Hyundai Unveils ‘E4U’ Personal Mobility Vehicle

As the human population grows and cities and villages become more densely populated, and public transportation travels on a steady path of not being tailored to your schedule, society needs to find a better way to get around. With the E4U personal transport, Hyundai is looking to remove our need for cars, but get us around more efficiently than bicycles.

Hyundai Motor Co recently unveiled the “E4U” personal mobility vehicle at Seoul Motor Show 2013, which opens for the public from March 29 to April 7, 2013.

The E4U is a concept vehicle that can be actually driven and was designed by the company’s Advanced Design Department. The eggmobile can maneuver in any direction. Rather than a traditional tire, the E4U uses a semisphere that can rotate in all directions; it’s riding around on a ball.

In order to move the vehicle in any direction without hindrance from the training wheels, the E4U simply tilts in a direction, lifting the wheels up off the floor. If that sounds complex, it works similarly to the way a helicopter works. Imagine the semisphere as the blades and the training wheels as the tail rotor.

The E4U is driven with the driver’s feet, which tilts the semisphere in a given direction in order to move or stop the unit. The speed of the vehicle varies depending on how much tilt force is applied, but in a demonstration, the E4U‘s moving speed was about the same as typical walking speed.

According to Tech-On, Hyundai’s Advanced Design Department only began development of the E4U in October 2012, so we’ll be interested to see where this concept goes.

Source: Extremetech, Nikkei Tech On