It’s not exactly practical to bring along your Vespa when you happen to be flying across the country. What if you could still have a scooter to take with you, though? What if it fit inside a suitcase for ease of transport? And what if it was almost entirely green too?

That’s fundamentally the idea dreamed up by one Terry Hope, the guy who has created what he calls the Kinetic Photovoltaic Vehicle (KPV). It’s a scooter that can be collapsed to fit inside a suitcase, but it also comes wrapped up with a series of solar panels for extra power on the go. If you do plug it into the wall, it’ll juice up in 15 or 45 minutes for 13 miles range.

This is totally a one-off project, but the current version sees a 396 W-h/24-volt battery, 28 W-h/12-volt booster battery, 10.8-volt ultracapacitor bank and a 12-volt kinetic generator, along with the 50-watt solar array with 14 monocrystalline cells across five panels. The 44 pound KPV can travel up to 20mph, but that’s obviously dependent on the heft of the driver too.

It’s a pretty neat contraption, albeit crude in appearance. Version 2 of the KPV will likely be more polished with lights, laser guidance, and a 7-inch tablet-esque display with WiFi, GPS, Bluetooth, and 3G/4G connectivity.

[GizMag via KPV]

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