Image from http://www.hiriko.com image gallery
Hiriko is a car prototype; it has been presented to EU commission yesterday. It is small, fully electric, very electronic, absolutely urban and designed and developed by basque companies with MIT collaboration, following their city-car concept. In the web it is claimed that apart from the car itself the production and business model is also innovative.
I do not know if I will be able to see those cars running around my home or in other cities in Europe or the world but I like the concept and I like the ambition to innovate in transportation. Transportation is one of our great challenges to reduce CO2 emissions, responsible of more or less 25% of the emissions and without clear alternatives for the moment because most people don’t think of driving anything powered without oil.
So, new ideas, projects and realities are not only welcomed but necessary. They have to be innovative, brave and attractive for the potential customers who have been using internal combustion engines for a century and they will need help from institutions and citizens.
Many projects will fail but this is part of research and if only one of them gets the accurate combination technology, a good product, business concept and intuition; it will make a very important contribution to change our carbon footprint.
Sometimes getting the right concept is only evident later as happened with the iphone. Many where looking for something like it but without getting it right.
Amateur Climate Change 
Comments on: "Hiriko, will I see this electric can in the streets?" (2)
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[…] time ago I mentioned this promising project called Hiriko a small electric city car following the concept by MIT . It seems a great idea but not always great ideas become real things, because the way to the great […]