ECO-POWER TRIPPING
RYAN CHIN – BOSTON, USA

 

Professor Bill Mitchell and I started Smart Cities many years ago.

Our idea was to design a lightweight electric car by collaborating with our colleagues at the MIT Media Lab to incorporate new digital technologies that were applicable.  After a period of time we decided to look at reinventing the whole vehicle — the way that they are built, used and integrated into urban environments.

The traditional car is over-engineered.  It's designed to go from 0-60mph in seconds — but how useful is that to the majority of people who use their cars in cities? Our concept takes into account social, behavioral and economic models for a fully encompassing urban mobility solution, redefining how people travel around within an urban city perimeter. If you think about the cost of driving a normal car you have maintenance, gas, taxes then the cost of parking — both the time trying to find a space and money to pay for it. You might only use your car twice in one day, the rest of the time it's just sitting there.

Our mobility solutions take into account how and why people move around the city. Through sharing a range of lightweight electric vehicles, you can ride a bike to the grocery store and then take a car home. The use scheme is an "on-demand" model, where you pay for the time you use it — it is essentially a short term one-way rental. That's where current car sharing schemes fail, they can't offer a one way trip. One-way rentals allow you to combine with mass transit systems, whereby the user can emerge out of a subway station and take one of our vehicles to their final destination. Our vehicles include a scooter and now a bicycle called the "GreenWheel" that has an electric motor integrated in the rear wheel.

The GreenWheel was actually a pet project that we developed for fun but it has really taken off. Basically we have a wireless battery-powered motor attached to the back wheel — the main difference being the lack of moving parts within the motor. When it's finished you'll be able to buy it online and fit it to your existing bike. It might add 10 pounds to the overall bike weight but this is less than half the weight of existing bicycle motors. You can pedal with or without the motor, or just use the motor on its own.

Our technologies and innovations are designed to improve urban life; to offer sustainable, economical and energy efficient transport solutions. We use Thomson Reuters information to search and track relevant and related work in our field. We have to change the way we do things — current mobility in urban areas are not sustainable nor smart for the environment. Ecologically, living in cities would be a whole lot better with electric vehicles and we have the means to make that a reality.

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