Tango Is Back in California — and We’re Preparing Tangos for Rent and Lease

 It has been a long time since we posted here, but Commuter Cars and the Tango are very much still alive.

Our website remained online throughout that time, but for a long period we were unable to make updates after Adobe discontinued Muse, the software on which the site had been built. The website has now been rebuilt in WordPress, and we are once again able to keep it current.

Commuter Cars has also moved its operations to Anza, California, and we are now preparing selected Tangos for a new phase: short-term rental and long-term lease.

There are currently only 11 completed Tangos in existence worldwide. Until now, very few people have ever had the opportunity to drive one unless they owned one or knew someone who did.

We would like to change that.

The existing Tango fleet is not being offered for sale. Instead, selected Tangos will be available for rental and lease, initially in Southern California. We are also exploring opportunities for film and television, commercial photography, technology events, demonstrations, promotional appearances, and other special uses.

Insurance, rental arrangements, pricing, and availability are still being finalized, so we are not yet announcing firm dates. But the program is moving forward.

The Tango remains what it has always been: an attempt to solve a very simple transportation problem.

Most commuter cars occupy far more road and parking space than necessary to carry one or two people. The Tango seats two people in tandem in a vehicle only about 39 inches wide, while remaining a serious highway-capable electric car.

That narrow footprint was never intended to replace every other kind of vehicle. It was intended to be the right tool for a very common job: getting one or two people to work, shopping, appointments, or other everyday destinations while using far less road and parking space.

After all these years, the basic problem the Tango was designed to address has not gone away. Traffic congestion remains a major problem, parking remains difficult in many cities, and most commuters still travel alone in vehicles much wider than necessary.

If you have followed the Tango over the years and wondered what became of it, the answer is simple:

We’re still working on it.

And now, for the first time, our goal is to make the experience of driving a Tango available to more people without selling the existing cars.

You can rent me.
You can lease me.
But you can’t own me!

You can see the latest information on the new Rent / Lease page at:

https://commutercars.com/buy-lease-rent/

We’ll post additional updates here as the rental and lease program develops.

Tango Is Back in California — and We’re Preparing Tangos for Rent and Lease

Self-driving solving traffic congestion?

I've been hearing a lot about self-driving cars creating this utopia of no more car ownership, end of congestion, etc. I take issue with that for purely common sense reasons.
Consider that people work and live and shop in locations scattered all over. This clearly explains why, out of 140-million workers in the US, 107-million are single-occupant drivers and only 7-million use all forms of public transit combined.

All of the self driving developments are great, and the possibility of less car ownership is wonderful too, however, if you think about it, it doesn't mean less traffic.

The problem stems from the fact that people need to get to work. Their homes are scattered all over the place, and so are their work locations. Rarely, even if husband and wife work in the same location, do they want to travel together, as it limits their freedom to come and go as they want, and to run personal errands that the spouse may not want to go on.

Suppose that half of these people started using self-driving cars that are owned by Uber or other car share companies. True, the number of cars needed would decrease drastically, and that would solve a lot of parking problems, however, the flow of people would not change by much, except that the parking lanes might be used to increase road lanes, and therefore capacity, and the cars may be able to drive with less braking distance, as the reaction time would be reduced. There would be virtually no change in traffic as the same number of people need to go to the same number of places. The duty cycle of each car is greatly increased as they don't sit around in parking garages, but rather go on to give the next ride. So unless they are electric, the pollution is not even diminished.

The simple solution is to have single-occupant drivers/riders in cars that are less than 40” wide. That gives the same clearance in half of a freeway lane that trucks have in a full lane. The narrow cars would stagger naturally, and this gives added safety as they are short and much more maneuverable. They are also fully electric, as it's almost impossible to make the center of gravity low enough in a gasoline vehicle to make it stable.

I believe that the only way to combat traffic congestion and to get most commuters driving electric, is to give them something that makes commuting easier, faster, safer, and more fun.
The Tango ticks all the boxes.
• Dimensions of a motorcycle
• 0-60 3.2 seconds.
• FIA certified racecar roll cage
• Same rollover threshold as a 911 Porsche
• Fastest speed recorded by Consumer Reports through the “Emergency Lane Change Maneuver (Moose Test)
• Holds two large adults comfortably.
• Self-driving or not, solves traffic congestion.

Self-driving solving traffic congestion?

Best Lanesplitting Article Yet!

Click here for Gizmag article on Lanesplitting

Best Lanesplitting Article Yet!

IBM People for Smarter Cities

Click here for short video
This video shows my vision of the future that I had 32 years ago, and started working on full-time over 16 years ago.
Simply observing a pack of motorcycles on the freeway proves that narrow lanes are not required to increase lane capacity with narrow cars, however, what a great incentive it would be some time in the future, as demonstrated in the video.
http://smartercities.tumblr.com/post/95286536737/people-for-smarter-cities-new-solution-to-traffic#notes

IBM People for Smarter Cities

Filtering now Legal in New South Wales, Australia

Filtering was just made legal in New South Wales, Australia.
Click Here for Video Interview on Filtering.
Previously, filtering, or lanesplitting has been illegal in all of Australia. This is a rare case where the formerly illegal practice has been made legal for safety and congestion-relief concerns.
NSW has defined filtering as legal as long as done at under 30 kph. They define lanesplitting as illegal, as that is the term that they have defined for splitting lanes at over 30 kph. In the United States, however, the terms are virtually synonymous, and to do it legally, in California, for example, must simply be done in a safe manner.

Filtering now Legal in New South Wales, Australia