What would pass for eco thinking in the US is a regular part of Italian life. In particular, their many, many small car designs are fascinating, playful and reminded me of the scenes in Star Wars where different droids are lined up to be sold. Many of these vehicles are electric, with power stations in the city center. In addition, I've included a pic from our hotel room, where they used an ingenious key card system to keep energy use low...
This card is both the key to our room and the key to our electric supply in the room. When you leave for the day and remove the key, all of your lights and power sockets turn off. It's really an ingenious unconscious way of regulating your energy usage. You can NEVER leave lights on in your room this way. I also discovered that you can't charge your computer when you are gone as well!
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Comments (15)
Ha! I took pictures of a yellow car like that when I was in Italy three years ago. I believe it's called a Pasquali. There was another tiny one we saw called a Town Life that was also cute, plus of course Smart cars everywhere. Such a different way to use cars than the way we do in the US!
On a recent tour of New Zealand, I noticed that almost all of our hotels had a similar key-car/power system. I thought it was ingenious!
the keycard idea is absolutely brilliant. one caveat, however: they should designate one outlet to have power at all times just for the purpose of charging electronics and anything else for which one might need constant power.
One of the things I really enjoyed about Europe was the juxtaposition between technology and these old, old cities.
It's also no wonder that European city-dwellers embrace teeny-tiny cars, given the usually narrow streets and lack of space in general. And I definitely preferred the electric cars to the pervasive Mopeds, motorcycles and scooters--much quieter and the drivers seemed less reckless.
We just stayed somewhere that automatically turned electricity off when you left the room. I think that's great for AC and lights, but it was really annoying the every time we came back the clock was flashing 12:00 again. Somebody wasn't thinking.
If you absolutely need to charge something and you also have to leave, you can put a giftcard in the slot (or an old hotel keycard) to keep the electricity running. Just be smart and only keep what you absolutely need plugged in/turned on.
Besides electronic charging issues, the other caveat to the card/electricity system is that you need to each have a card. If one person goes out with the card, and the other stays in, or if you split up, one of you will be in the dark... We did that a couple of times before we got used to the system.
re-- small vehicles -- what's also cool in Europe are the motorcycle taxis... the taxi-motos
same card trick in the hotels of Thailand
I've always liked the european key card idea, and wonder why they don't have that in the states. Yes, sometimes I get a second key so that I can charge my computer when I'm out of the room (but only when it's necessary - I used to travel a lot for work), but my favorite part about it has nothing to do with the energy saving - it's that I always know where they key is!. When you're working on 3 hours of sleep a night trying to get a multi-billion euro deal closed, the fact that you don't have to spend 20 minutes crawling around looking for where you think you dropped the key at 4am is a godsend.
That little yellow car is stinking cute. I wish we had those here.
Re charging batteries, obviously you charge them while you are in the room asleep (and therefore not phonecalling / websurfing / listening to music).
Cute... but I would hope to never get in an accident in one of those tiny cars/box on wheels!
The hotel where my husband and I stayed in for our honeymoon in Montreal had the same system. It was really cool. Hotel Le Crystal.
If only, this electric car business could solve our global warming crisis.
they key-card/power system's been around for a while, saw my mom put any random card (like store membership card) in the slot to keep the electricity on for us kids when they went to grab something outside.