Lit Motors thinks we're just driving around in too much car.

So Lit Motors is developing what looks a lot like a motorcycle, but with several traits from a car: You don't have to balance and you don't get wet. They call this model the C-1 and the full-size running prototype is, admittedly, in a very basic state. But here we see the sort of thinking that is perhaps just this side of too radical, while performing drastic surgery on what of the last great areas of waste in our daily lives: The amount of car we lug around for no particular reason.


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I like Daniel Kim, he wants to change things but isn't up "there" in a world of intangibles. He began his career as a Land Rover mechanic and, like Steve Jobs, did a little coursework at Reed College in Oregon before moving on (probably bored with the routine progression of college.) He's assembled a team of about a dozen people in a old warehouse in San Francisco that looks like a poster child for urban renewal.

The C-1 is up against some long odds to be sure: Aside from printing "motorcycle" (which will do it few favors in the U.S. market), I also came to realize there's a significant mental hurdle to trusting a two-wheeled vehicle to keep itself upright with you in it. By unseen magic. In traffic. But change has to start somewhere and what Lit's working on is at least part of the new attitude toward everyday vehicles we need to embrace, two wheels, three or four.

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