Sustainable Transport - a foldable scooter ?

How about a fold-able scooter as your transport? Yeah, that was the great invention that made MIT students to win the Year 2009 BuckMinster Fuller Challenge. I was and am always fascinated by the ingenuity and creativity of people around the world in general.

This group of students actually invented/proposed more than just a fold-able electric scooter. Their invention was really about a "comprehensive system", whereby the scooter is just one part of it. But the scooter is what astonishes me the most :-) especially because you can fold it.

Actually it would be much better if we can fold it into a comfortable chair. That way, we can stop under a shelter during heavy rain and sit on this comfy chair while waiting for the rain to stop or subside before continuing our journey.

Read more about the invention here ..

Wazzup Toyota ??

Looks like Toyota is kind of hesitant to move forward quickly on electric cars.

I wonder why?

The reasons they give does not really make any sense to me especially when Toyota is one of the most innovative and successful car makers around. I am sure Toyota can work around any obstacles especially the technical ones. Car makers should share and learn from each other about this new (I mean electric vehicle) technology. It makes more business and environment sense to come up with a good electric vehicle.

Read more on this here ..

Sustainable Transport - A2B Metro

What happens when you combine electric and pedal power ? You get A2B Metro bicycle or two-wheeler. Unfortunately for us Malaysians, Ultra Motor don't sell any of its cool two-wheeler products here yet. This product ins only available in a few countries - US, UK, Germany and India.

Is it because there is no demand for it ??? I don't think so. According to this website article, the largest number of motorcycles per person is in Malaysia & Greece.

There are few more cool environment friendly two-wheeler products by Ultra Motor ... read more here

Or perhaps, we could develop our own electric-pedal power product ?? With Malaysians being more aware and concerned of being more environment friendly, I believe this will be a very fruitful venture. Of course, the quality must be good. I have came across few online articles on a electric bicycle product which is imported from China and sold in Malaysia but it didn't look very good.


Update on 21-08-2009.

Looks like i was about 1 year too late to stumble upon A2B .. thestar motoring article actually carried an story on this about a year ago. You knwo what they, better late than never to find out something useful or interesting :-)

Sustainable Transport - Busycle

What a superb innovation !

Beside being a sustainable transport and reducing waste, this transportation also creates a great opportunity for teamwork among communities or colleagues. Probably organizations can use this as part of their team building efforts. Very large organization should start looking into pedal power as a mode of transportation between its nearby building/campuses.

The Busycle is a 15-person pedal-powered bus that travels in neighborhoods throughout the United States. The Busycle runs solely on the energy of its passengers. Anyone willing to pull their weight and pedal can be a Busycle passenger. The Busycle requires individuals to use their own will and physical strength to come together as a group to go from point A to point B .. read more here