Robots and cars for the future

…Electric vehicle research has gone into overdrive recently and MIT’s Smart Cities Lab is developing a whole new transportation system for urban environments one element of which could be the stackable City Car.

They are like luggage carts at the airport. You pick one up, use it briefly and drop it off at another location.

The City Car charges while stacked.

… Another MIT project is an electric bicycle that stores pedal power – allowing the rider to tap into it when going up hills.

Of all the mobility inventions this is the one that is likely to have the fastest and biggest impact in existing societies.

Ryan Chin, a research assistant at MIT, said: “There are actually a lot of e-bikes out there in China and Europe.

“Over 20 million of them in China. The primary difference is that we have integrated the motor and the battery together in the hub space of the wheel which allows us to easily retrofit this unit into any bicycle.”

BBC