October 12, 2007 8:30 AM PDT
Believe it or not, General Motors says that it based its Ant car of 2057 on the actual insect. It considers the ant "nature's best commuter" because, as a team, ants do well at coordinating traffic. The Ant would use a more enhanced version of GM's current OnStar communications system to create vehicle-to-vehicle communication for coordinating traffic patterns.
Three independent wheel systems and "electro-active polymer actuators" acting as artificial muscles would allow the car to contort into many different configurations...Was that idea based on the rubber-tree plant?
Photo by General Motors Advanced Design, California
