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City Car: A New Design Approach Enabling Urban Mobility
Technical Paper
2006-21-0076
Annotation ability available
Sector:
Event:
Convergence 2006
Language:
English
Abstract
The City Car is a stackable, sharable, electric two-passenger urban vehicle. The one-way sharable user model is designed to be used in dense urban areas. Vehicle Stacks will be placed throughout the city to create an urban transportation network that takes advantage of existing transportation infrastructures such as subway, commuter and bus lines. By placing stacks in urban spaces and key points of convergence, the vehicle allows the citizens of the city the flexibility to combine mass transit effectively with individualized mobility. The stack receives incoming vehicles and electrically charges them. Similar to luggage carts at the airport, users simply take the first fully charged vehicle at the front of the stack. The City Car is not a replacement for personal vehicles, taxis, buses, or trucks; it is a new vehicle type that promotes a socially responsible and more effective means of urban mobility.
The City Car utilizes fully integrated in-wheel electric motors and suspension systems called, “Wheel Robots. ” The Wheel Robots eliminate the need traditional drive train configurations like internal-combustion engines, gear boxes, and differentials because they are self-contained, modular, digitally controlled, and reconfigurable. Additionally, the Wheel Robot provides all wheel power and steering capable of 360 degrees of rotation, thus allowing for Omni-directional movement. The vehicle can maneuver in tight urban spaces and park by sideways translation. This highly modular architecture allows for the design and manufacture of highly customizable passenger cabins that are freed from traditional drive-train and powerplant constraints. Both the City Car and Wheel Robots concept are under design and engineering development within the Smart Cities group at the MIT Media Lab.
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Authors
- Ryan C.C. Chin - MIT Media Lab, Smart Cities Group
- William Lark - MIT Media Lab, Smart Cities Group
- Patrik Künzler - MIT Media Lab, Smart Cities Group
- Raul-David “Retro ” Poblano - MIT Media Lab, Smart Cities Group
- Philip Liang - MIT Media Lab, Smart Cities Group
- Mitchell Joachim - MIT Media Lab, Smart Cities Group
Topic
Citation
Chin, R., Lark, W., Künzler, P., Poblano, R. et al., "City Car: A New Design Approach Enabling Urban Mobility," SAE Technical Paper 2006-21-0076, 2006.Also In
References
- Imperial College Urban Energy Systems Project
- Texas Transportation Institute (TTI) Urban Mobility Report 2002 http://www.ntweek.org/publications/ARTBA_Congestion.pdf
- Burns Lawrence D. McCormick Byron J. Borroni-Bird Christopher E. 2002 “ Vehicle of Change, ” Scientific American, October Issue
- Baldwin C.Y. Clark K.B. 2000 Design Rules: The Power of Modularity Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1 p. 6
- von Hippel E. 2005 Democratizing Innovation Cambridge, Mass.:MIT Press
- http://www.theoscarproject.org/index.php
- http://www.a123systems.com/html/tech/power.html
- Liang Philip MIT Media Lab, Masters Thesis “ Social Networking in Vehicles, ” 2006
- World Car Share Consortium, 16 positive impacts of car sharing http://ecoplan.org/carshare/general/basics.htm#impacts