NARO Tilting Car Concept Progressing

UPDATED August 13, 2005 The NARO vehicle concept we featured in January is progressing and the company is currently undertaking extensive market research prior to the construction of prototypes at the same time as testing public reaction to several new styling themes for the executive commuter, taxi, and light van trade market segments. The NARO vehicle concept is a "free leaning" vehicle that improves the mobility of the commuter and addresses the key issues of congestion, pollution and parking scarcity in urban areas.

Independent research undertaken to investigate the effect of narrow vehicles on traffic flow in urban environments shows that once a certain density is reached within the vehicle fleet, traffic queues can be shortened and journey times reduced. All of this is possible without making any changes to the infrastructure using a vehicle such as the NARO.

The Naro evolved from initial research work carried out by Prodrive in 2003. The Narrow Car Company has licensed this work and is developing the concept through to production. The objective of The Narrow Car Company is to develop the NARO vehicle concept to provide both licence and manufacturing opportunities.

The automotive industry business experts Prof. Garel Rhys and Dr. Paul Nieuwenhuis of Cardiff University Centre for Automotive Industry Research has predicted that the UK Market size for this ‘sub-car’ sector will grow progressively to 20,000/year by 2012. This will be fueled by: increasing congestion, ultra low CO2 requirements, parking scarcity, and financial incentives (e.g. freedom from congestion charging).

The cutting edge styling and rewarding driver experience of Naro will ensure that it secures a significant place in this market sector.

NARO’s new web site can be found here and the previous NARO article can be found here.