{"id":507,"date":"2015-07-07T04:38:27","date_gmt":"2015-07-07T04:38:27","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/?p=507"},"modified":"2018-06-25T04:40:34","modified_gmt":"2018-06-25T04:40:34","slug":"i-test-drive-a-futuristic-mini-car","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.strangerworks.com\/?p=507","title":{"rendered":"I Test-Drive a Futuristic Mini-Car"},"content":{"rendered":"
Originally published at Grist<\/a>.<\/em><\/div>\n
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I hate cars for a multitude of reasons, both logical (I\u2019m afraid of getting hit by one) and illogical (cars are just so boring).<\/p>\n

But it\u2019s a complicated way to be, hating things. Whenever I decide to just go ahead and full-on loathe, I find myself making exceptions. For example, I am actually pretty excited to be getting into a car right now. My excuse: It\u2019s electric, and it looks like a jellybean on three wheels. Toyota has set up a little practice track in a high school parking lot not far from the Aspen Ideas Festival, where attendees have been disappearing for test drives. For the last few days I\u2019ve been overhearing a lot of excited chatter about the test drives, in between all the fraught panel discussions about \u201cWhat is America?\u201d (Short answer: complicated) and \u201cIs America a jerk?\u201d (Short answer: probably).<\/p>\n

The car is called the iRoad<\/a>, because Toyota has been putting a lowercase \u201ci\u201d in front of its weirder projects for a while now, and Apple never did win those trademark infringement lawsuits<\/a>. The iRoad is being billed as marrying the safety and ease of a car with the fun of a motorcycle. I am not sure about the safety part \u2014 to the eyes of someone who grew up in SUV country, the iRoad looks alarmingly small, like the clown car of the future.<\/p>\n

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But once I climb inside the clown car, the feeling changes. It has one very narrow seat in the front, which resembles the pilot seat of a Star Wars<\/em> X-wing. \u201cThe steering is in the back,\u201d says the driving instructor, Steve. \u201cSo it\u2019s going to handle counter-intuitively. It\u2019s a good idea to turn earlier than you usually would. There\u2019s a gyroscope inside that will keep you from tipping over. See if you can get around the track and not knock down any of these cones.\u201d<\/p>\n

What I want to say is, suavely, \u201cIt\u2019s not impossible. I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home.\u201d But since I drive so infrequently, it takes a while for the muscle memory of the whole process to return. I stare down at my feet. Which pedal is the brake? Which pedal is the accelerator? I push my foot down on each, very slowly, while trying to look supremely confident, and like a person who under no circumstances should be forbidden to drive the prototype car.<\/p>\n

Steve looks worried. I think Steve is on to me.<\/p>\n

But it is too late, Steve, because I now know which pedal is the accelerator. I take off with a jolt, and round the first corner, sharply. The entire car tilts to one side with the force of the turn, in a way that feels eerily non-vehicular. (I later hear that the main engineer on the project, Yanaka Akihiro<\/a>, is an ardent skier, and is obsessed with the idea of mechanically replicating the experience of skiing.) Cones topple all around me.<\/p>\n

Steve wasn\u2019t kidding about the turns, but each lap around the track feels like I\u2019m getting more of the hang of it, though I\u2019m still taking out the occasional cone. My time is up long before I\u2019m ready to stop driving. I reluctantly step out, wondering, how would<\/em> this work in the real world? Why don\u2019t we have something like this already?<\/p>\n

Well, we have. Many times. When I first saw the iRoad, it looked familiar, though it took a while to realize why. It\u2019s a pint-sized ringer for the Dymaxion Car<\/a>, the three-wheeled car designed by Buckminister Fuller (with design input from Norman Bel Geddes<\/a> and Isamo Noguchi<\/a>). The car was the toast of the 1933 Century of Progress Exposition in Chicago.<\/p>\n