HIRIKO: the city pocket car is a smooth operator
The famous habit of the politicians is that they are declaiming in every of their speeches about long perspectives, eminent results. According to this José Manuel Barroso, the president of the European Comission, named in January of 2012 the four-wheeler Hiriko as the direct „answer to the crisis". He should be hardly mistaken,
as this minicar - expectedly put into the circulation in 2013 - will be able to not less than to reduce the chance of the city traffic jams, followed by a zero direct emission.
Actually the Basque investors, the Spanish government and the worldwide recognized american MIT knowledge centre can be considered as the forefathers of this child with a far eastern-like sounding name. As it's clear from the preliminaries, the EU leaders ensure the back wind for the market introduction of this two-seated vehicle which partially follows the concept of the - in our country also famous - „Camping' bikes and which is even titeled as collapsible.
In point of the design and inner formation the Hiriko shows a close relation to the Smart, but it's able to much more. For example to that if there is only a narrow parking place, we can shorten the axle lenght with a half pocket-knife movement (so the total lenght will be decreased from 2,5 meters to 1,5 meter). In this case only the 2/3 of the parking place occupied by the Smart is for the Hiriko enough, which practically means the same, that three from this kind of car could park in one ordinary parking place. We could say, 3 in 1, and this is a real advantage in the crowded city centers. Moreover we can get out through the windscreen door, so we can bravely park close to each other.
The series of the tricks and practices continoues in the field of the undercarriage. Even if it's not singular, it's a useful and environmentally friendly solution at all, that each wheel is driven by an electric motor. But it's a real speciality in case of serial cars, that each wheel can be turned alone and separately braked – i.e. the turning round loses its reason.
So the vehicle with the mixed name coming from the Basque words hiri (city) and kotxe (car) is a tipical city car, which is able to do with one charge 120 kms. Though the calculated price of 3,8 millions makes the potential customers beside the undisputable advantages at least to think about it, but if the wiseguys of the EU would provide beside the encouraging also other subsidies to the project, we can get accustomed to the sight of the Hiriko. It may be so!
