Three recent 'personal transportation' inventions

YikeBike

A compact electric bike that can be folded up quite small. Looks like they're intending to sell them in 2010. website here

Being ridden



Being folded up

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The Enicycle

A Segway-like electric unicycle - and despite what that sounds like, it actually seems quite functional.

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The Contortionist

Dominic Hargreave's concept bike that can be folded up so it's not much bigger than one of its wheels



(though the process of folding it up seems a bit involved).

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Here's why stuff in this space is of interest to me. So much of how we live, or can live, whether in cities, the suburbs or the countryside, is defined by the transport options available to us.

I think in cities, in particular, it could be great to have a form of transport that was quick -- something more in the scale of buses, trains, cabs and bikes, than on the scale of walking -- yet was much more ad-hoc like walking, in that you could just pick up and go, when you wanted (no waiting for it, no having to go to the place to get it), and you can go pretty directly to where you want to go (unlike a train), and once you're there there's nothing to do (no having to lock up a bike) or no big thing to lug around.

I don't think any of these things here are idea in this regard, but they're heading in that direction.