Toyota, the Godzilla of Japanese automakers is taking mobility, personally, literally. The company recently demonstrated their commitment to developing clean vehicle technology and recently unveiled their latest wild-child concept car in hightech Tokyo and bewildered the masses in Bejing. The vehicular viruosos of Toyota have sucessfully mated pop culture and art with ecology and emotion resulting the birth of the single seat electric concept vehicule of the future. It's the automotively sexy i-swing "personal mobility vehicule".
It's an evolutionary offspring of Toyota's past high tech offsprint, the P.O.D released in 2001, and most recently the PM which debuted in 2005. More of a bod-pod than an actual car, the i-swing resembles a space age, spaced out George Jetsonian gas free galactic pod straight out of "Invasion of the Body Snatchers." Toyota brass was on hand for the unveiling and Toyota President Watanabe's Personal Mobility Wannabes were an instant hit with the press and the public. The i-Swing is designed for riders 5' 9" or shorter, has a snuggly Victorias Secrets kind of wearable feel to it with a detachable and interchangable form fitting fabric outer cloth wrapped around a shock absorbing polyeurethene shell which itself is designed to lessen impact while in "pedestrian" mode.
If you want to give yourself a personal mobilty makeover you can change coverings to match your moods from lime green to lipstick red or deep sky blue. Yes you too can now be a personal mobility fashionista! The i-Swing operates in a two-wheeled pedestrian mode that glides slowly along the sidewalk to allow for conversation with a similarly podded person. If you're ready to NASCAR it, i-Swing style and hit the city highways and byways it can morph into a three wheeled green machine as you set sail on the high seas of the city's pavement and asphalt.
The i-Swing is a jaunty joy with joystick control or you can do the boogaloo and by shifting your body to control speed and direction. Lean forward to slow down and brake, or lean back to accelerate and burn up that quarter mile, Toyota style. The i-Swing thing also does wheelies! Now get ready to enter the Toyota twilight zone. The i-Swing, like the Hal computer in Stanley Kubricks "2001: Space Odysy" also utilizes artificial intelligence, engineeringly and lovingly referred to as AI. The i-Swing is just a computer chip off the old block! This bond between person and pod is Toyota's version of a Vulcan mind meld where the two grow to know one another just short of falling in love. More of a platonic pod affair really, where Inspector Gadget meets the Batmobile.
The i-Swing AI will learn it's owners moods and tastes and act as a cyber secretary with a calendar function to remind you of appointments and events. It's advanced robotics will enable it to adjust colors on the nose cone and music to allow for your changing moods. It will also give fashion tips for those still stuck in polyester disco era mode. The nose cone of the i-Swing is a psychedelic delight. It projects a visual feast of liquid changing colors that shift and change with movement and is reminiscent of acid trip lightshows at the Filmore in San Francisco. When you stop the pod and want to leave it push a button, and unlike Hal the Computer, it will open up for it's human companion and release you from it's gentle automaton embrace.
Specs are wonderfully compact for storage purposes or in travel mode. It's 800 mm wide, in two wheeled mode it's 985 mm long and 1800 mm high. In three wheeled mode, it's 1,275 mm long and 1710 mm high. Toyota wants you to get into the i-Swing of things, so if you want to enjoy a taste of the future, you can go to Toyota, or you can go to Hal!
Mike Marino is an author, freelance writer, green journalist and pop culture dumpster diver!
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