transportation problems
2007 was a big year for the planet. That's when, for the first time ever, more people lived in cities than in rural areas. For car companies, this global trend means finding new ways to move people around in tighter and tighter spaces. General Motors thought up the EN-V concepts and, with Segway, the Puma. Honda has the P-NUT. The current real-world king of small urban vehicles is, of course, the Smart Fortwo, which was way ahead of the curve.
More people in bigger cities leads to transportation problems like congestion and less incentive to drive a car. People want public transportation options to be expanded, and more car sharing services. But the automakers are very keen to keep selling personal mobility vehicles to people no matter where they live and, since electric cars a good fit for urban environments, it makes sense that this new breed of city cars have a zero-emission powertrain. For BMW, this all comes together in Project I, the Megacity Vehicle (MCV, above) and, maybe, a new Megacity sub-brand.
That BMW has been working on something called the Megacity Vehicle is no secret, the company officially announced the car over a year ago and, earlier this year, confirmed that it would release the car in 2013. Still, there was a lot we didn't know about the car and the project. This week, near Munich, with vehicles like the E1 (an early BMW electric vehicle), a carbon-fiber X5 and the Isetta on hand, BMW revealed an
THINGFUL overwhelming amount of information about just what we can expect from the MCV and Project I. Read all about it after the jump.
