14 February, 2009

Pod cars over Abu Dhabi?

Can anyone verify this?

"A Jetsons-style transit system is set to roll out around Masdar City - electric, elevated podcars that can carry a few passengers at a time around the city, between several customizable destinations."
"Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) is a system that has been used at the University of West Virginia in Morgantown for over 30 years (it was invented by a professor there), and now a super-duper version of it is being planned for Abu Dhabi. It runs on an elevated grid, on wheels rather than on a monorail, and each podcar operates independently, taking passengers directly to their destination, bypassing other stops."

Source, and here.

(It would be kinda cool if it were for real.)

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Yeah, pod cars are definitely being looked at, but the elevated design is just one of many. The National reported on this recently.

Anonymous said...

can they take u anywhere?
and how high do the move

Pls tell me a few inches just above Salik and you've got urself a customer

Gaia said...

Yes, it's true! I saw a version at the World Future Energy Summit... very futuristic design but the maximum speed it can attain is only around 40 km/hr.

Mr_Grant said...

It's real. Newslinks here:

http://tinyurl.com/5zqvhh

A similar system called ULTra (atsltd.co.uk) at Heathrow Airport will open to the public later this year and another, Vectus (http://vectus.se/eng_index.html), is under development in Sweden

grapeshisha said...

I think it is true, but more of a Masdar initiative - and I originally got the story from treehugger.

http://blog.grapeshisha.com/2009/02/podcars-masdar-abu-dhabi.html

Lirun said...

sounds amazing.. i wish we got it here in israel.. especially if it can be run in a green way..

Em said...

yea i attended a seminar where the masdar representative talked about having them. but i believe it is only within the masdar city, not anywhere else.

hemlock said...

thanks guys.

even if only within masdar city, it's still very Jetsons - and very, very cool :)

hut said...

Pah. Dubai had those for years...
Dubai PRT

hemlock said...

wiseguy.

Anonymous said...

This is rich. ultra clean city in one of the worlds largest oil producers.

Genius PR bit going on.

Veiled Muslimah said...

If anything else, the cars look exceptionally...cute. :P

Anonymous said...

The pod cars look like space shuttles. Or Porsche Cayennes. It's the same really.

Emoxaph said...

haha...they think they can pull it off in this condition!! nyc...gud luck to em!

Neil Roberts said...

They will be in Masdar only, as to help achieve their "zero carbon" status there will be no cars allowed.

Five Ocean Computers said...

looking lovely !

Emirates Strong Force

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