Your
flexible electric friend is coming soon. We’ll all need one. Electric cars are
fast becoming the flavor of 2012 along with the assumption that they are
greener than anything based on fossil fuels. As we frack and frack some more to
squeeze natural gas out of its hiding place to drive our power stations, we
will, of course, use some of it to generate the electricity to power our new
car.
The
question remains hanging in the air, why don’t we stuff that natural gas in our
car and use it rather than go through a secondary and the tertiary process to
get to the liquor store, but enough of this gloom and doom, we should look
towards the blue skies.
One
nice blue skies project that brightened my day is the Hiroko Project, which is
quite close to becoming a reality (1). It’s based in Spain, but has roots as
diverse as MIT’s town car concept.
It
is another two-seater electric car, which has a satisfying futuristic design.
Ready to race you at the traffic lights, it has a slightly VW Beetle look, but
I hasten to add a futuristic beetle, not a retro one.
The
downside is that it has a 75-mile range at present. That is a bit limiting if
you are foolish enough to want to buzz around LA and its environs every day, but
for simple commuting or retail therapy it will be fine. Especially when they
fit inductive charging stations in parking lots so we can go and drink our
skinny lattes with the beautiful people and come back after an hour or two of
Facebooking and connecting with the Twittering classes to find our battery
topped up.
But
all this is nothing compared the big idea of Hiroko. It folds up to park on a
dime. It leisurely tucks it rear wheels under its body like a Saluki hound
folds itself up to sit in your favorite chair and balances on its nose. As a driver you step out elegantly from a
close to standing position. When getting in you do the same and your Hiroko
casually stretches out taking you into a semi-recumbent posture ready to scoot
off leaving the parking demons standing open mouthed before they can hand you a
ticket.
My
only thought is that being rear ended in a multi-vehicle pile up could be a tad
unusual, but my mother always told me that I had too much imagination for my
own good. I am already saving up for my first fold up car. If it gets Googled
so that I just have to tell it where to go and don’t have to soil my hands on a
steering wheel, I’ll be in heaven.
- http://www.hiriko.com/what-is-the-hiriko-project
