of the car and minimize the front.  I don't know if this is a two seater or a four seater, but make the bank triangular, with the hypotenuse as the back of the seat in front.  Or just don't stack the car while you are out shopping.

As to the power problem, buy a desert somewhere and put a ton of solar cells there.  And get DARPA to finance it.

How do you get your car out if it's sandwiched in the middle of a pack of these things?

Why not look ata below solution instead of polluting (yes, at the source) electricity?

Metal 'muscles'

Autonomous robots, micro-scale air vehicles, and prosthetic limbs are all supposed to operate for long periods without recharging or refuelling, making efficient energy supply crucial.

Nature's choice is to provide chemical power for natural actuators like muscles. Human engineers have typically taken another route, relying on converting electrical energy into mechanical energy using motors, hydraulic systems, or piezoelectric actuators.

This is much less efficient, meaning even the most athletically capable robot must be wired to a stationary power source for much of the time.

The ideal solution is an artificial muscle that can convert chemical energy directly and efficiently into mechanical energy, says Ray Baughman a physicist at the NanoTech Institute at the University of Texas in Dallas, US.

Baughman says he has built such a device made of a "shape memory" alloy of nickel and titanium. The metal is coated with a platinum catalyst and placed in a device that allows methanol to be drawn along the surface.

Exposing the surface to air causes the methanol to be oxidised, which heats the alloy and makes it bend in a pre-determined way. Cutting off the methanol supply lets the alloy cool and causes the alloy to its original shape.

Baughman says the device can generate stresses 500 times greater than human muscle and believes further significant improvements should be possible.

Well, each rack might be like a hanger.  In your closet, you put clothes in and out efficiently by storing the clothes on hangers, so that they are all even, neat, and easy to find and remove.  The same principle may apply here.  Picture the rack moving the car out of the rest, then lowering it enough for the car to unfold.

However, I am open to ideas on this one.  My way requires a lot of electricity, and possibly hydraulics.  Maybe that other guy with the chemical robots has the solution - you would only really need two positions for each hanger.

This would be nice if mass transport didn't quite make it to your destination, but it wouldn't help you if mass transport were not located near your home.  So you would still need a car, in which case it would almost certainly be cheaper just to drive your car directly to your destination.

Let's face it: the main cause of global warming, pollution, dependency on foreign oil, habitat destruction, etc. is the suburban lifestyle, which involves long daily commutes (mostly alone), large houses, large cars, and walking/biking done exclusively for exercise/recreation.

Brillant idea but not for parking evidently. The trick is to get electric quick charge stations from renewale energy or a battery manufacturer inteligent enough to develope a battery pack for quick plug-in and rapid disconnect allowing them to lease batteries fully charged. Takes responsability away from automobile mfg. which they can't rip you off for, and enables them to produce their electric cars NOW. Furthermore a profitable business for battery mfg. or independant enreprenures' interested in bringing new technical products to market with latest clean tecnology for generating power to charge batteries at night and selling power to the utilities during the day at good profit. 1)Spread the clean energy, devise profitability and quick return on investment. Battery people would have a vested interest in quality and preformance under controlled conditions without dependancy on fossel fuel. 2)0% pollution and ecology responsable. We the people need a break from petrol NOW please. Right on mass transit and local commodity vehicals that all can afford. With nano technology and capacitor banks capeable of quick charge maybe a drive through will be sofficient to recharge. So much is said and so little is done when confronted by the deep pocketed fossel fuel competition.

That is a really good idea, having fast, battery-charging stations.  I am someone who does not like society's dependence on oil, and if rechargeable batteries is the future, that is fine with me.  I think a useful idea might be (I hope MIT people are reading this) to combine multiple forms of energy.  Create a big wind mill.  The add solar panels onto all of the blades.  Then attach a lightning rod to the top.  Think about it:
1)Combines almost every clean energy source.
2)Never really stops getting power - when it is sunny, solar cells collect, when it is windy, the actual windmill collects, and when it is dark and stormy, the lightning rod collects.
3)Pretty efficient use of space.

Just make sure you have a lot of wiring at the other end.

This is a great and novel idea. Instead of parking your car in the garage, you just take the mass transit system (assuming one is available), use the Stackable, drop it at your office garage (charging station with attendant), go to work. Then reverse the process at lunch and end of day. There are parking attendants all over most city lots who can manage the 'stack'. Maybe mass transit will finally work!

This would be great as in many suburban cities the jobs are all central yet it often takes an transfer from an express bus to a local and all of that fuss and time discourages people entirely. Express bus / train to avoid the freeway and just do 2 miles of city driving in this it would be great. Looks like it will be performing well with rocker arm shaft when using