2010 Year for NEW Sustainable Transportation
Our growing population and expanding urban cities force us to revisit the issue of sustainable transportation. At one point we had California dealer parking lots packed with clean energy cars. From one day to the next the lots were stripped of these efficient vehicles and sent directly to car mauling sites. We are now wit heads way below water and cannot afford to ignore our cry for better, efficient, and less polluting cars.
Drivers await the arrival of General Motors's much-anticipated Chevy Volt plug-in hybrid car later this year, GM unveiled an
electric vehicle of an entirely different stripe on Wednesday at the World Expo 2010 in Shanghai. The company's Electric Networked Vehicle (EN-V) is a mini electric vehicle built for two, unless you are using it to go shopping, in which case you might have room for yourself and a bag of groceries.Working with Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp. Group (SAIC), GM designed the EN-V to meet the challenges of getting around major metropolises as urban populations swell. The EN-V resembles more an enclosed pedicab—minus the bike—than it does a car. In fact, the 1.5-meter-long vehicle is three times shorter than a typical car and weighs less than 500 kilograms, one third as much as most cars on the road today.
By 2030, more than 60 percent of the world's population will be living in urban areas, says Chris Borroni-Bird, GM's director of advanced technology vehicle concepts. In densely populated cities around the world, including New York City, "driving is not a practical way of moving around," he says, adding that a third of city congestion is typically caused by drivers looking for parking spaces. Several cities, including Athens, México City and Bogotá, Colombia, have resorted to "road space rationing," allowing a vehicle to enter the city only on certain days (or during rush hour), based on whether its license plate number ends in an odd or even number.
Please click for latest news and images of prototype cars: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=gm-electric-networked-vehicle
