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GM's EN-V concept (it stands for "Electric Networked Vehicle") is designed to fill the niche of urban, short-range transport, where space is limited but travel distances are typically shorter than suburban or rural drives. I saw three designs of the car (shaped like a deep-sea diver's helmet, MF Doom's mask, and Urkel's clown car, respectively), all of which are about half the size of a Smart car and fitted on a two-wheel base co-designed by Segway.

The Segway base is called the "Skateboard," though a skateboard actually does have four wheels and typically boasts a minimum of gyroscopic sensors. But that base allows the EN-V to turn in place, and as a bonus, looks really cool. Moving from "park" to "drive," the entire chassis shifts back and forth on the gyroscopes to balance the cab's weight, though you don't actually feel it while driving. (The spinning-on-a-dime thing did give me immediate nausea, however.) The car itself is about half the length of a Smart car, which makes it about a quarter the size of a normal obese American parking space, and is about a third the weight of a typical sedan.

The EN-V's communication aspect is pretty interesting as well--it uses sonar (you can hear the telltale clicking sound) to detect other cars as well as pedestrians and cyclists, though in the demo it nearly ran down a GM rep before stopping. That communication also allows it to perform something GM's calling "platooning," basically forming an autonomous convoy with other EN-Vs. The automation doesn't stop there, as it's also able to park and retrieve itself without the help of a driver. You can control its parking with a smartphone or a laptop.

Will the EN-V ever be released? Probably not, at least not in this form. The car would need to be enlarged to come to market--at the moment, it doesn't have any storage space at all--and judging by my experience driving it, the automation needs a bit of work before it's really safe. But a lot of the ideas in the EN-V are super futuristic and interesting, and the concept of an ultra-light, presumably ultra-cheap, urban-only car is one that's just starting to be addressed.

Your Chevy Volt may draw adoring smiles from that cute, crunchy barista you’ve been eyeing at the coffee shop, but be advised: it may also draw rats. At least that was the experience of Cars.com correspondent Joe Wiesenfelder, who was forced to confront an unforeseen problem with the website’s Volt after a rodent made a cozy home among the car’s warm batteries.

When the Volt is charging, its batteries maintain a minimum battery temperature. Wiesenfelder’s Volt was charging in Cars.com’s downtown Chicago parking garage during last week’s Chicago blizzard, where it weathered the storm just fine. But then he started getting emails from the ChargePoint network that monitors public charging stations like the one where Cars.com keeps its Volt (the site bought the car to see how it would survive a cold Chicago winter).

The next morning he reset the charger, which began charging the car again without problems. But the next time he got behind the wheel, the dashboard lit up with a host of warning lights. A rat, it turns out, had made itself comfortable among the warming batteries when temperatures plunged during the night, helping himself to wiring harness as a snack. The result: damage to the warning lights and the rear defogger device at minimum. The cost: at least $600 (acts of rats are not covered under warranty).

Of course, this is no demerit to the Volt itself; rats are part of life in the big city. The problem, as Wiesenfelder points out, is that he can control neither the rats nor the weather nor, in this case, where he parks his Volt--there simply aren’t that many charge stations for EV’s around the city at this point. Just a reminder that with all new technologies come problems both seen and unforeseen.

On the bright side, with the exception of the rat attack the Volt has performed flawlessly in lakeshore winter conditions for more than a month and 3,000 miles.