Pod Cars: Would You Drive One?

If you thought that neighbor with the grey beard and the compost tumbler in his back yard looked silly tooling around town in his Smart car, wait till you get a load of GM's new "Pod Cars."

The futuristic two-person vehicles look like something out of a Disney theme park, with a big glass bubble top that pivots down to enclose the passengers in a colorful, yes, pod. But that's not the wackiest part. The autonomous vehicles can be dialed up on a smartphone to come pick you up and then wiz you off to wherever you want to go in hands-free mode.

While those jetpacks we were promised haven't materialized just yet, this steering wheel-less concept car, which has been making the rounds at expos and car shows, runs on two wheels and is based on the Segway balancing platform. It has low clearance, so it can't drive in rain or snow and doesn't even have enough juice to make it up a driveway ramp.

The car (known as the EN-V) hasn't gone into production yet and probably won't for another decade or more, but future models will retain their small size and advanced communication abilities, but will be designed to be more practical in real-world use. The idea is that fleets of the emission-free vehicles could be deployed in gated communities, college campuses and major cities where pollution and overcrowding are concerns. The estimated cost would be around $10,000.