The world's fastest urban car... {not what it sounds like}

[eppur_se_muova]

Innovation Nation
Call it the Eureka Moment: The sudden, blinding flash of inspiration that leads to a new product or company. We asked four inventors to share the story of theirs.

Small steps to a slim car
Rick Woodbury
Founder of Commuter Cars in Spokane

The Problem: One morning in 1982, Woodbury was stuck in rush-hour traffic on L.A.'s Interstate 405. Ironically, the day job he was crawling his way to was selling Porsches.

"There was one car per driver, one car per lane," says Woodbury. "But effectively, four times that space was wasted in unused seats and trunks."

The Moment: Woodbury did a bit of research and found that of 140 million U.S. workers, 106 million were single-occupant automotive commuters; 88% of all cars carried just one person. So he set out to design the Tango, a single-occupant, high-performance electric car.

Woodbury discovered that if he broke the vehicle's big electric motor into smaller units -- one for each wheel -- he could get blistering performance: zero to 60 in less than three seconds, and up to 100 mpg with careful driving. This from a freeway-ready car that was seven feet long and just three feet wide -- about the width of a Harley-Davidson.



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more: http://money.cnn.com/galleries/2009/smallbusiness/0909/gallery.innovation_nation.fsb/index.html

http://www.commutercars.com/

[Kutjara]

1. Interesting idea. Hideous car.

My initial thought was, "that's got to be monstrously unstable," but it looks like they've put most of the weight under the floor, so it should actually be pretty resistant to rollover. I still think the car's narrowness will make it a bit of a handful in the handling department, though.

[phantom power]

2. I'm kinda surprised he needed "to do research" to figure that out.

I mean, go driving and look out your window.

[DJ13]

3. 3 lanes of freeway @ 70mph inbetween 2 semi's

No thanks.

[Historic NY]

5. not unless I was wearing depends extra strength edition.

[NickB79]

6. From the comment section of the link

"That is the first comment people always make when they see a small car. "Wouldn't want to go up against an 18 wheeler..." Seriously, name the car that would actually "win" going up against an 18 wheeler."

Couldn't have said it better myself.

[Kutjara]

7. Exactly. It's the kind of thought process that ultimately...

...results in people buying SUVs. Sadly, many don't realize that even a SUV won't survive a serious encounter with a big rig, and meanwhile, the SUV driver is at greatly increased risk of death or serious injury from a rollover.

[bbinacan]

4. Looks like a death trap. n/t