LISA VAN PAY: I love driving. I love being able to get wherever I want whenever I want. But living in a city
means I'm one of thousands of drivers, and we're all looking for the same things, speed, convenience,
and most important, a place to park. Add in pollution and other problems and it's easy
to see why we need to find better ways to get from point A to point B.
So here I am at the MIT Media Lab where designers, artists, scientists and engineers mix work and play
to answer the question, what do you do with millions of people who all have someplace to go?
WILL LARKIN: Vehicles are obviously a big part of cities. How can we make the car a better citizen
to the city? So what we started with was CityCars, a radical redefinition of what transportation is.
Not only can it move directionally like normal cars do, but all the wheels can turn sideways so that
at any point in time the vehicle could parallel park directly into a space.
If you had to get out of a tight corner, the vehicle can spin on a dime.
LISA VAN PAY: So U-turns would be really easy.
WILL LARKIN: U-turns are very easy. O-turns are now possible. So you just do whatever
you need to. And what's unique about this is we take all the stuff that's usually in the hood of the
vehicle and divide them up into the four wheels. So we have the steering, the drive motor and
suspension, all built in a unit.
LISA VAN PAY: With electric motors in the wheels, there's no need for an engine up front.
And that lets you do some pretty interesting things.
WILL LARKIN: So this is our half-scale prototype. What we've done is introduced a linkage that
allows the vehicle to fold up so it takes half the footprint.
LISA VAN PAY: So pretty much instantly the car is half as long.
WILL LARKIN: Yes.
LISA VAN PAY: Cool.
LISA VAN PAY: So the cars are fully electric, more mobile, and they fold and stack, like shopping carts.
WILL LARKIN: The idea is so that when it is folded up you can take a little bit of space, and also
it gives space back to the city, which can be used for more green areas.
We don't just dream this up out of thin air. It's a fun process to get to where we are right now.
And sometimes we use tools that are maybe a little more crude. For example, just using plywood or
cardboard to figure out, how does the vehicle fold up. Well, actually I grew up playing with Legos.
Really just worked really hard at math and science classes. And then also just, I explored other
design classes, too. So arts, et cetera. And what works really well for our project is we have people
that have all different types of backgrounds that can influence the vehicle itself.
LISA VAN PAY: Okay.
LISA VAN PAY: Okay Will, I don't see a steering wheel here. What's going on?
WILL LARKIN: That's a good point. We don't use a traditional steering wheel. Instead we control
everything through a computer. And what this does is allows a lot of freedom for design.
Not only can we have the freedom of design of how we control the vehicle, now we free the
interior up to be designed differently. We can do things where we can just walk directly
out of the vehicle because you have that freedom of space.
LISA VAN PAY: So the idea is to have stacks of CityCars all over the city, right?
Tell me exactly how it might work.
WILL LARKIN: You don't necessarily just buy one car and use it. You become a part of a community
that has access to the vehicles whenever you want. Come up, swipe your ID card and just take the first
one off the stack. When you're done with it you can return it to the back of that stack, or you
could just return it to another stack located somewhere else.
So it is a shared concept. Each time you get in a different vehicle, you want it to feel like it's your
vehicle. When you swipe your card it's virtually like logging on, and the vehicle knows something about you.
So it knows your favorite music settings, your favorite driving settings.
There are different technologies which we can use so the vehicle could change color on the fly.
You could have animated flames on the side of the vehicle if you wanted to. So it's really
about using the technology wisely so each time you get in it, it's your vehicle.
LISA VAN PAY: So it's almost like having a homepage where you log in and all your own
settings automatically get downloaded to the car, and it knows what you want.
WILL LARKIN: Yes.
LISA VAN PAY: It will become my new best friend.
When I was sixteen and wanted to meet up with friends it was either Mom's minivan or
Art the Dadillac. Now imagine, in a few years you can get the call from your friends,
find a stack of CityCars and roll out in a custom ride that will look the way you want, play your music
and get you there in style. Not only that, you're doing your part to make the city a better place.
With support from the National Science Foundation, Will and his mentor, Bill Mitchell, are working hard
to improve the environment around us. CityCar is part of the Smart Cities group, which aims to
revolutionize the way we create and operate vehicles, buildings, entire cities.
And the best part is it never ends. You think you have a better idea? Figure out how to make it happen.
Cuz we all have places to go.