MIT Car

The CityCar or MIT CityCar is an urban all-electric concept car designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Lab. The project was conceived by William J. Mitchell and his Smart Cities Research Group. It is now led by Kent Larson, Director of the Changing Places Research Group at the Media Lab. The project came into conception in 2003 under the support of General Motors. Time Magazine selected the CityCar as one of the "Best Inventions of 2007."

Hiriko Driving Mobility, a Basque consortium, developed a commercial version based on the CityCar c and began manufacturing of test pre-production cars in 2012. The production car, called Hiriko, is scheduled to begin a trial in Vitoria-Gasteiz by late July 2012 as part of a carsharing program. Other trials are expected to follow in Bilbao, Boston, Malmö, and the Hiriko Fold, one of the three models planned for production, is scheduled to go on sale in 2013.

The MIT CityCar is a concept car project conceived at the MIT Media Lab, for the purpose of exploring the idea of urban mobility. This intensive study on advanced human traveling has been in progress since 2003. Designed for fluid movement in downtown cores, the concept car research is designed for passengers to navigate the city intelligently and ecologically. This project comprises the testing and making of a vehicle which re-invents the car as an object, and redefines the user's relationship to metropolitan patterns. The intention was to take the design process “out of the box," of automotive design alone. The prototype will be designed from a new perspective: that of architecture, energy, ecology, urban planning, and urban design.

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