GM's two-wheeled electric city concept wins award in China

(March 2, 2011) SHANGHAI —The EN-V two-wheeled concept car, inspired by the movement patterns inside beehives and ant colonies, and a possible solution for traffic congestion in megacities, continues to receive accolades in China where it was a star attraction at the SAIC-GM Pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai World Expo.

Economic Information Daily, China’s oldest financial publication, recognized General Motors’ newest vision for the future on Friday with the Concept EV Gold Award. EN-V, which stands for electric networked vehicle, can avoid crashes, uses no gasoline and can drive and park itself.

The vision for EN-V is to be more affordable than today’s cars and transport people who cannot drive, such as the elderly, people with special needs, and even children.

With 50,000 traffic fatalities and spectacularly long traffic jams in some Asian cities, EN-V envisions the automobile designed around modern-day technologies, such as vehicle-to-vehicle recognition and GPS capability; car bodies that weigh less than 1,000 pounds and lightweight, lithium-ion batteries.