Amazing Hiriko

Have you ever driven through a city centre and spent ages looking for somewhere to park?

In many urban areas, there simply isn't enough space for all the cars that people want to use.

And it doesn't just create parking problems - it also means inevitable traffic jams.

Watch this video and find out how these problems can be solved. This car is really amazing technologically speaking, because it not only is electric but, as its name suggests, it squeezes up and folds!

The Hiriko is an electric car that folds up to reduce in length from 100 down to a mere 60 inches - the width of an ordinary car

That the Hiriko electric car prototype is small is obvious to anyone. Perhaps less obvious is that, in parking, the Hiriko becomes even smaller. Thanks to a folding mechanism that tucks the rear of the car in under the chassis, the Hiriko's length can be reduced to the width of an ordinary automobile. The result? It's possible to park three Hirikos in a single parking bay.

The Hiriko is an evolution of MIT's CityCar project, in collaboration with Denokinn (the Basque Center for Innovation) and a consortium of Spanish businesses. The word Hiriko itself derives from the Basque words hiri (town or city) and kotxe (car) - so the name is in essence merely an English to Basque translation.

Electric Car News put the price of the Hiriko at £11,000 (US$17,430), which broadly agrees with other figures that have been suggested, though it may be that the car is more popular with city authorities hoping (perhaps clamoring) to introduce fleets of Hirikos for inner-city hire schemes. In any case the electric cars are expected to take to the streets in 2013. The car was unveiled at the end of January by president of the European Commission, José Manuel Barroso.

From BBC and Gizmag