The Wonderful No-Horse Shay

Small electric cars are a practical way of travelling short distances in town. They're environmentally responsible, cheap to run, easy to park, and they mostly look like the bastard offspring of an iMac and a Yugo. I submit that the final factor is significant in their low adoption rate.

So: let's get uncreative with electric car design. Let's make them retro. Very retro. Let's make them like they did in the 19th century! One-horse carriages are elegant, pretty, and small. So: add wheelmotors and appropriate blinkenlights, mount a windshield, replace the reins with a steering wheel for the sake of compatibility, and recreate a small carriage as a modern horseless carriage. Literally: the only thing missing is the horse.

But in the abscence of a horse, you ask, how will the two-wheeled carriage acheive stability? By the same clever methods, involving gyroscopic sensors, as a Segway. And what are you going to do with the horse attachement? Well, we're going to leave it there. We might well attatch ornamental reins, giving the vauge impression of a carriage pulled by an invisible horse.

Hey, the turning radius is great.