Mr Money: driving the 'car' of the future
GM's clever EN-V concept is a two-wheeled, two-seater solution to urban transport.
Telegraph Motoring's Mr Money, Mike Rutherford, takes it for a spin.
Mike Rutherford 'drives' the EN-V
General Motors confidently claims that it’s reinventing the automobile. But so far at least, The General has failed to achieve this ambitious goal.
That’s because the reinvention process is spearheaded by a range of two-wheeled, Segway-based, all-electric EN-Vs (Electric Networked Vehicles). One of them, the Jiao, I “drove” (actually, it was more like flying a light aircraft) around a giant, ultra-high-security indoor test track last week. In terms of wackiness, originality, smiles per mile and state-of-the-art entertainment value at the controls (I can’t say behind the wheel – because I didn’t find one, or any pedals come to that) it gets 11 out of 10 from this necessarily sceptical EV fan.
So what’s the problem with the Jiao? Why does it fail in its stated mission to reinvent the automobile? Because, er, it’s not a car.
Sure, it’s an effective mobility machine for one or two people travelling at up to 25mph around cities. But it’s far less like a car than the considerably simpler but dearer Renault Twizy electric quadricycle, which at least has four wheels outside, accelerator and brake pedals inside, and therefore needs (under British law) a trained and fully-qualified car driver behind its conventional steering wheel.
Having said that, the Jiao’s not a bike with a roof either, because a motorcycle tends to have one wheel in front of another, rather than side by side, EN-V-style. When I pressed the company last week, GM could not or would not define what, exactly, the EN-V is.
More importantly, it said it didn’t know what legal category it will fall into if and when it is homologated prior to going on sale by 2030 at the latest.
But "PUMP" (Personal Urban Mobility Pod) would be the label I’d slap on it. It’s a) less than 60 inches in length, b) as wide as it is long, c) able to drive itself or be driven, d) has a 25mph top speed and range, and e) is supposed to be uncrashable thanks to a combination of antennae, sensors, drive-by-wire technology and more.
Alternatively, EN-Vs could be described as busy, highly travelled butlers. A typical day for a family of EN-V owners a decade or two from now might be a bit like this: at 7.45am a parent might unhook it, fully recharged, from the side of the house, having been automatically parked there. Then a child will be strapped inside, which they must enter through its visor-like polycarbonate front door.
Via the “iWheel” mum or dad will use a password to put the vehicle into autopilot mode, before punching in the first drop-off address (a school perhaps) of the day. While the kids are dozing or doing homework en route, a parent can watch thanks to the on-board CCTV facilities. Then, after delivering its human cargo, driving itself back home and parking itself neatly (three or four can be stored sideways in a conventional bay), it would be time for one or more of the parents to climb in for the morning commute to the office.
After doing its self-driving, self-retrieval and self-parking, the EN-V can idle for a while and fully recharge its lithium-ion phosphate battery pack, a process that takes only two to six hours. Alternatively, it can recharge faster when exploiting inducted (cordless) power technology, which will be available - in part at least - from beneath future road surfaces. The icing on the cake is that regenerative braking provides additional juice for the two brushless DC propulsion motors.
With all this in mind, while the owner is at work from 9-5 they could possibly allow the EN-V to earn its keep by hiring it out as a sort of automated taxi that doesn’t need an expensive driver who expects a tip.
Other potential EN-V cost advantages are low running costs, lower parking fees (on the grounds that they take up little more space than a motorbike) and massively cheaper insurance policies due to their low maximum speeds and (unproven) collision avoidance systems.
Today’s typical car has five seats, an internal combustion engine, and in terms of providing mobility within cities is “inefficient” and “over engineered,” GM insists. To build a conventional petrol- or diesel-engined car capable of doing 100mph-plus “substantially drives up the cost of the vehicle” to the customers, millions of whom are in cities where average speeds of 8-12mph are the norm and maximum speeds are only 30mph or, increasingly, 20mph.
“It’s entirely conceivable that future city vehicles will weigh less than 1,000 pounds," The General concludes. “They will be more expensive than electric bikes but could be much less costly than conventional cars.”
How much cheaper? GM says the target price for EN-V cars will be “around 10,000.” It’s not clear about whether that’s $10k or £10k. Even more uncertain is whether The General is thinking about that price tag at today’s prices, in which case it’s far too high, or at 2020 or
But "PUMP" (Personal Urban Mobility Pod) would be the label I’d slap on it. It’s a) less than 60 inches in length, b) as wide as it is long, c) able to drive itself or be driven, d) has a 25mph top speed and range, and e) is supposed to be uncrashable thanks to a combination of antennae, sensors, drive-by-wire technology and more.
Alternatively, EN-Vs could be described as busy, highly travelled butlers. A typical day for a family of EN-V owners a decade or two from now might be a bit like this: at 7.45am a parent might unhook it, fully recharged, from the side of the house, having been automatically parked there. Then a child will be strapped inside, which they must enter through its visor-like polycarbonate front door.
Via the “iWheel” mum or dad will use a password to put the vehicle into autopilot mode, before punching in the first drop-off address (a school perhaps) of the day. While the kids are dozing or doing homework en route, a parent can watch thanks to the on-board CCTV facilities. Then, after delivering its human cargo, driving itself back home and parking itself neatly (three or four can be stored sideways in a conventional bay), it would be time for one or more of the parents to climb in for the morning commute to the office.
After doing its self-driving, self-retrieval and self-parking, the EN-V can idle for a while and fully recharge its lithium-ion phosphate battery pack, a process that takes only two to six hours. Alternatively, it can recharge faster when exploiting inducted (cordless) power technology, which will be available - in part at least - from beneath future road surfaces. The icing on the cake is that regenerative braking provides additional juice for the two brushless DC propulsion motors.
With all this in mind, while the owner is at work from 9-5 they could possibly allow the EN-V to earn its keep by hiring it out as a sort of automated taxi that doesn’t need an expensive driver who expects a tip.
Other potential EN-V cost advantages are low running costs, lower parking fees (on the grounds that they take up little more space than a motorbike) and massively cheaper insurance policies due to their low maximum speeds and (unproven) collision avoidance systems.
Today’s typical car has five seats, an internal combustion engine, and in terms of providing mobility within cities is “inefficient” and “over engineered,” GM insists. To build a conventional petrol- or diesel-engined car capable of doing 100mph-plus “substantially drives up the cost of the vehicle” to the customers, millions of whom are in cities where average speeds of 8-12mph are the norm and maximum speeds are only 30mph or, increasingly, 20mph.
“It’s entirely conceivable that future city vehicles will weigh less than 1,000 pounds," The General concludes. “They will be more expensive than electric bikes but could be much less costly than conventional cars.”
How much cheaper? GM says the target price for EN-V cars will be “around 10,000.” It’s not clear about whether that’s $10k or £10k. Even more uncertain is whether The General is thinking about that price tag at today’s prices, in which case it’s far too high, or at 2020 or
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