Comments on: Transportation Tuesday: MIT’s Stackable City Car

By: juan-fe

juan-fe — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:06:17 +0000

Estaria interesante que tambien hubiera transporte de este tipo para motos. He visto algunos que van a tener mucho futuro.

By: juan-fe

juan-fe — Sat, 05 Nov 2011 16:00:34 +0000

I wanted to comment that there are other projects also about to take place, although this seems very interesting. Hopefully soon news. Thank you.

By: Ecolect

Ecolect — Wed, 14 Jul 2010 20:12:38 +0000

Fabulous!

By: JonathanRV

JonathanRV — Mon, 23 Nov 2009 10:40:23 +0000

My idea;
The car will be available in metropolitan cities and a potential user will just have to find the nearest car. Users can then pickup any electric vehicle from the area. On reaching the destination, once the passenger disembarks from the car the vehicle will automatically join with the nearest car, without any transferring. The vehicle is powered by a set of batteries that fuel the hub motors present in the wheels of the car.
If this cars could join for travel more then one person.. example 8 people peak 4 cars and 1 driver..
If you car is between, just get the first car .. An example for this project is like working as Vélib of France Company or bicing in Barcelona… “is about bicycles”.. I come with this idea in my project specification when I use this picture.

By: Joshua

Joshua — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 16:57:57 +0000

I’m personally very proud of MIT and what they are trying to do. I live less then two miles from MIT and know many engineers that work and a lot of these projects. I only hope they succeed and if they are to do so they are in the right city.

Thank you as always Inhabitat for share/hosting a great source of green information.

~ Joshua

By: Cru

Cru — Thu, 23 Jul 2009 14:19:23 +0000

You’re never in the middle.. you’ve gotten out by then… You come back and grab the first one, just like a grocery cart.

Read the Neanderthal Parallax by Robert J Sawyer. Very similar concept, stacking cars. We use up too much space paving for and parking these hyper-expensive objects that we only use for an hour or two a day. The only problem we have as humans, is not having the surveillance to keep people from littering or worse inside the car anonymously.

By: Stackable Cars « Urban Neighbourhood

Stackable Cars « Urban Neighbourhood — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 21:57:12 +0000

[...] The smarty pants over at MIT have come up with a design for a stackable city car ideal for large scale car sharing programs, or integration into a city’s transportation system. The City Car is a stackable two person electric vehicle that they hope will revolutionize the way that urbanites conceptualize (and use) personal transportation. Take a look at the Inhabit Article here. [...]

By: Regina

Regina — Tue, 04 Mar 2008 20:57:18 +0000

If you are looking for more information regarding the City Car, William Mitchell, the MIT professor who led the team of architects and engineers who designed the City Car, will be leading a discussion on the City Car Project at the MIT Museum on Wednesday, March 19th at 6:00 pm as part of the museum’s Soap Box discussion series. Here is the website if you need more information: http://web.mit.edu/museum.

By: Christopher P.

Christopher P. — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 21:09:51 +0000

Until the system is ubiquitous, it would parallel the existing private car usage. As with grocery carts, which do end up in alleys, apartment entries, curb-side in odd surroundings, etc, a trailer company will have to go out and periodically retrieve and redistribute the strays back to higher-use venues as part of the cost of doing business.
And do some hygiene and maintenance, while they are at it, as part of the contract service. The corporation that does the better job of service will have more card customers. (We’ll just hire lower echelon people who can only afford bus service and “last mile” hikes to maintain the system for “us” creative design types who can afford an MIT education! Even in a co-op, there is a smaller percentage that “do” compared to the % that “share”.)

By: mike g

mike g — Thu, 17 Jan 2008 00:01:20 +0000

i think the car idea is great but people are picky. the idea is like the smart car. we need cars like this with gas or electric motors. but we need a 4-seater .

By: Stupid

Stupid — Thu, 13 Dec 2007 16:57:46 +0000

IF YOUR CAR IS IN THE MIDDLE…. HOW DO YOU GET IT OUT??

