25 September 2009 - 14:00
Are you sitting comfortably?
It's a common problem: you're comfily propping up the bar on your favourite stool, several pints worse for wear. You realise you need to visit the, er, restroom. But - and here's the kicker - you've forgotten how to use your legs. Disaster!
Honda feels your pain, and has just unveiled the U3-X, a bar-stool-meets-unicycle personal mobility device that will allow you and your non-functioning legs to glide to the bathroom in all-electric ease.
A smaller, more compact take on personal transport than Toyota's iReal, the Segway or, heaven forbid, that terrible GM Puma contraption, the U3-X will scoot you around the office/high street/future at a whopping 4mph, changing course as you lean in the desired direction.
It's powered by a lithium ion battery that, says Honda, provides around an hour of eerily quiet transportation on a single charge.
Honda describes the U3-X as ‘a compact experimental device to provide free movement in all directions... just like human walking'. Which does beg the question: assuming you're able of limb, what exactly is wrong with walking? It's served us humans pretty well for a few thousand years, after all.
Honda has also released a short video of the U3-X in action. It doesn't look exactly... comfortable, does it?
What do you think, TopGeareans? The future of urban transportation? Or simply an uncomfortable and unstable take on, y'know... the chair?
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It looks mad fun though!!! Only if it moved a lot faster than in the video...
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Having seen the complications engineered into their lavatory apparati, one wonders what sort of antiseptic, automated, electronic protruberence keeps the rider anchored to his or her seat. The Ford Probe reincarnated in a bad way!
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That seat looks like the kind you shiffle around on a lot before you're comfortable, and there's thus a risk of slipping off, especially if you have to lean forward. I'd prefer the Toyota Electric Wheelchair to this Honda Electric Unicycle.
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@azfelix: ask mr. Garrison about that and you'll know. Season 5 episode 11. It still beats flying. About this thing: I think that when I'm drunk I do NOT want to drive this. I'd never make it to the china.
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Put a V8 on it! Jeremy? Hope you read this..
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Japan strikes again.
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If you think this is mad, wait for Citroen's version complete with vibrating seat pads.........
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It's a one-wheeled Segway.
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You know that two-wheel drift viral vid? How long before a drunk with one of these makes a one-wheel drift? :)
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Looks like a riding toilet to me.
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This looks totally ridiculus. But how the hell does it work, James? Anyway I rather crawl then, thanks.
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why the obsession with these personal impractical pointless overpriced conveyances , they suggest to me that what we know as the car is finished . i'll resist .
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Soon, to be in an American home thankfully not near you.....
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this thing is perfect for americans who use a little car to moves in supermarket and use a car to do everything
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@sav5: Or the end of Man as we know him. The Japanese are fanatic in developing things for us so we never have to walk again. Next is probably a mobile drip so we don't have to bother with eating and drinking. It's not as if Japanese need that sort of thing, so what's the deal here? Taking over America?
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what if you've got......um.....you know........piles!
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i want 1! on my way 2 scool the smugness will be endless!! "out of the way peasents!"
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I wonder what'll happen if this thing hits a pencil on the floor.....why don't these Honda engineers go make new Honda NSXs or something....
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I think i will stick to my legs lol
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If you're drunk enough to not know where your legs are, you won't keep your balance on that thing anyway.
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If Honda are looking for...useful ideas, they should consider a car which can drive up walls with friction, so that you don't lose that handy no claims bonus from hitting a wall at 90 odd miles per hour. Of course, on the day that idea will come alive, pigs will fly with doves.
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Where do we need this? What's wrong with walking?
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what happens when we get to the restroom?
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that works when youre as tall as a coce bottle, not 6 ft.5
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AshHorne commented on this article
25 September 2009
Wouldn't this technically be drink-driving? I have a lot of friends that I would definitely not trust with the controls to one of those things!
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