Segway and GM design outside the box

The newest design for personal mobility has been seen this week in New York. The PUMA (Personal Urban Mobility & Accessibility)  is the result of a joint venture between Segway and beleagured General Motors.

Unlike the upright Segways now in use (Legal in Europe, though illegal to use on public roads in the UK), the new vehicle would be enclosed from the elements, carry two or more passengers and have a top speed of 35 miles an hour.

The prototype runs on a lithium-ion battery and has a driving range of 35 miles on one charge.

Segway said it had begun informal talks with city planners “from Paris to Singapore” about taking part in tests to see how the vehicle would work in urban environments.

Old thinking vs. New thinking

I spotted this in a newsletter this month from Ecocities Emerging. I think it pretty much sums up how we need to grasp a revolutionary new perspective.

“At this time Old Thinking is still prevalent — that we should figure out how to maintain high carbon cities and societies with partial and/or potentially dangerous solutions like “better” cars, nuclear power, carbon capture and storage (an unproven technology), and cellulosic biofuels (a proposed technology, and biofuels are in direct competition for soil and acreage with hungry people and the planet’s remaining biodiversity).”

“But why tune up an unsustainable model with partial solutions, when, in likely the same amount of time it would take to build all those nuclear plants and finish work on questionable next generation biofuels and “clean” coal, we could instead reshape and rebuild the model to run indefinitely on clean renewables?”

“The New Thinking argues that we should utilize the remaining gift to the Industrial Age, fossil fuels, to rebuild our civilization so that it can operate into the future on a fraction of the energy it demands currently. This transition would require a huge effort, the kind of massive global project that we’ve been hearing world leaders hinting about more and more, just without a clear vision as of yet.”

“Ultimately, the economy isn’t based on theories, products, indicators and investment portfolios. It is based on time and labor, dirt, minerals, water, wood, wind, decomposition, the sun. The faster we reconnect with our economic base, the sooner we will be able to stop climate change, and usher in a new era where humanity lives in balance with living systems. Only then will we have an enduring civilization.”

Blake, from We Are Futureproof