by Kenneth Andrews

Created on: January 29, 2012

Folding bicycles have long been a favourite of commuters who don't mind the fact that they take ages to fold, weigh half a ton, have no gears (and so are useless on hills), and have a habit of falling apart while you ride them. But a folding car? However odd it might seem, the Hiriko is a compactable electric car which has been launched in Europe, according to a report from

Deutsche Welle.

Designed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and built in Spain's Basque country, the Hiriko features the ability to fold itself vertically like a pushchair, so that parked in compact mode it will take up one third the space even of a Smart car. Its manufacturers hope this will make it ideal for Europe's tight city streets and restricted parking areas.

The folding feature is not the only design innovation displayed by the Hiriko - instead of a traditional central engine, the engine is split into motors which are divided between the car's four wheels and powered by two ion lithium batteries. This means that the car has both four wheel steering and four wheel drive, and each wheel is also capable of turning through 90 degrees, hopefully making parallel parking much easier.

In spite of its length of just 2.5 metres, this compact automobile is far from a budget model, and has been priced at a robust $16,000 for its launch in Spain. The manufacturers hope that the Hiriko (which apparently means "city" or "urban" in the Basque language) will take off for urban environments in a way in which even the Smart car, backed by Daimler, has failed to achieve. As Deutsche Welle put it, it's an innovative design, but remains a tough sell. Will the Hiriko's clever innovations, which in some cases really do redefine cars as we think of them, be enough to win over motorists?

The fact is that while electric cars have struggled to gain traction in Europe due to the scarcity of charging points between towns, they are ideal vehicles for urban driving, where you're lucky ever to get above 30 miles per hour, constantly stopping and starting, and never too far away from a power point. With a compact shape and extra manouverability with the four wheel steering making the driver's nightmare of parallel parking so much easier, the Hiriko could succeed where others have encountered limited success and make urban drivers across the world think more seriously about the environmental impact of their motoring.

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