Look, most people expected Silicon Valley to have brought robo-cars by now, forcing (‘Foxconn’) traditional automakers into a subcontractor role. Instead, its ride-hailing companies started using SUVs and MPVs they just bought from automakers. Not the sort of vehicles to use if you want to lower costs, have affordable zero-emission propulsion and deploy driverless. Uber and Lyft are still hemorrhaging money like there’s no tomorrow. Might there be something wrong with their premise to begin with? Yes, in their eagerness to come across as clever, hoping to impress board members and investors, engineers typically overlook the obvious, forget common sense. It’s kid stuff (<click).

Easy to see that a vehicle like the one depicted here, would yield all sorts of benefits: (battery-)energy efficiency, cheaper to run, more road space to have fun with, easier to make driverless, perfect ride-hailer (did you know that the average Uber ride consists of 1.2 passenger?) are a couple of them. Want to know more, go to Smartphone should inspire us to bring a Smart-Mobility ‘APP’.

Cheers, Ralph (sevehicle@gmail.com)