With a click on a
smartphone, the experimental "Armadillo-T" electric car made in South
Korea will park itself and fold nearly in half, freeing up space in
crowded cities.
The quirky two-seater, named
after the animal whose shell it resembles, may never see production but
it is part of a trend of developing environmentally friendly vehicles
for urban spaces.
The car can travel 100 km (62 miles) on a 10-minute charge and has a maximum speed of 60 km per hour (37 miles per hour).
When
it comes time to park, the rear of the vehicle folds over the front,
almost halving its body length to just 1.65 meters (65 inches).
"They
can be parked in every corner of the street and buildings, be it
apartments, shopping malls or supermarkets," said Suh In-soo, a
professor at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology who led
development of the car.
Suh did
away with rear-view mirrors by adding tiny digital cameras that show the
back and sides of the car on a flat screen on the dashboard. A
Windows-based computer system communicates with the driver's smartphone
and enables self-parking.
The
Armadillo-T cannot legally venture on to the road in South Korea because
it does not meet certain mandatory criteria, such as withstanding
crashes. Suh said South Korea should relax rules for micro cars,
exempting them from crash requirements because of their relatively low
speeds.
A video demonstrating the prototype has been viewed more than 780,000 times on YouTube.
Check the Youtube video above for more details