TheScooterScoop

Mr. Mystery scooper (as well as S.A., and even my wife) pointed out this bit from MIT. These are from their “Smart Cities” project. MIT’s dream is that by 2020 you’ll be able to rent one of these electric scooters (built by SYM?) on the street to get you around town. Expect to see even MORE details on these as well as their electric, folding microcar (from GM) at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

Here’s what a press release at ScienceDaily had to say about the project:

From Taipei to Saigon and from Florence to Madrid, to say nothing of the Vespa revivals in New York and San Francisco, the streets are buzzing with scooters. Although they burn less gas than cars and take up far less space, they’re not without their problems: white laundry in these towns requires extra attention, and riding behind one invariably leads to coughing.

To solve this, MIT Professor of Architecture and Media Arts and Sciences William J. Mitchell and his students in MIT’s Smart Cities Group have come up with an electric scooter that houses motors inside the wheels itself. The design retains the space efficiency of a traditional scooter sans the emissions, and reduces costs and parts. “A typical gas scooter has about 1,000 parts, but ours only has 150.” The lack of a conventional engine also enables the scooter’s folding design, increasing its urban appeal.

The forward-looking Mitchell and his team have also thought about how the scooters could be presented to the public, as cost-efficient rentals.

Exciting stuff! I’d like to see how things turn out for the first of these “Smart Cities”. I wonder if Austin is on the list.

Google is investing tens of millions of US $Clams on advanced informatics in the category, and two of the previously mentioned prototypes had examples of such informatics in their designs. Developments are moving fast in this arena, now lets just hope the vehicles do too.