Government Motors gives British government broadcasters a first look at their new concept car, the EN-V. That’s short for electronic networked vehicle. It’s based on a chassis by…Segway. For reals.
From inside the bubble, the futuristic EN-V feels like a living organism as it slowly rises from a crouching position, before balancing on two wheels as if they were legs.
Unlike a motorcycle, which has one wheel in front of the other, the two-seater electric car has one wheel on either side of its flimsy body.
The light-weight design makes it as agile as a ballet dancer. Turn the steering wheel hard to the side and the car, if that is indeed the best way to describe this peculiar vehicle, turns on a sixpence.
Push the wheel – which is more of an iPad-inspired joystick – forward and it surges ahead into a sprint at speeds of 25mph (40km/h) or more, depending on how the computer is programmed, delivering a 25 mile (40km) range per charge.
Travelling at such speeds may seem hazardous, given that the car has been designed without bumpers, air bags or any other conventional crash protection devises.
But according to the people who make it, the EN-V – short for electric networked vehicle – is smart enough to avoid collisions.
“Unlike a conventional car, which is designed to prevent its passengers and pedestrians in the event of a crash, the EN-V is more like an aircraft, in that it is designed to avoid crashing in the first place,” explains Tom Brown from the research and development department at General Motors (GM).
The EN-V has sensors including GPS that allow it to drive itself. It could, say, drive your kid to school and then swing back to grab you for the trip to work. But it’s so delicate a little eggshell that it can’t live on the same roads as Escalades and Excursions. It would lose every interstate highway battle of the fittest. So for now, they will be confined to specific zones, but there’s already speculation of changing urban laws to mandate the things, or something like them, in major cities.We would all be happy little drones in our glorified Segways.
I predicted something like the EN-V in a sci-fi story I never finished a few years back. Now real tech has already made the story obsolete.
EN-V’s prior name was GolF-KRT
This thing is worse than those tiny two-seater “smart cars” I’ve seen tooling about my town. These things belong on a go-kart track, not on an Interstate highway.
I was reminded of the story about the naming of the Mercedes “Smart Car”. The focus groups didn’t like “Dumb-Ass Death Trap”.
My daily driver is a classic – a 1971 Karmann Ghia. I think I’ll stick with it.
The memory of the advertisement has faded to the point where
I am not sure is if was serious or joking, but it did appear;
Full-size Cadillac in a head-on collision with a VW Beetle,
captioned ‘Which car would you rather be driving ?’
We all know how that turned out.
The EN-V is perfect for cases where the car is smarter than the driver,
and I leave each of you to make up your own list of who qualifies. >:)
I would have no problem with a REAL car with the smarts to drive itself. I have no desire to flit around in what amounts to a pregnant roller skate.
Soon, the living will EN-V the dead.
They really named it the Envy? I suppose that’s what anybody sitting in one would feel as they saw the rest of the world zooming past in actual automobiles.
At least the old roller skates has four wheels.
“It could, say, drive your kid to school and then swing back to grab you for the trip to work.”
And if the police want your ass, the vehicle can be remotely instructed to report your position, or to deliver you up.
Murphy’s Law has already visited wrath on the Segway…many times.
What can go wrong, will go wrong, and f you start out in an inherently unstable platform such as this GM apparatus offering, when the poo hits the fan blades, it is going to be ugly for the imbeciles trapped inside it.
Wait…that has to be a feature, not a bug…
I like it, but then again I’ve been driving a GEM car since 2004. The same argument can be made for the EN-V, to wit: It’s a niche vehicle, quite suitable for the neighborhood driving requirements. To the market, to school, to work (if you live in town). I’ve put +20K miles on my 4 seat GEM, all of it in Sacramento city, in the main grid (downtown, east sac). So a vehicle like the EN-V could be useful in major cities. But for any drive out of the city grid (like to the mall or out of town), only big iron gas-burners will do the job. So if the limitations are acknowledged, the EN-V could be a useful auxiliary vehicle that saves gasoline for the trips that do require the utility of a real automobile. Yeah, its a glorified golf cart, but many times that may be all you need to go to the store for some groceries.
In fairness to GM, I saw an episode of Top Gear (UK version of course) recently – not sure what season it was from – where Toyota created basically the same thing. That’s not to say it isn’t crazy or that I’d trade in my pony car to drive it, but at least they’re not alone in the automotive insane asylum.
And at least some of them haven’t lost their minds entirely. The Camaro ZL-1 comes out in a few months, after all, and that’s the polar opposite of this thing – flashy, loud, blazing fast, fuel-inefficient (relatively), cool, popular to normal people instead of urban hippies… and you can get most of the same fun with a good dose of cushiness with the CTS-V, too. GM’s not all crazy.
Wait till that POS hits a pothole at 25MPH.
I can actually see this working for the British Country Side in the small rural towns, where there is no parking and public pathways are the norm. But for our streets and roadways, it’s insane.
EN-V? meh. Full Use City Kar – Union seems more appropropriate
This is no more insane than a motorcycle (“… designed without bumpers, air bags or any other conventional crash protection devises…”) and a heck of a lot more practical (weather protection, storage), so long as you can steer it yourself.
And as much as I find the SMART to be a laughable little rolling Barcolounger, it does fairly well in crash testing. Too bad the fuel economy is so bad, and nose in parking is illegal in most places in the US.
“Unlike a conventional car, which is designed to prevent its passengers and pedestrians in the event of a crash, the EN-V is more like an aircraft, in that it is designed to avoid crashing in the first place,”
Surely GM is not employing “engineers” stupid enough to say this. Exactly how does he think this vehicle is going to avoid the other driver who runs a redlight and t-bones it at 35 MPH?
On the otherhand, it will reduce the liberal population.
Designed like an aircraft to avoid crashing… I was unaware that would be possible. I would have to see a lot of test evidence to concur that it could be possible, but like Over50, there are so many possibilities.
It’s basically a mashup of a Segway and Transformer.
BTW——how is this thing supposed to STOP!!!! Having only one axle I guess that the 25MPH stopping distance should be about 200 feet or so. That sounds really safe to me.
Guy, this vehicle is NOT meant for highways. It is NOT street legal and NOT crash worthy. It is a concept that would be used in cities or gated communities to remove congestion where large cars are unwieldy or not allowed. This vehicle may never coexist with normal vehicles.
Get your facts straight before you trash it.
This thing belongs in a Costco parking lot to get invalids from their cars into the store in the rain.
Also, a neighbor two doors over bought a Smart Car, against the warnings of friends who said it was dangerous. Sure enough, one day in its place was a brand new shiny BMW 3 series. I asked what happened. She said she was in a minor accident and it scared her, though she escaped without injury. Bye bye Smart Car.
Face it Mike this is just another “Green” waste of money. Gated communities do not have traffic problems and the cities would have to build special lanes for these stupid things. Banning vehicles from large parts of a city is just not practical.
How many points for each?
Deathrace 2012!
You can make fun of my 1988 Volvo station GLE station wagon all you want, it’s a very safe car. Not a computer chip in it, so I’m EMP-ready, although that’s not why I have it.
It’s heavy on icy roads, and churns out a goodly amount of CO2 to nourish our crops. Happy to do my part, there.
I agree completely…