Google Gives Shweeb A Million Bucks

The Shweeb just got a million bucks from Google according to Treehugger. The Shweeb is so much fun that it’s an amusement park ride in New Zealand, but Google sees the future of the pedal-powered monorail as mass urban transit. Shweeb comes from the German “Schweben”, meaning to float or suspend. Shweeb is a human powered pod on a monorail designed as a personal urban transport. Since a pod surrounds the rider, it’s much more efficient than a bicycle – taking only about 1/2 the pedal power of a racing bike and 1/3 of a mountain bike to move it along at a good clip.

The inventors write:

The world’s populations are increasingly migrating to huge cities, and the densities within our cities are steadily climbing as residential towers become the dominant mode of residence. Traffic is slowing to walking pace, there is little parking and there is significant and ever-increasing pollution of the air we breathe. Of note, the average speed of a motor vehicle in central London in 1908 was 8 mph. In 2008 it was still 8 mph.

Any attempt to resuscitate the automobile by devising a new fuel or engine is doomed. Our cities simply can’t cope with rising numbers of cars or parking spaces. In our opinion a fresh approach is required.

What the Shweeb brings is an efficient vehicle and inexpensive infrastructure to urban transportation. The capacity for this new form of transport is thousands per hour in a small airspace with zero carbon emission.