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The UAE's eco-friendly, robotic city looks more like a ghost town
The United Arab Emirates' pre-planned Masdar City is supposed to be a shining beacon of technology between its clean energy and automated cars. However, it has hit a few roadblocks, including the financial crisis from the last decade -- and the result is less of a Utopia and more of a ghost town. If you need proof, Quartier Libre has posted an eerie video tour (below) of Masdar as it stood this summer. With just a few thousand residents, many of the buildings and high-tech facilities sit unused; it's as if everyone suddenly went on vacation. The city should be more welcoming once it's completed sometime after 2020, but for now it's not exactly a tourist's dream. Not unless you really enjoy haunted houses, that is. [Image credit: Jan Seifert, Flickr]
Inhabitat's Week in Green: Cities of the future, the Aqua Star, and 0-60 in 3.4 seconds... with a go-kart
Each week our friends at Inhabitat recap the week's most interesting green developments and clean tech news for us -- it's the Week in Green. What will the high-tech city of the future look like? This week Inhabitat brought you a sneak peek as we took an exclusive look inside Abu Dhabi's carbon-neutral Masdar City, which just opened for business. We also brought you brand new photos of the world's largest wooden structure, and we spotted several innovative solar-powered buildings - Sweden's rotating photovoltaic cog building and a self-sustaining pod home that can be perched on any roof. Green transportation also took off with a blast this week as the Linde E1 Electric Go-Kart set a Guinness World Record by traveling from 0-60 in 3.4 seconds and Synergy's folded-wing glider plane announced plans to compete in the CAFE Green Flight Challenge. We also saw greener vehicles gear up around the world as France announced plans to deploy a fleet of all-electric garbage trucks next week and Nissan unveiled the NV200 -- New York City's taxi of tomorrow. And for those looking for an underwater escape this summer, don't miss out on the Aqua Star - a submersible electric scooter capable of charting the ocean depths. In other news, this week we showcased several high-tech concept gadgets made from paper - an origami cell phone that folds into a flat piece of cardboard and the world's first interactive paper computer. We also brought you a sensor glove that could help stroke patients recover through gaming, and we covered a clutch of wired home furnishings that bring new meaning to the term geek chic -- from an interweb chaise made from 1,100 feet of coaxial cable to an analog cassette tape chair, to a modern computer mouse made from fine wool felt.
Masdar City's driverless pods now whisking students around on a limited basis (video)
Oh, sure -- Masdar City's driverless pods may not make nearly as many stops as your average metro, but it essentially matches the usefulness of the subway station in Pyongyang. And with a lot less energy waste, to boot. If you'll recall, these driverless pods were planned years ago, and while the ambitions have been quelled somewhat thanks to the economic crunch, that hasn't stopped students and engineers from using 2GetThere's pods, magnets and a fiber optic system to create a two-stop transfer system at the university. For now, they're whisking students between a pair of drop points that are 800 meters apart, traveling 15 miles per hour and instilling fear into everyone who dares step inside. As for the future? Only The Jetsons truly know, but you can take a glimpse in the video just past the break.
Masdar City's driverless podcars are more shuttle than Johnny Cab
Welcome to the future of urban transportation, a driverless taxi that will get you where you're going without any unpleasant human interaction or labor disputes. This is the PRT (Personal Rapid Transit) podcar from Zagato, a fully electric and fully automated taxi system set to shuttle people around Masdar City, an eco-utopia under development in Abu Dhabi that pledges to have no carbon footprint and no real roads, leaving these to buzz along underground at a leisurely 15 mph. Unlike other prototype autonomous taxis we've seen these will initially only be able to go between set locations, but the hope is that in the not too distant future they'll take you to within 100 meters of any location in the city -- hopefully with the accompaniment of Robert Picardo's unique vocal talents.[Via Switched]
