General Motors and Segway unveiled today a prototype all-electric vehicle intended for city driving. Dubbed Project PUMA (Personal Urban Mobility and Accessibility), the two-seater vehicle balances on two side-by-side wheels like Segway's stand-up personal transport.
Its top speed is 35 miles per hour (so it can't go on highways), it can travel 35 miles on a single charge, and recharges in 35 minutes. The vehicles can turn in place, and has two smaller sets of wheels, one in front and one in back. When stopped, the vehicle rests on the front set; the ones in the back are there to prevent it from tipping over.
The prototype shown off in New York this morning ahead of the New York Auto Show is the bare-bones skeleton of what the vehicle will look like, and the companies are expected to show off a fleshed-out version later this year.
The announcement was lacking in details on how much and when the vehicle would come out, two issues closely linked. Estimates put the release of PUMA as far out as 2012, with the price hovering between one-third and one-fourth the cost of the average vehicle.
Larry Burns, GM vice president of research and development and strategic planning, was quoted as saying the vehicle would be one-quarter the cost per mile of typical vehicles and its efficiency would be equal to as high as 200 miles per gallon.
The vehicle also boasts features intended to make city driving easier and safer, with a docking station for a smartphone that turns the phone into the vehicle's dashboard. PUMAs could then network and communicate with one another, and Burns said that the vehicles would be able to use transponder and GPS technology to drive themselves and automatically avoid people and vehicles.
While he was also quoted as saying the vehicles would ideally never crash on their own, and would therefore not need most safety features and have safety belts only for "comfort purposes," that doesn't take into account the possibility of other, non-PUMA vehicles hitting them.
The PUMA announcement comes at a time of uncertainly for the future of GM, since it now has less than 60 days to develop a restructuring plan to present to the White House, showing it has a viable future.