Aussies Design NY Cab

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New York cab of the future
MATT CAMPBELL
June 1, 2010





A quirky looking cab designed in Australia has been rethought for the busy city streets of New York.

New York is known as much for its taxis as it is for its hotdogs and trendy 40-something shoppers. The city is typically depicted in television shows and movies as having streets crammed with yellow Ford sedans and people yelling "Taxi!" on almost every street corner.

But that could be about to change.

The NYC UniCab Taxi of Tomorrow has been designed to change the way people think about catching a taxi - and there's an Australian connection.

The concept is based on the award-winning design on Melbourne-based RMIT University student Damian Lucaciu. His concept design, Melbourne TAXI 2020 has been adapted to suit the hustle and bustle of New York City's criss-crossing roadways.

According to UniCab website, the essence of the Taxi of Tomorrow is: "People-moving with a lighter footprint, treading more gently on the earth as human beings rather than human doings."

The managing director of the project is also an Australian. Jacob F Baldwin is a foundation member of the Disability Council of NSW, and his expertise has been drawn upon because there's one key element to the UniCab that makes it a much more viable option as a city cab - unlike the four-door sedans of this world, the UniCab is wheelchair friendly.

In fact, the UniCab name is inspired by the notion of access for everyone. It has been designed with a low, flat floor-pan and a sliding wheelchair access ramp. The concept's designers say it should be able to transport almost anyone.

"No matter what size, shape or measure of mobility they possess," the UniCab website says.

Getting into the cab appears easy, too, with dual sliding doors on the sidewalk side of the car ensuring that nobody needs to get among the traffic to hop in.

Some of the ingenious elements of the concept include a hydrogen fuel-cell and two low-lying battery banks which work in tandem to send power to all four wheels (each has an electric motor) via a link of generators.

The hydrogen fuel-cell begins generating electricity when the level of charge drops to 40 per cent. There's also a solar panel on the roof to help keep the charge up.

If the driver does run out of go, though, they can pull into one of several Boomerang Hubs (a hat-tip to the Aussies in the team?) where the cabs can plug into a rapid recharge station while waiting for passengers.

The UniCab has four seats with the front being a rearward-facing chair, which is meant to stimulate conversation between the passengers. If you do sit in that seat, though, you miss out on seeing what's on the infotainment screen positioned on the safety shell that surrounds the driver.

If four seats isn't enough, there's also the Maxi-Taxi equivalent, a long-wheelbase version that is designed to seat six passengers as well as cart a boot-load of luggage

[Mr Hardware]

They obviously never read this. It's been done before, albeit in much more of a 90's flavour. The bottom line from all of this is there is 0 market in the modern world for a purpose-built taxi (london's black cabs excepted), as quite simply the TCO of anything other than an off the shelf sedan is just too high to run at anything other than a big loss.

[Fev]

Still waiting for the day of little 3-wheelers and cute lil robots like Total Recall

[MAD]

I'd love to see a total vehicle exclusion in CBD's of major cities, with huge carparks on the outskirts with a park'n'rent sort of system in place.
You pay to park your car, receive your rental voucher for a scooter, or travel voucher if you dont want to ride yourself. Think Thailand with a twist... Hundreds and hundreds of what could only be described as Tuk-Tuk's in the CBD to transport you wherever you need to be.