Gadgetory

I'll bet most of the time you drive you're probably alone in a car a rather big machine with a slew of empty seats and three to four thousand pounds of metal plastic and glass on four wheels anything about that strike you as out of balance in this scene that conversation we meet a guy who thinks so he's put together a company that believes the perfect vehicle lies somewhere between your car a motorcycle and a spinning top she beautiful Daniel Kim is the founder of San Francisco's lit motors and this prototype is called the c12 wheels like a bike fully enclosed like a car and self-balancing like nothing you've ever seen it does print motorcycle in that I see it's got two wheels that you know are lined up like a motorcycle but it doesn't what am I seeing it doesn't prove motorcycle in many other ways right well it's the best of both worlds so the only motorcycle part would be the fact that it has two wheels yeah and that at tilton leans oh that's tears everything else is basically it has all the creature comforts of a car and the safety it's more than a fairing it's got a full body right it's fully enclosed so you can be your daily commuter you can drive in the rain you could take it up the mountain driving the snow you're riding in your helmet so no leathers no helmet no boots this is one of those interesting things about this vehicle Daniel is that it's basically you said it's like you you're driving your helmet right but you're also driving your fishbowl you need great visibility when you're driving a motorcycle that's a paramount from a safety standpoint is incredibly important to be seen really yeah yeah of course we're having all of this body uh-huh makes a bigger statement that I'm here I mean your guests bottle yeah I'm in your blind spot I'm crossing the road you know I am oh I'm going into your field of view compare this to a motorcycle this is a thousand times safer but without a doubt the headline on the Siwon is its ability to stay upright on its own even in the event of a side impact collision thanks to a couple of gyros that are unique to this vehicle so this is where I want you to show me the secret sauce yeah absolutely oh one of the secret sauce but the lining is the most unique to what I've seen your story is the idea that it's a two wheeler tandem two wheeler it doesn't fall down absolutely you made a kind of a high-tech weeble here yeah you know it wasn't just me it was a you know with the help of a great engineering team so but you know our paths are basically in the controls for these gyroscopes so here are two of our gyroscopes our first full-scale attempt and there's a slardar wheel on the inside that spins it like seven to ten thousand rpms and this is outputting around five hundred foot-pounds of torque that's a lot of torque adds a lot of torque and that torque is used to keep this thing upright yep so in every situation you'll be stable we actually bring safety to motorcycles okay so here's the gyroscopic technology in action I mean these guys have got this thing I'm I'm putting a hand on it here and I can feel it resists it resists any interest in going over puppets it's like it's got a will of its own it's pretty impressive and it's just those two gyros down there creating these hundreds of foot-pounds of torque aside from balancing itself Kim's tea names for the c1 to do zero to 60 in about six seconds 120 mile an hour top speed and arrange pushing 200 miles on a full charge that should take no more than a handful of hours at most now the real test cuz I'm I'm tall enough to test any car let's see how I fit in here works yeah yeah my knees aren't up against anything that's kind of a win for me great you still have a couple inches behind you so yeah the room is actually quite good great it's quite good now tell me about your big idea here all right so the big picture is you know August go to mass production there's a huge energy problem and transportations the biggest one the biggest pies to that so we're looking really to change the way people move around I basically create a very efficient platform and bring a lot of value to you know not just the United States but also developing countries where two wheels are actually a necessity but you weren't just aiming at the developing world with this it's everywhere it's everywhere there's a two-wheeler that's necessity so anywhere there's a traffic jam a two-wheeler is great for splitting lanes or chopping off 20% of your commute it's incredibly sustainable platform you know this is the future of Transportation to be sure the c1 is a ways off if all goes well deliveries will begin in late 2014 at around $24,000 but even as it sits today without paint windows or even a decent seat it's part of a renaissance of new ways of imagining how we handle transportation with a little more balance