Skytran
If you love the principle of public transport but hate the thought of getting on it, you might want to invest heavily in Skytran. Billed as 'Personal Mobility for the 21st Century', this seriously innovative form of transport offers a light rail system with individual pods.
Puyo
Last October at the Tokyo Motor Show, Honda unveiled Puyo. This little bubble car is another futuristic concept that threatens to blow gas guzzlers out of the water – or at least off our streets.
Pivo 2
Talk about a cute concept car. The Nissan Pivo 2 almost makes Wall-E look dull – almost… This environmentally-friendly electric urban commuter vehicle has a built-in robotic interface and rotates 360 degrees on its axis. By getting rid of traditional mechanical linkages like shafts and hydraulic cylinders and using drive by wire electrical technology instead, it's infinitely more flexible than most cars we're used to.
Unicat
Have you ever felt like traveling through the Sahara, without leaving all (well, almost all) of the comforts of home behind? Well the makers of the Unicat are here to help you. A cross between an extreme, off-road RV and the Four Seasons, the creators of the Unicat are hoping to change how and where people travel, by putting the power back in the best hands: you.
The NmG
So you thought the Aptera was a cool alternative to gas guzzlers? Check these little guys out. NmG (standing for 'No more Gas') personal electric vehicles are smaller than Smart cars and use no gasoline at all. None. In fact, you can run them for one or two cents a mile.
Zip It
The gas pump torture of watching numbers roll swiftly higher is increasingly unbearable. Especially for the nostalgiac US resident who lucidly remembers the days of the $1 and $2 gallon. As energy prices increase and permeate every aspect of our lives, our lives change in step with it. Necessity begs for alternatives, and new solutions appear. Solutions like the zipcar.
Mobile hotel
How much easier would traveling be if you could take your house with you? No need to pack, no worries about forgetting your passport, no need to book hotels… Well, Hotelmovil comes about as close as we're going to get to that fantasy for now (apart from RVs, of course, but I refuse to count them). It's a hotel that can be hauled around on an 18-wheel trailer platform. Park it, press 'play' on a remote control, and your hotel pops out. Really.
Wingless flight
A car that gets 230 miles per gallon? Don't be daft. That would blow the trusty Toyota Prius out of the water, and turn the rising cost of gasoline into only a minor concern. Right? Which is why we should all rush out and preorder an Aptera.
The Chiva Express
Talk about traveling in a hybrid. This colorful little bus from Ecuador thinks it's a train. A chiva is an old-style Latin American bus, more accustomed to carrying grain and chickens on its roof than a bunch of tourists. But this particular chiva has been adapted to run on tracks - and gives out-of-towners fantastic views of the Andes and the coastal lowlands of Ecuador.
Scuba car
It's straight out of a Bond movie (The Spy Who Loved Me, 1977, to be precise). But the cool thing is, this diving car is real. At last month's Geneva Motor Show, the sQuba - the world's first submersible car – was revealed to the world.
