Sustainable Personal Mobility: The CityCar, the RoboScooter, and Mobility-on-Demand Systems

Winning Team:

William J. Mitchell, Ryan Chin, Charles Guan, William Lark, Jr., Michael Chia-Liang Lin, Dimitris Papanikolaou, Arthur Petron, Raul-David "Retro" Poblano, Andres Sevtsuk

Excerpts from the winning entry:

"The gasoline-powered private automobile was one of the greatest inventions of all time. Over the last century, it has radically transformed our daily lives and the forms of our cities. However, it has become increasingly apparent that there are strict limits to scales at which automobile-based personal mobility systems can effectively and responsibly operate, and that we are fast approaching those limits. The proximity of limits shows up in the forms of rapidly growing negative externalities to automobile use – urban congestion, peripheral sprawl and inefficient land-use, excessive energy-use, petroleum dependence and the associated geopolitical/economic problems, local air and noise pollution, and carbon emissions contributing substantially to climate change.

In response to these problems, incremental improvements to automobile and road infrastructure technology are often worth pursuing. However, these technologies are very highly evolved and mature, so there is limited benefit to be derived from further evolution. An evolutionary path to improvement will not have a sufficient impact, within the necessary time frame, on the pressing problems of urban sustainability and global climate change. Instead, a radical reinvention of urban personal mobility systems is required."

"We have designed several new battery-electric vehicles – the CityCar, the RoboScooter, and the GreenWheel electric bicycle – that are utilized within mobility-on-demand systems. All of these vehicles are extremely lightweight, have small footprints, have no tailpipe emissions, and are extremely frugal in energy use. This is accomplished without compromising safety, comfort, convenience, or fun. Mobility-on-demand systems provide racks of these vehicles at closely spaced, convenient locations around an urban service area. Vehicles automatically recharge while they are in these racks. Users walk to the nearest rack, swipe a credit card, pick up a vehicle, drive it to a rack convenient to their destination, and drop it off. These are, in other words, ubiquitously distributed one-way rental systems. These systems are highly efficient in reducing urban congestion, energy use, and carbon emissions. They are synergistic with ubiquitous wireless networking and distributed intelligence, and with solar-friendly, wind-friendly, fuel-cell-friendly smart electrical grids. There are some attractive business models for their introduction, and the political and economic climate is increasingly propitious."

Learn More  about the winning entry

Go to the MIT Smart Cities Website

"This research paper proposes the concept of the ‘general ecosystem’—a novel pattern of economic and social organization based on a holistic reassessment of human needs and a reintegration of our sense of what it is to be human."

The paper begins with:

"In March 2007, the BBC broadcast in the UK a three-part documentary called The Trap1, by the controversial British film maker, Adam Curtis. Its message was that “a simplistic model of human beings as self-seeking, almost robotic, creatures” plus an overriding belief in human selfishness have created “a cage” for human beings in modern society. The documentary argued that this predicament is in part the result of a long process by which social and personal values have become dominated by reductionist thinking. The Trap was pessimistic in tone and did not offer any clear solution. The question it left open, which this paper addresses, is whether it is possible to reverse this process by establishing a basis for values that would not be reductionistic, and that would offer a way out of the present trap."

Hardin Tibbs is CEO of CEO Synthesys Strategic Consulting Limited. His work is focused on assisting organizations to move forward with confidence in an environment marked by accelerating social and technological change. This means developing the capacity for resilience and self-renewal, integrating it as a key competence in operational performance, and maintaining it over time.

Download the research paper

The Process

The Seawater Greenhouse uses the sun, the sea and the atmosphere to produce fresh water and cool air. The process recreates the natural hydrological cycle within a controlled environment. The entire front wall of the building is a seawater evaporator. It consists of a honeycomb lattice and faces the prevailing wind. Fans assist and control air movement. Seawater trickles down over the lattice, cooling and humidifying the air passing through into the planting area.

Sunlight is filtered through a specially constructed roof, The roof traps infrared heat, while allowing visible light through to promote photosynthesis. This creates optimum growing conditions - cool and humid with high light intensity.

Cool air passes through the planting area and then combines with hot dry air from the roof cavity. The mixture passes through a second sea water evaporator creating hot saturated air which then flows through a condenser.

The condenser is cooled by incoming seawater. The temperature difference causes fresh water to condense out of the air stream. The volume of fresh water is determined by air temperature, relative humidity, solar radiation and the airflow rate. These conditions can be replicated in the thermodynamic model and, with appropriate meteorological information, the detailed design and performance of the Seawater Greenhouse can be optimised for every suitable location and environment.  READ MORE »

Via the website of New York Sun Works - Sustainable Engineering

See the Video 

What is the Science Barge?

The Science Barge is a prototype, sustainable urban farm and environmental education center. It is the only fully functioning demonstration of renewable energy supporting sustainable food production in New York City. The Science Barge grows tomatoes, cucumbers, and lettuce with zero net carbon emissions, zero chemical pesticides, and zero runoff. It is powered by solar, wind, and biofuels, and irrigated by rainwater and purified river water.  READ MORE »

It’s simple. The car has evolved. Gas guzzlers have gone the way of the dinosaur - there’s a reason they call it “fossil fuel.” In their place we have electric versions of our favorite makes and models being developed by established car companies.

And the evolution of the car means the evolution of the entire transportation model. When we eliminate the dependence on oil, we eliminate the environmental and economic damage that came with it.

The good news is we’re evolving into something very familiar. The Better Place business model is one most of us already experience every day - with our mobile phones.  READ MORE »

Harnessing the current: An artist's rendition of how a commercial VIVACE system might look. Passive bars, positioned horizontally, are boxed together in a single unit that could be placed at the bottom of a river or in the path of an ocean current. Dozens of 500-kilowatt units could be grouped together in different configurations to create multimegawatt systems.
Credit: Vortex Hydro Energy 

The world's river and ocean currents carry an enormous amount of kinetic energy, but most of this water flows slower than four miles per hour. Existing turbine and water-mill technologies can't generate enough electricity at such speeds to make their deployment economically viable.

Researchers at the University of Michigan say that they have overcome this limitation by taking advantage of energy-packed vortices that are formed when water flows past a cylindrical object, even at low speeds. Salmon and trout are known to leverage the force created by these naturally occurring water swirls so that they can swim upstream. A new mechanical device designed to economically harvest that energy and convert it into electricity could turn waterpower into a much larger part of the world's renewable-energy mix.

"Anywhere we have currents, we can use it," says Michael Bernitsas, a professor in the department of marine engineering at the University of Michigan. He says that the first test of the device will be in the Detroit River, likely in 2010. "If we make it work, and I believe it will, it's going to be a major development," he says.  READ MORE »