Electric Car News put the price of the Hiriko at £11,000 (US$17,430)
That the Hiriko electric car prototype is small is obvious to anyone. Perhaps less obvious is that, in parking, the Hiriko becomes even smaller. Thanks to a folding mechanism that tucks the rear of the car in under the chassis, the Hiriko’s length can be reduced to the width of an ordinary automobile. The result? It’s possible to park three Hirikos in a single parking bay.
The folding allows the automobile to be reduced from an already diminutive length of 100 down to a mere 60 inches (2.5 down to 1.5 meters). The folding is carried out during parking, and doesn’t require the driver to leave the comfort of her seat, much less get her hands dirty.
Better still, the Hiroko‘s windshield doubles as the car door, so drivers and passengers (the car is a two-seater) can park facing the sidewalk without have to worry about chipping paint or bruising cheekbones attempting to squeeze in and out of narrow gaps.
Perhaps the key feature of the Hiriko is its “robot wheels” which allow the car to turn more or less on the spot about its center. Each integrates a motor, steering actuators, suspension and braking right inside the wheel, controlled by a drive-by-wire system. The car is entirely battery-powered with a single-charge range of 75 miles (120 km).
The Hiriko is an evolution of MIT’s CityCar project, in collaboration with Denokinn (the Basque Center for Innovation) and a consortium of Spanish business. The word Hiriko itself derives from the Basque words hiri (town or city) and kotxe (car) – so the name is in essence merely an English to Basque translation.
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