+ Click to Enlarge THE SHAPE OF THINGS TO COME? Bombardier designers predict that this is what we’ll be riding in 2025.

January 16, 2004
By Dave Abrahams

When the designers at Bombardier (best known in South Africa for its potent quads) were asked to create a vision of what we could be riding in 2025, they came up with the super-radical "Embrio".

It's aimed, the designers say, at the 18-45 age group and they claim it is an advanced concept tries to predict the user-friendly, minimalist vehicles we might be seeing - and using - in the cities and countryside in the not-too-distant future.

The Embrio uses gyroscopic and electronic technology and a hydrogen fuel cell as its main power source. Fuel cells exist; they create power by mixing hydrogen and oxygen, ideally resulting in water as the only exhaust.

Car manufacturers have already developed this technology for automobiles and General Motors plans to start selling fuel-cell powered cars before 2010.

When the Embrio is parked the small front wheels deploy to the ground, like an aircraft's landing gear, to keep it stable.

Riding the Embrio would be an intensely physical feeling, akin to flying a helicopter. With a seat like a motorcycle, it uses a complex series of sensors and gyroscopes to balance one or more riders on a single wheel.

A digitally encoded learning key will start the engine; to move forward, the rider activates a trigger on the left handlebar – but to prevent the seat from rotating rearwards and spitting him off the rider has to lean firmly forward.

The landing gear retracts when the speed reaches 20km/h and to turn you just lean in the direction you want to go.

The brakes are activated by a trigger on the right handlebar and when the speed drops below 20km/h the landing gear redeploys automatically.

However, the Embrio should be stable even without the small wheels when stationary thanks to the controlling gyroscope.

Bombardier envisages using fuel-cell technology and recycled aluminium and polyethylene to make the Embrio eco-friendly.

It should weigh about the same as a mid-sized motorcycle – perhaps 164kg.

It’s a fascinating idea because it combines the simplicity and alternative-fuel technology of futuristic commuter vehicles with the excitement of "recreational" products such as ATVs.

Although an animated video exists, here's no working prototype yet; the Embrio, which looks like a prop from Blade Runner, is still in the advanced concept phase of development.

It's also been compared with the Segway, a gyroscope-driven "self-balancing human transporter" designed by inventor and entrepreneur Dean Kamen, which shares its gyroscopic balancing principle approach, small-radius turning ability and the compactness to go where other motorised vehicles can’t.

But the two are quite different. The Segway weighs only 16kg and folds up so you can fit it in the boot of a car or carry it into your office – and the Segway’s top speed is 20km/h while the Embrio is reaching 60km/h in training mode!

Great - but fuel cells need to shrink

Industry observers disagree over which aspect of the Embrio's technology will be the most difficult to realise but certainly gyroscopes don't seem to be a limiting factor.

"Recently we have been fascinated by the Segway's self-balancing technology," said Geoff Wardle of the Art Centre College of Design in Pasadena. "Eighty percent of aircraft are landed with gyroscopic technology."

A more significant barrier could be the fuel-cell technology – the smallest one Wardle has seen is only small enough for a car.

"I could envision some kind of hybrid system - it's become kind of a cliché - an internal combustion petrol engine like a lawn mower’s, that would be used solely to generate electricity," he predicted.

But it’s not the technology that makes the the Embrio an idea whose time has not yet come. The problem is where to use new forms of transportation like this.

High road or no road?

Many single-person vehicles, such as the GoPed motorised skateboard, the Embrio or the Segway, could be quicker than cars or walking in an inner-city environment. But these new types of vehicles don't necessarily fit the scale of normal roads and pathways.

"We don't have the physical infrastructure to support the Embrio," said Darrel Rhea, an industrial design consultant. The lighter, slower Segway has already been banned from most city pavements so the Embrio would have to be a street vehicle.

But could it safely share the road with heavier and faster cars and trucks?

Maybe, as with bicycles, there could be a separate lane for miniature one-person vehicles.

"I'd like to think that by 2025 part of our transportation scenario would include special lanes so big vehicles would be discouraged from sharing the same road space," said Wardle.

I just hope I’m still around to ride one when the Embrio becomes a reality; check out the video – this thing is going to be fun!