The future seems to hold both a worsening obesity epidemic and ubiquitous electric cars.
Today’s invention seeks to use an aspect of car design to help solve the problem of flab.
This is in the form of a car which, when parked for a set time (eg 30 min) after having made only a short journey from home (say 1km) refuses to restart for an hour or so.
This would encourage everyone who uses a vehicle for very short journeys to walk there instead (or to walk the short distance home).
It seems that the health benefits of only a very small decrease in car use are significant.
Over time, the 1km might automatically increase in order to reduce car use and improve exercise still further. At some distance, a bike rack might unlock, enabling even longer return journeys.
Or the car may hide on another parking spot so the driver has to search for it.
Or you have a training bike at home that generates electricity for your car – partial – e.g. enough for those small drives. Then people can take the short drive as they did the exercises for it. Mind you when it is raining like last days I want to take my car and do the walking/biking @ home 😉
Have you seen this Rob?
http://www.organictransit.com/models.html
I’m not sure how well this design would work in Northern Europe.
Happy 2013!
P
Think they would do well in a city as a sort of cab (mostly in the dry season). The truckit reminds me of a small lorry that is allowed in some cities during daytime. Bigger trucks are only allowed in the night e.g. 21:00-06:00 so delivery with small trucks jump forward.
Regards,
Rob