As the human population grows and cities and suburbs become more densely populated, and public transportation travels on a steady path of not being tailored to your schedule, society needs to find a better way to get around. With the E4U personal transport, Hyundai is looking to remove our need for cars, but get us around more efficiently than bicycles.
Efficient personal transport vehicles aren’t exactly a pristine example of new technology — they’ve been around for a while. Motorized scooters, mopeds, and the immortal Segway have all tried their hand at improving the way humans make their daily travels. None have caught on in any major way, though. New York City is filled with people irritatedly waiting for subways, irritatedly attempting to catch cabs, or irritatedly rushing toward their destination on foot. Everyone’s late everywhere, and it’s not really their fault — they just don’t have a reliable way to get around. At the Seoul Motor Show this year, Hyundai debuted a concept for its personal mobility vehicle (PMV), the E4U. Though it’s shaped like an egg with training wheels sticking out of the back — certainly difficult to chain to a bike rack — the E4U is aimed to be an efficient vehicle for personal transport.
The eggmobile can maneuver in any direction even though its motor only moves in one. What makes this possible is, rather than a traditional tire, the E4U uses a semisphere that can rotate in all directions; it’s riding around on a ball. When the top of the semisphere is touching and vertically aligned to the ground, the vehicle moves by rotating the semisphere horizontally. Since the vehicle sits atop and is able to move due to what is a multidirectional ball, the two training wheels prevent the E4U from spinning uncontrollably. In order to move the vehicle in any direction without hindrance from the training wheels, the E4U simply tilts in a direction, lifting the wheels up off the floor. If that sounds complex, it works similarly to the way a helicopter works. Imagine the semisphere as the blades, and the training wheels as the tail rotor.
Reminiscent of the Flintstones, or any bicycle, the E4U is driven with the driver’s feet, which tilts the semisphere in a given direction in order to move or stop the unit. The speed of the unit is controlled by the severity of the tilt. Controlling the PMV is complicated, according to tester reports, and takes a bit of getting used to. Though the E4U shown was a working concept, the demo only consisted of the unit moving at a human’s walking gait.
Hyundai didn’t seem to disclose what powers the E4U, but given the nature of the vehicle, it would be odd to have to roll it through a gas station to fill it up. Hyundai also didn’t disclose whether or not it has plans for a public release, but it’s safe to assume the company isn’t attempting to develop this PMV just for fun.
Anyone that has walked on a conveyor belt at an airport, or actually walks up an escalator rather than leisurely idles on it, knows that there are more efficient ways to get around a public setting. However, the daily operations of a major city would be severely stifled if, for example, sidewalks were replaced with moving conveyor belts. Even if the city could figure out a way to prevent the construction from ruining everyone’s daily lives, and even if the city could also figure out how to quickly install the walkways, figuring out how to power them without an infinite supply of money would be another issue. So, Hyundai, and Segway before it, are on the right track toward figuring out how to make everyone’s daily lives just a little bit more convenient. Unfortunately, as Segway has shown, PMVs still haven’t caught on, and that’ll be the E4U’s biggest obstacle should it — or something like it — ever come to market.
Article Courtesy of ExtremeTech
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