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To discover the spirit of invention, get off the beaten path. And so it was that I recently found myself in a back-alley Vancouver industrial unit that was filled with the blue bolt of welding sparks and the whine of air grinders.

The space was the temporary home of Intermeccanica. This company has always made beautiful Porsche Speedster replicas, but something new was afoot – in the centre of the shop was a tiny, three-wheeled car that looked like a baseball helmet with doors and a windshield.

This is the EMV17, the first draft of a machine aimed at solving gridlock and smog problems that curse major cities like Vancouver and Toronto. One EMV is on the road for testing, and an elegant final design is on the drawing board: the ugly-ducking EMV is being re-contoured into a sleek carbon pod called the Solo.

Peter Cheney

The micro-car is one of the most occult machines in the transportation universe. Once upon a time there were machines like the BMW Isetta and the Heinkel bubble car, which were just large enough for a pair of human beings. Today, we live in the age of the SUV and the super-sized pickup.

So is it time to resurrect the micro-car?

Henry Reisner and his partner, businessman Jerry Kroll, say it’s time to rethink the way we commute. More than 80 per cent of Canadian commuting trips are made with only one person in the car, Reisner said, and most are 30 kilometres each way, or less. Why not use a small, ultra-efficient machine for the trip?

Peter Cheney

“There’s a huge block of people that fit this profile,” Reisner said. “Even if we get one per cent of them, that will be a viable business. And think about all the things that are wrong with putting everyone in a huge car. Parking, congestion, the environment – it’s all bad.”

Back in Toronto, I gazed down on the Gardiner Expressway from an overpass. Below was an endless, slow-moving stream of vehicles. Most were large and the majority had just one occupant. A young woman had her purse balanced on the dash while driving a Cadillac Escalade – her three-ton machine took up about four times as much road space as a Solo would.

The eastbound Gardiner carries 115,000 cars per day. If Reisner’s estimate is correct, that means that there are about 92,000 people driving alone in large vehicles. Imagine how much more space there would be on the road if they were all in something the size of a Solo.

The Solo project isn’t the only attempt to produce a small, ultra-efficient car. In Arizona, a Elio Motors is working on a three-wheeled two seater that it hopes to deliver for $6,800 (U.S.). Unlike the Solo, which is a rechargeable electric, the Elio uses a gas-powered engine. The company says the Elio will get 2.8 litres/100 km.

Peter Cheney

The size and weight of cars are costly, both financially and environmentally. At highway speed, about 90 per cent of the fuel burned is due to aerodynamic drag – and every square inch added to a vehicle’s frontal area adds to the problem. And weight hurts efficiency at every speed – the U.S. Department of Energy estimates that cutting 10 per cent from a vehicle’s weight will increase fuel efficiency by up to 8 per cent.

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) standard, which was passed by the U.S. government in 1975, was supposed to change the auto industry. And, at first, it did: by 1980, the average weight of vehicles sold in the United States had dropped 20 per cent and average fuel efficiency increased by nearly 50 per cent – from 18.1 litres/100 km to 12.4 litres/100 km.

This was the beginning of a sustained design and engineering effort that has given us unprecedented gains on the powertrain front: technologies such as direct fuel injection and turbocharging have made the internal combustion engine more efficient, and it’s coupled to high-tech transmissions. There are lightweight materials, cylinder deactivation systems and hybrid drivetrains. All good, right?

Peter Cheney

Unfortunately, most of these gains have been squandered by vanity and greed. In the 1990s, manufacturers began cranking out SUVs that earned them fat profits. Then came the power wars: 600-horsepower Vipers and Corvettes were marketed to baby boomers who wanted a rolling aphrodisiac. Then came the rise of the daily-driver pickup truck – millions of drivers began using giant Ford F-150s and Dodge Rams for commuting to work and picking up groceries.

Even compact cars have gained a bigger footprint. The first-generation Honda Civic, which was built from 1973 until 1978, was 3.55 metres long and 1.5 metres wide. Compare that to the 2015 model, which has gained 104 centimetres in length, and 25.4 centimetres in width. If you do the math, you’ll see that a 1973 Civic took up 5.35 square metres of space, while the 2015 takes up 8.01 – almost 50 per cent more.

Then think about Kroll and Reisner’s Solo project – a machine that takes up about half as much space as that 1973 Civic, and can zip along at highway speed using nothing but electricity. It’s big enough to hold a driver and several bags of groceries. It can park in a motorcycle-sized space. Selling the micro-car to North Americans who’ve grown accustomed to giant machines may be an uphill battle, but it’s an idea whose time has come.

Peter Cheney

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