The Smart Cities group at the MIT Media Lab is working on two low-cost electric vehicles that it hopes will revolutionize mass transit and help alleviate pollution. Next week, the group will unveil a prototype of its foldable electric scooter at the EICMA

Motorcycle Show, in Milan. A prototype for the team’s foldable electric car, called the City Car, is slated to follow next year.

The MIT group sees the vehicles as the linchpin in a strategy that aims to mitigate pollution with electric power, expand limited public space by folding and stacking vehicles like shopping carts, and alleviate congestion by letting people rent and return the vehicles to racks located near transportation hubs, such as train stations, airports, and bus depots.

The group’s strategy will efficiently solve the “last mile” problem without losing the virtues of the private automobile, Mitchell says. The last mile is that inconvenient distance between any major transit stop and a person’s final destination. While a traditional automobile provides mobility on demand and gets you to your destination, its negative externalities–congestion and pollution–seem intractable.

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