What's the news?
Try and wrap your head around this one: automotive giant BMW has revealed another of its visions of future transport, but it's not even a vehicle in this instance - it's a road.
More specifically, it's called the BMW Vision E3 Way and that should actually be 'E to the power of 3' in BMW's typography, because the E stands for elevated, electric and efficient. Developed at the BMW Group Technology Office China in Shanghai, it proposes a high-level causeway used only by two-wheeled electric vehicles (augmented bicycles and so on) that should alleviate the problems of traffic congestion and air pollution in our increasingly crowded cities.
The E3 Way would link key traffic hubs in urban area and has been explicitly conceived for local emission-free single-track mobility concepts - handily, BMW has a couple of these, in the form of the Motorrad Concept Link and the Motorrad X2 City.
The E3 Way, modular in design, would be linked to the regular road networks, underground stations, other traffic hubs and even shopping centres by a series of ramps and sluices, while it is in the main covered over and vehicles travelling on it are limited to a top speed of 25km/h. Clever systems also harvest rainwater and purify it, which can be used to clean the road surface at night.
Anything else?
Dr Markus Seidel, director of BMW Group Technology Office in China, said: "The BMW Vision E3 Way opens up a whole new dimension of mobility in overcrowded conurbations - efficient, convenient and safe. It works by simply creating space for two-wheel zero-emissions traffic. In China, more than a billion people will be living in cities by 2050. The country will become the global incubator for numerous mobility innovations such as the BMW Vision E3 Way. After all, nowhere else is there such an urgent need for action."