No One Wants City Cars

Apparently, F1 designer Gordon Murray has unveiled a lightweight city car.

Imagine a car so narrow that two can drive next to each other in one lane; a car so small and short that three can park in one parking space.

...

It seats three, weighs just 575kg, has a top speed of almost 100mph and is expected to cost about £6,000 ($9,000).

Which is great, except no one wants city cars. They're completely impractical for anyone who doesn't live right in the middle of a city and who only does small journeys with few people and no luggage. Most families still need to do long trips, carry four people and luggage and get up to motorway speeds without the car drowning everything out. No to mention safety.

What designers should be spending their money on is smarter cars. Ones that will allow more traffic to travel in the same space (computer control, inter-car communication and radar), or cars that can modify their size and shape to do different tasks so when there's one person commuting to work they can be smaller, but when taking the family out it can be large enough to accommodate them all.

In short, the sort of technologies discussed in this article, posted a few days earlier on the BBC.