On-track to be completed by 2020 in the United Arab Emirates, the Masdar City project’s developers aim to do nothing less than create a 100% carbon-neutral luxury village which – they hope – will change the international image of an entire nation, push the envelope of renewable energy technology, and represent the current state-of-the-art in “green” city planning.
100% carbon neutrality is a lot to ask of any building project – regardless of the budget involved – but Masdar City’s planners have a novel idea to help the reach that goal: they’re going to ban personal automobiles.
Instead of cars, Masdar City’s residents will travel around in autonomous electric pods. Called “Personal Rapid Transit pods”, these vehicles are fully electric, travel underground, and are fully computer controlled. Far from “concepts”, the vehicles are already in use at the Mubadala Company campus (the development firm behind the Masdar City project) and have met with rave reviews from the workers and visitors who’ve experienced them.
Check out the pods in action, below, and let us know if the proliferation of pod people is a perplexing or positive predicament (sorry people, it was either this alliteration or a more “Invasion of the Body Snatchers” jokes … try to enjoy the video anyway).
Sources: Mental Floss via Neatorama, Masdar City website.