Honda Patents Four-Wheel, Three-Person MotoCompacto for Parents
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Now with added friend compartments.
The Honda MotoCompo is an icon.
Its design, a motorcycle in a suitcase, is brilliant, lightweight, easily manueverable, and just makes you smile from ear to ear. Silly in its proportions and character. And it's been like that since Honda debuted it all those decades ago, with the latest iteration—dubbed the MotoCompacto—sizing everything further down thanks to the EV era.
But there is a critical design flaw to its being. It's too small to fit a friend.
Honda's new MotoCompacto, like the original, is a single-seater. And while it makes sense why you wouldn't want to add a pillion to either scooter, it's no fun to go alone on such silly machines. Thankfully, Honda's engineers have been working on a solution as evidenced by this new patent RideApart found.
The vehicle, titled "Mobility Apparatus," is essentially a sized-up MotoCompacto that features two seats and four wheels. That might not sound like the two-wheeled, single-seat EV you're used to seeing, but hang with me, as the design, tech, and controls look very similar.
And it's apparently for parents?
According to the patent, "Many parents like to take advantage of or expose children to different experiences in cities, downtowns, or large scale shopping areas. The primary goal is to provide opportunities for a family to focus on interacting with one another, and to provide opportunities for additional, previously unplanned destinations (within the city center) to enhance the urban cultural experiences. However, in order to make the mobility journey a source of excitement for children, new modes of transportation are required."
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And that's the basis for this very fun-looking machine. As you can see from the patent drawings, the vehicle has two seats, and three handlebars. The two forward handlebars are linked to the body of the vehicle and are attached in a way that allows the two seated riders to hold on. While a third handlebar, along with a small standing platform at the back, controls the vehicle.
The patent talks about that, further, stating, "It can be expensive to drive and park in cities, and mass transit is largely a point to point transportation alternative. The solution is to minimize time spent waiting for transportation, and to not make children walk large distances with predictable results. A need for a family mobility apparatus has been identified that is compact in design, stowable in mass transit, and including power assist motors to make it fun for families to travel further together in a city or urban setting."
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So what Honda's saying is that, if you have two kids and don't want to walk to the park, but still want to make the trip fun, while reducing your need for a car, this fully electric four-wheel MotoCompacto is the perfect vehicle for you! And, honestly, they might be right.
It's an adorable design, just like its two-wheeled brethren. But unlike the MotoCompacto, it also has storage beneath the seats, can be towed via a rope with the handlebar, or follow along autonomously like a lost puppy. It's neat as hell!
Now, obviously, it's still just a patent and Honda hasn't announced anything as of this writing. But I could totally see the company launching this in the near future. It'd be a boon for a lot of parents around the world.