For those densely populated cities and countries in the Far East, the Chevrolet EN-V Concept may be a godsend. To most Americans, the pod-like vehicle resembles a glorified Segway, except with Internet and telematics. This is why the latest conceptual update to the little personal mobility device is being shown off at the 2012 Beijing Auto Expo, and not NAIAS.
Appropriately called the Chevrolet EN-V 2.0, the concept adds features like in-vehicle climate control and personal storage space. In addition, the EN-V 2.0 would be capable of driving in all weather and city road conditions. We wonder, though, if it can take a Siberian blizzard.
More importantly, GM is expecting to use EN-V 2.0 prototype models in pilot studies throughout China, though a timetable has not been specified. The EN-V itself was built as a possible solution for alleviating concerns surrounding traffic congestion, parking availability, air quality and affordability for tomorrow’s cities while running on electricity.
Comments
And this is what intrests me.
Of course something like this wouldn’t fly in North America; our cities aren’t designed for such things.
That’s why I’m interested in the future of city planning that excludes or minimizes the use of cars as we know them. For what we have now, cars and their movements dictate how cities here are planned.
If, for instance, cars didn’t have such a priority and infulence on planning, were automated within city cores, and consumers saw cars like the EN-V as means of transportation, then it mean that a city’s planning wouldn’t be restrained by the management of traffic.
It’s still long term, but the long term doesn’t mean impossible.
There are some cities out there that already have emission-free zones. And yes, such a radical change — a city without cars — wouldn’t come about anytime soon, at least from what I can analyze. Unless one springs up from out of nowhere like Dubai or Las Vegas and has a fresh blueprint. (Now I’m thinking about Halo 2’s New Mombasa, but even that had cars). This is interesting, and I’m curious as to what kind of city you picture in your brain if it doesn’t involve cars. Does it involve buses? Trams? Futurama-eqsue tubes?
There would still be a demand for human transport, no question. It’s simply not practical or possible to get across town in a few minutes on foot. Percentage of people walking would increase, but in a way that reflects transport within say a small town; a small town sitting next to another small town and another and another that collectively make a city.
Tubes, as sweet as they would be, don’t seem work out; test subjects eardrums keep getting inverted somehow, and the SPCA can blacklisted our record and thus the pet store won’t let us buy hampsters for use in our central-vac.
Buses, as ususal, serve the masses, but with less congested routes that are shared with freight and emergency services. On these routes, there wouldn’t be cars ebcause the “cars” have been shifted elsewhere; specifically, the automated roads.
These, the EN-V’s and similar vehicles, would be the cars intended for individual transit and would utililze the automated roads. If suitable software and computaional work is done that gets traffic movement organized and fluid, then these could be intended for “town to town” travel. Within the towns, the buses or light rail. Within neighbourhoods, walking or that within buildings that feature services built in, say a convience store on the ground floor or rentable retail space on another.
As for the EN-V’s “vehicle ownership vs. vehicle sharing taxi”, well, it may work to treat them as taxis. Such vehicles wait to be called up, hit up the automated routes, and then wait until they are needed. Owning one would require it sit parked when it is not in use. The physical space a parked EN-V takes up when not in use, although smaller, places demands on architecural design; making designs for cars and not humans.
On the plus side, EN-V’s with automated roads would allow cars as we know them to live on in a evoled state. Car design could be radically altered forever.
Heck, I’m still playing with all this, and by no mean has everthing been ironed out.