Finally, a Giant Vending Machine Full of Rentable Cars

This is the Kandi Machine, a giant garage full of on-demand electric cars that can be rented out for around three bucks an hour. The company behind the idea is named — you guessed it — Kandi, and the whole shebang’s being launched in Hangzhou, China.

It’s like a mishmash of bike-sharing services and Zipcar. As both a Hubway bike-share member and a Zipcar member here in Boston, I much prefer the ability to take a bike from one dock near my house and leave it in another dock by my office. With Zipcar, I have to return the car to where it was originally parked, making it less than ideal for commuting to and from work. This Kandi system lets you take a car from one garage and drop it off at another.

Cool stuff. Check out the eight-minute video above if you’re interested in this stuff. It’d be nice to see something quick, easy and relatively inexpensive like this roll out on a wide-scale level here in the U.S. someday. I’d love to be able to drive to and from TIME headquarters in New York once a month for around $30 round-trip, for instance.

Kandi Crush: An Electric-Car Vending Machine From China Could Upend The Auto Industry [Forbes]