Green Daily

Andrew Maynard's vision of the future may not be a popular one with soccer moms and real estate developers, but perhaps it's not completely implausible. Australia's favorite suburb-hating green architect has drawn up plans for a robot that will suck up tract houses and abandoned SUVs, firing their recyclable remains back to population-dense cities in the form of missiles. That is, after "Peak Oil" and the ensuing lack of transportation has rendered the suburbs useless, of course. Watch the video presentation here.


We've talked a few times about the idea of Peak Oil and the hysteria that it seems to inspire. Certainly, running out of oil would bring about some rather uncomfortable changes in the way we live. Still, oil companies and automakers disagree that the situation is really so dire as to spawn an apocalypse. Assuming that Peak Oil turns out to be catastrophic, the six-legged robots are Maynard's attempt to answer two questions:

• What will we do with our abandoned and decaying suburbs?

• And most importantly, what will we do with the 50% of Australians that are over-weight due to car dependance and a sedentary lifestyle?

The answer is simple: feed them to the robots. Not only will the CV08 absorb and recycle the bricks and mortar of the suburban landscape, but it will use our own liposuctioned body fat as fuel to propel it through its mission. Four of the CV08's legs will be devoted to re-wilding the landscape and storing the local fauna in a carbonite sleep -- like Han Solo -- until their new habitat is ready.

OK, I'll admit it. I'm not actually convinced that transportation will come to an end in 2011like Mr. Maynard -- but I still think the idea is hilarious. Check out some of his other outlandish environmentally-inspired designs.

[via Treehugger]