Transport

The ingenious Cargoshell shipping container concept is about to be tested for ISO certification, finally enabling deployment. The composite Cargoshell is both light and collapsible. Though containerisation has streamlined global trade, it remains inefficient. The current steel containers use the same space whether they are empty or full, and waste valuable resources globally being transported and stored empty. A Cargoshell can be broken down by one person in 30 minutes, to a quarter of its original volume.  Read More

car2go, the car-sharing service that began in Ulm, Germany in 2008 before spreading to Austin, Texas, Hamburg, Germany and Vancouver, Canada, has now announced it will launch a service in San Diego that will be the first car-sharing program in North America with a 100 percent electric vehicle fleet. The San Diego car2go program is due to start operations before the end of 2011 with 300 smart fortwo electric drive vehicles.  Read More

Dubbed CAT (City Aquatic Transport), this personal water service concept from Irish industrial design studio Curve Creative is aimed at providing an alternative to battling traffic on congested inner-city roads.  Read More

We first wrote about the DTV Shredder late last year - a wild, go-anywhere cross between a Segway and a powerboard, with twin tank tracks and a steering/control column to hang on to as you blast through the underbrush at frightening speed. Well, it seems like many fun extreme sports ideas, the Shredder may end up being co-opted by the military. And to that end, DTV has designed the Jackal - a hybrid-drive, weather and waterproof, militarised version of the Shredder that's fitted with twin grenade launchers and a full remote control system that allows it to operate as an unmanned ground vehicle. The Jackal can sneak silently across contested areas in fully electric drive modeand lay an explosive smackdown on hidden enemies with no risk to live soldiers.  Read More

Designed and built by a team of students from Australia's University of Adelaide, EDWARD is a futuristic, purely electric dicycle – also known as a diwheel. Although it looks like transportation from the realm of science fiction, the vehicle is fully operational and can be controlled with surprising precision.  Read More

The Yikebike is a sensational product - I called it the first "transportation appliance" when I rode the miniature electric penny farthing last year. Funnily enough, when I wrote about the ingenious range-extender earlier this year, I wrote that the Yikebike ticked all the boxes but one - its range. Now that the company is to offer a slightly heavier version at roughly half the price, you can probably bury the last objection that could be aimed at the Yikebike.  Read More

For the last ten years, Michelin North America has challenged designers from around the world to create innovative vehicle concepts. The company put those concepts before some judges, and then displayed a chosen few at the North American International Auto Show (NAIAS). The 2011 "Plus 10: The Best is Yet to Come" challenge was to come up with a vehicle that could be enjoyed by people local to the designers in 2021. From the record number of entries received, Michelin's judges chose 34 works to go on display. Let's take a quick look at some of them ...  Read More

Daimler's car2go car sharing service kicked off in Ulm, Germany in October 2008 before expanding to Austin, Texas in 2010. Earlier this month, Hamburg, Germany, became the first city with more than a million inhabitants to see the introduction of the car2go service, but the second won't be far behind with a launch set for Amsterdam before the end of the year. One point of difference for the Amsterdam fleet is that the 300 strong fleet will consist purely of electric drive smart fortwo vehicles.  Read More

The European Commission has released a white paper detailing ambitious plans to transform Europe's transport infrastructure by 2050. The roadmap for a Single European Transport Area includes forty initiatives for road, rail and air travel that aim to increase mobility, reduce reliance on oil imports, cut emissions by 60% and combat congestion by halving the use of "conventionally fueled" cars in urban transport by 2030 with a view to phasing them out in cities by 2050.  Read More