Electric Car Folds To Half Its Size And Only Needs Tiny Parking Space

People have longed for a solution when it comes to traffic jams and the sometimes impossible task of finding a parking spot. So far, no such solution has been invented, but there are some innovators who have taken on the challenge. It seems we will have to redesign the entire spectrum of what cars look like in order to solve this one, and that is exactly what the people over at Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST) have done. It resulted in a foldable electric car.

When Mercedes-Benz decided that enough was enough a few years back, they innovated a new kind of car which ended up being the tiny Smart. At first, people laughed at it. But as the enthusiasm for the car and its incredibly slim and traffic friendly design grew, people started paying more attention to it than ever before. The Smart car wasn’t an overnight success in any way, but it helped pave the way for a new and more time optimizing car body design.

The foldable electric car presented by KAIST is a lot different from the Smart car, but they have pretty much the same core idea – that is to make a car that is easy to wield in traffic and also super easy to park. Another key concern when designing this foldable electric car called Armadillo-T, was to see if they could save a whole lot of parking space when parking a lot of these cars alongside each other. They managed to do just that. The fact that the car can be turned around on its own axle makes it super easy to pull in and out when the electrical car is folded up and parked.

It also has a pretty nice reach since it only uses a 3.6 kWh battery, which allows it to travel up to 37 miles per hour with about a 60 mile range per charge. It’s not too shabby if I may say so myself. The folding mechanism also serves as a really clever anti-theft mechanism as it is literally impossible for any car thief to get into the car without making sure it’s unfolded first, which is virtually impossible without the key. When folded, this electric car measures just 1.65 meters long, which only requires a very small space to park.