When Danny Kim founded his car company in 2010, he was confident that at even 30-year-olds, he could take on the big automakers. When we interviewed him in 2011, he called San Francisco the next electric Detroit and showed us his cardboard mockup for his C-1: the two-wheeled car/motorcycle hybrid that couldn’t fall over, thanks to gyroscopes.
We returned two years later (in August of 2013) just as Kim was offering a test drive – inside the Lit offices in San Francisco’s SoMA district- to a potential investor. A few months later, with nearly 3/4s of their planned production run for 2014 already sold (but no road-ready prototype), the company received a patent for their gyroscopically-controlled stabilization system.
The concept of a gyrocar isn’t new (the first was manufactured in 1914 for a Russian count), but Kim wants to create a “rolling iPhone” where the user experience feels like an extension of your smartphone. The final product should reach top speeds of 100 mph, with a range of 220 miles per charge. During our visit last August the prototype had just one sensor, but he expects the final gyrocar to have around 32. “It’s really a robot,” he explains.
Oh yes, these guys are REAL RAT BASTARDS!
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