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Vehicular Hives: Envisioning Urban Commutes in Compound Cars

24 Nov

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

modular office on wheels

Imagine a future where driverless vehicles transcend their expected role in transit, becoming modular hubs that can link up for meetings or socializing beyond just getting you from Point A to Point B.

platooning-car-idea-example

modular office warehouse cars

modular vehicle gathering event

There is a great deal of talk about how car-sharing will save space (we only use 4% of roadway surfaces even during peak transit times), reduce waste (less pollution and fewer idle vehicles) and cost (by up to $ 100 billion a year in fuel) and reshape the urban experience, but what if platooning cars could also help reconnect us with other people?

modular office interior design

modular office interior board

That is part of the premise behind IDEO’s Automobility project, which extrapolates current trends and modes of transportation to predict how we might use vehicles in the not-so-distant future. We may use empty vehicles during the day, for instance, to drop off packages, or to pick up things from stores-on-wheels.

modular office display walls

modular park vehicle place

Beyond that, though, we might come together in new and different ways, too, at portable parklets, coworking space and open-space offices that migrate, congregate and dissolve on demand.

modular car shipping idea

modular car delivery cargo

“It opens up ideas about what the communal experience is in a vehicle, versus a single person in a car,” says Danny Stillion. “We’re definitely thinking about vehicles as a much more social space, where you could have face to face conversation and socialize in a much richer way while you’re in transit.”

modular car system design

modular parked empty vehicle

Imagine, too, destination events – a sort of next-generation tailgating – in which the spaces of the vehicles used to take you to and from a place become temporary spaces inhabited or otherwise utilized by those same attendees, rather than dead loads to be dropped off.

modular car cell call

car modular design idea

With legislation in place to keep wheels in cars for the foreseeable future, there may be intermediate steps. Still, none of these ideas are a particularly radical departure from the present, just a natural extension of how we already socialize, carpool and use public transit. “How different will tomorrow be from today? Both a lot and very little. More of us will live to be 100. Our resources will diminish while our technological capacity grows. Stuff will get faster and cheaper. But our basic needs? We’re betting those stay the same—that humans will still need to sleep, to eat, to work, and to move from place to place. That last part is what we’re interested in here. What happens to mobility in the next 15 years? Let’s go for a ride and find out.”

[ By WebUrbanist in Conceptual & Futuristic & Technology. ]

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Posted in Creativity

Record Breakers: 7 Vehicular Wonders of the World

05 Jun

[ By Steph in Technology & Vehicles & Mods. ]

World Record Breaking Cars

Destroying lesser vehicles in more ways than one, these seven record-smashing cars and trucks are stronger, longer, faster, narrower, more fuel-efficient and way more expensive than the average vehicle. In most cases, you have to be a millionaire to afford one, but if you’ve got the cash, going over 460 miles per hour and crashing through buildings would make the indulgent purchase worth the dent in your bank account. This list includes only vehicles that are produced by civilians or available to the public, eliminating military and construction vehicles.

World’s Most Expensive Car: Bugatti Veyron

World's Most Expensive Car Bugatti Veyron

At a price tag of $ 2.4 million, the Bugatti Veyron SuperSport is the world’s most expensive car – and accordingly, only thirty of them have been produced. The Veyron SuperSport is powered with an 8-liter, W16 quad-turbocharged engine for a total of 1200 horsepower, and it’s made of lightweight materials like carbon fiber and aluminum. The Veyron 16.4 is the last version of this particular model that will ever be made. Is it worth the money? Sure, if achieving insane speeds of up to 267.81mph is important to you; no other car available to the general public and legal on the streets can go this fast.

The Bugatti Veyron held the title of the world’s fastest car for a while, until it was revealed that a speed limiter was switched off during tests. The title was stripped, and no other has been awarded. However, even nearly 270mph doesn’t reach the speeds that the actual world’s fastest car can achieve.

World’s Fastest Land Speed Car: Speed Demon Streamliner

World's Fastest Car Speed Demon

This car definitely won’t be appearing on the highways anytime soon; it’s a one-off produced by George Poteet and Ron Main in an attempt to smash speed records, and that it did. The Speed Demon is the world’s fastest wheel-driven, piston-powered car, and it clocked an astonishing 439.562mph in a test at the 2012 Bonneville Speed Week. The shell is part of what makes the steam-powered Speed Demon so fast; it’s incredibly aerodynamic. The car boasts a Kenny Duttwiler 368-cubic-inch twin-turbo V8 engine.

World’s Largest Pick-Up Truck: Modified 1950s Dodge Power Wagon

World's Largest Pickup Truck

Said to be the largest car or truck in the world, this 1950s Dodge Power Wagon was made by oil billionaire Seikh Hamad bin Hamdan Al Nahyan of the United Arab Emirates in the mid 1990s. Looking to be at least five times as large as a standard Dodge Power Wagon, this model is more than just a cab on wheels – it holds four air conditioned bedrooms, a living room and a bathroom, with a motorized tailgate that drops down to become a terrace.

Hamad is a bit of an eccentric, obsessed with collecting oversized vehicles; he also has a giant replica of the Willys WWII Jeep and two jeeps welded together into a double-wide vehicle. He also holds a number of Guinness World Records for things like the biggest graffiti tag on the planet.

World’s Most Fuel-Efficient Vehicle: VW XL1

World's Most Fuel-Efficient Car

The world’s most fuel-efficient car will achieve 261 miles per gallon – beat that with your Prius. The XL1 is a two-seat diesel plug-in hybrid with a driving range of a little over 30 miles; the limited range is part of what makes it such a miserly gas sipper. Small, low to the ground and aerodynamic, the XL1 was built for fuel efficiency, if not for speed; it will take 12.7 seconds for the car to get from zero to 62 miles per hour. The car’s narrow profile means the passenger seat has to be set back slightly from the driver’s seat so each person in the car has a little bit of elbow room. It’s intended to be a production car, but VW says it plans to use “handcrafting-like production methods” to build it at its facility in Germany.