The Birth Of The Car Share

Jonathan Lerner profiles "Hiriko, a two-passenger electric vehicle developed by the Changing Places research group at MIT’s Media Lab":

Hirikos measure 100 inches long, compared to a two-door Mini Cooper’s 146. But for parking they collapse to just 60 inches, and nest together like shopping carts. Drivers use them like shared bikes, picking up a car at a Hiriko depot near where they’re coming from, and dropping it at one near their destination. Thus they address the "last mile" problem of mass transit and "might be most useful at the edges of cities where the transit network is sparse," explains architect Kent Larson, director of the MIT research group. "In an inner city where it’s very walkable to begin with and then you have good trams or subways or buses, you don’t need the vehicles so much. But at the edges you have a desperate need for additional mobility."