MIT Reinvents Transportation With Foldable, Stackable Car 158
alphadogg writes "Parking in a downtown area is one of the least enjoyable elements of driving. MIT researchers may have found a solution: a car you can fold up before parking. The boxy conveyance folds in half, and the plan is for the vehicle to fit eight in one conventional parking spot. 'Franco Vairani, a Ph.D. candidate at MIT and one of the original designers in the City Car project, said his team is taking a vending-machine approach to city travel. In his vision of the future, people would find a stack of electrical-powered City Cars on nearly every block in the city. When a user would want to drive somewhere in town, he would swipe a smart card or cell phone across an electronic reader and take a car out of the stack. When he gets to a business meeting across town, a shopping mall or their doctor's office, the driver simply leaves the car in a stack at his destination. The drivers don't own the cars. They simply rent them. It's fully self-service. The next person takes a car out of the stack, and off he goes.'"