Scoot!

This post in honor of my friend & obsessive (Vespa) scooter-lover Heather Parker:

The genius that is MIT, in Cambridge, MA has done it again: electric scooters.

The low cost and foldable design of these electric scooters, as shown in this rendering outside the Duomo in Milan,
could provide a convenient and efficient mode of transportation in urban environments.

Scooters & Vespa's alike are a live and well in each and every thriving urban-community across the globe, and it doesn't seem like they will be going away anytime soon...and thank goodness for that. It is energy efficient, clean, compact (it folds!) and simple and apparently, I am not the only one who thinks they are incredibly: cool.

A few facts about this new scooter from the horses' mouth, Professor of Architecture and Media Arts & Sciences, William Mitchell:

• The new design "was all about providing a clean, green, silent electric scooter that would provide, even better, the same kind of urban mobility..."
• As an added bonus, the simplicity of the electric design, which eliminates the powertrain by putting motors directly inside each of the two wheels, made it possible to design the scooter so that it could be folded up to about half its size, making it even easier to store in crowded urban environments.
• "A typical gas scooter has about 1,000 parts, but ours only has 150."

Now go and read this full article on these amazing street-chic creatures:

Enjoy! (And go get one, damnit!)