Exciting developments in motve technology
check out this cool air car, now available in Europe and soon to be licensed worldwide
http://www.theaircar.com/
this could make the below idea feasable!
The recent launch of a car share scheme
echoes harry's plan which was first written about in 1969. This
included electric vehicles which would be co-operatively owned and shared.
Knowledge of the whereabouts, condition, state of charge and so on of the
vehicles would be kept in a central database. Access to a car would be via
credit card which would be logged by the car, which then would release its keys
to the member. Membership would be necessarily limited to people with a valid license
who had a stable address.
Since the cars would be electric, they would need daily charging, and it was
envisaged that there would be charging stations installed rather like parking
meters are in London. An electric vehicle would be attached to its charging
pole which would then allow the diagnostics, position and status report to be
made via land line rather than cell net. Of course the widespread availability
of GPS would in fact make the management of a system like this vastly easier.
The whereabouts of available cars would be published by the web, and booking
taken on a first come first served basis. The cars would not be made available
if the central database determined they were overdue for a service, of if the
diagnostics indicated the car was in any way unsafe or had been vandalized.
leaving a car away from designated areas would mean the card holder lost his
or her card until the matter was resolved. Reasonable breakdown would be
covered by the organization, willful neglect would be charged to the
individual. In many ways the current system is analogous to the one envisioned back then but with petrol
cars replacing the electric ones.
My guesstimate for the savings in the numbers of cars on the road was a
factor of three. In fact the study published in the Age 30/07/07 indicates it
to be more in order of 10, which is marvelous.
Fewer cars on the road on a regular basis amounts to a huge saving in
pollution, greenhouse gases and noise.
Maybe one day we will be able to reclaim our beautiful cities form the smelly
noisy dangerous and unhealthy machines we have created.
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