This Car Folds to Fit Tight Parking Spaces

Korean researchers have come up with a two-seat electric car that can literally fold over on itself to squeeze into a small parking spot.

The Armadillo-T, which was developed at the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology, normally measures 9 feet long. It shrinks to about 5 feet when the driver exits the car and uses a smartphone app to reposition the rear of the vehicle over the front half.

The app also can be used to rotate the folded vehicle around its vertical axis to fit into irregularly shaped spaces. Developers say an Armadillo-T occupies about one-third the area of a conventional car.

The four-wheel-drive runabout weighs less than 1,000 lbs, has a top speed of 37 mph and can travel about 62 miles per charge. The car's 13.6-kWh battery, which is housed in the nose of the car, can be replenished in as little as 10 minutes, according to the developers.