Humanity's pressing need for a 45 m.p.h. shopping cart

In early June, Charles Guan was part of an M.I.T. team that won first prize, and $100,000, in the Buckminster Fuller Challenge, which recognizes projects that have "significant potential to solve humanity's most pressing problems." The team's "Sustainable Personal Mobility and Mobility-on-Demand" proposal involved a citywide network of foldable electric scooters and partly collapsible minicars that could serve as alternatives to gas-powered vehicles.

All very high-minded, of course, making it considerably different from Guan's other, simultaneous project (which, you will be amazed to hear, got more attention in the tech blogosphere): At MITERS, the engineering school's "build-anything-you-want" workspace, Guan has been busy fashioning a shopping cart capable of reaching 45 miles per hour. His "LOLriocart" is powered by nickel-cadmium aircraft batteries and a 15 horsepower engine. It boasts grippy aftermarket wheels, a steering apparatus, and brakes that admittedly need a bit more work. On a recent rainy day, the aspiring engineer took his supercart for a spin on the MIT campus (including on public roads) and then posted a video of his adventure on the MITERS Web site.

"Awesome?" he asked. "Or evidence?"

He was helmetless.

Via Gizmodo