SHANE Disrupts Car Design: This EV Has 2 Wheels and No Steering Wheel, but Is Totally Safe

Where Shane Chen is concerned, the car of the future still rolls on solid ground and shares common traits with current vehicles, like the ability to carry five people and cargo. It's also fully electric and fully autonomous and rides on just two wheels. If a comparison to the aforementioned Hoverboard popped into your mind just now, it's with good cause.

This is SHANE, a concept electric vehicle designed by Chen, whose name it proudly wears. It doesn't exist beyond the renders in the gallery for the time being, but Chen is convinced it could, with the right kind of support. He's inviting others who feel the same way to back him on this and help bring SHANE from the virtual paper it's drawn on into our reality.

"Two-wheeled cars have simply not been practical or stable enough for everyday driving until now," the world-famous inventor explains. "I was excited to create a car concept with two wheels that can go at high speeds and be energy efficient. I truly believe SHANE will make a difference in how we approach mobility, and I look forward to collaborating with partners to bring this concept to life."

That first line of Chen's statement holds the key to the novel approach to designing SHANE. Indeed, two-wheel cars – or even three-wheel models, if you think about it – are anything but stable or reliable at higher speeds and during sudden maneuvers. SHANE compensates for that with oversize wheels that automatically react relative to the car body to keep it in balance and a system that changes the gravity center according to the situation.

So what we're getting is an oversize hoverboard with a glass and metal structure on top. The cabin opens up like a clamshell on either end, offering seating for five passengers and even cargo space in the back. The interior layout is not unlike what you can find in a standard car, with the exception that ingress is done by lifting the entire front section upwards.

Not having a steering wheel and everything else that goes with it helps, of course. Chen doesn't specifically say that SHANE is autonomous, but it's the only possible, logical conclusion with the details provided. As the video below also shows, all five people inside are passengers, with no driver.

Full autonomy would make SHANE perfect both as a personal vehicle and as a shuttle for the daily commute. It also pushes its timeline farther into the future since technology for autonomous driving is now barely scraping Level 3 autonomy, with two more after this one to go.

Then again, development on a car takes a long time, and, as Elon Musk once said, conceptualizing it is the easiest part of the process. Assuming Chen gets backing for SHANE, it will integrate several other innovative features like two-wheel differential speed control and in-wheel regenerative shocks.

The two-wheel differential speed control maximizes maneuverability, effectively doing away with whatever issues you might have with parallel parking. Heck, it completely obliterates the concept of parallel parking, as the wheels move at different speeds and turn the vehicle on the spot, smoothly gliding into position.

Chen says that SHANE would also be equipped with in-wheel regenerative shocks to maximize efficiency and charge the battery while the vehicle is in motion.

Designed to create "a futuristic driving experience," SHANE is dubbed the "first of its kind parallel two-wheel electric car concept" and the "first two-wheel car concept to be practical and efficient for everyday urban and highway use." These features, together with its self-balancing ability, do render it a safer, more comfortable option to other EVs, if only in theory.

That said, all that balancing the car would have to do on uneven roads or even in regular traffic conditions would probably require some getting used to for the occupants. It would probably feel like a rollercoaster ride, minus the sudden drops and slow ascents.

But humans are resilient and adaptable creatures, so we're assuming we’d do just fine if or when a two-wheel car like this one became the standard on the road. Chen is probably hoping you think the same and are willing to put your money on such a bet: he's asking investors to "be a part of the next auto revolution," with a pen and checkbook as a first weapon.

For the rest of us, an EV like SHANE is just daydreaming. Chen's involvement makes it the kind of dream worth keeping an eye out for, if only out of curiosity.