By: Amanda

Amanda — Wed, 05 Dec 2007 19:35:21 +0000

O my goodness I think that what you are trying to do is amazing and a great way to help out the enviorment. My class and I are doing a project to show what we, as students can do to help out our enviorment as well. We are making our own “business” of our own to show that we can come up with ideas as well as ways to help our enviorment rebuild itself

By: nkq0rs

nkq0rs — Sun, 25 Nov 2007 02:46:33 +0000

I think it is a good idea, and since all the cars are the same, it would be easy to manufacture something like a “car washing machine” similar to a dishwasher etc.

Its also possible that MIT could successfully implement an artificially intelligent system into the car so that it could find its own way back to the storage or find its way to you. You could request it via mobile phone account. the user cards for the cars could be linked to an account via phone or even a pay card (like phone pay cards).

By: Traci

Traci — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:37:16 +0000

I think the difference with car sharing (verses public transport) is that people are held accountable (the company knows who is driving it) and fined if they damage the car so people behave more responsibly.

By: Traci

Traci — Wed, 21 Nov 2007 12:34:07 +0000

I was surprised to hear so many ignorant comments on car sharing. There already is car sharing in many cities in the world (and the US) and I am a car sharer in Boston with Zipcar. I don’t own a car and simply ‘check one out’ when I need one (which is rare). Its no different than renting a car and I’ve never had a problem. People may treat their own vehicles poorly but car sharing vehicles are always clean and read to go (at least for me).

I think the idea is not that you own a particular car but take the one at the front (like a shopping cart). How my car sharing company works is that you are a member with a key card. You sign out the vehicle you want (say for three hours), go to that car, use your key card to open it and drive away. Then you return it to the same parking spot at the end of your reservation. Insurance and gas are paid for and the company cleans the interior and exterior on a regular basis. I’m disappointed that so few people know about car sharing…

By: links for 2007-11-16 at YakShaving

links for 2007-11-16 at YakShaving — Mon, 19 Nov 2007 05:41:26 +0000

[...] Inhabitat » Transportation Tuesday: MIT’s Stackable City Car don’t care if it looks like the urkel mobile. we need it. and i want one. (tags: car transit environment future) Filed under Links. | var blogTool = “WordPress”; var blogURL = “http://www.bhoopathy.net/wordpress”; var blogTitle = “YakShaving”; var postURL = “http://www.bhoopathy.net/wordpress/2007/11/16/links-for-2007-11-16/”; var postTitle = “links for 2007-11-16″; var commentAuthorFieldName = “author”; var commentAuthorLoggedIn = false; var commentFormID = “commentform”; var commentTextFieldName = “comment”; var commentButtonName = “submit”; [...]

By: Car sharer

Car sharer — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 15:17:46 +0000

I already share a car as part of a successful car share in the UK. You get a swipe card to get into the car. You pay a deposit on the swipe card. If the car is in poor condition you report it and the previous user loses some of their deposit. It works.

http://www.citycarclub.co.uk/

By: sophie

sophie — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 13:21:39 +0000

great idea for the not-so-fit, the pregnant and anyone else who would like to use public transport but isn’t good at long cold walks. swipecards + heavy fines for misuse + people actually bothering to report litter etc might help on the not-being-a giant-ashtray front.

By: RenaissanceMan

RenaissanceMan — Sat, 17 Nov 2007 06:23:54 +0000

How about insurance? Will you need a license to drive it? How will it know you have a license? What will it cost? Will it be a flat rate or by distance? Will you be driving it on roads or sidewalks and if you’re driving on a road, what an accident that will be if you get hit. I don’t see that it would be close to renting a bike or getting a cart at the airport. This thing is going to be on the road!! And, yes, how will it be cleaned after use?

By: Butch

Butch — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 21:55:04 +0000

I think that in less than a week these would smell like an ashtray in a urinal full of coffee grounds.

This might work in Europe, but people are too selfish and self-absorbed in America. They don’t even share the road, how are they going to share a vehicle?