United Routes Gets Up Close and Personal With the New Traffic-Ignoring Prototype
Need a way to weave through traffic without driving recklessly? Well then, why don’t you just drive over them. Yes, you heard right, OVER. Though it may sound like an episode of Inspector Gadget, Verizon and Jeep have come together and created the world’s first car, the Hum Rider, that can extend itself upwards to allow it to literally overtake the car ahead of them.
Wait, Verizon manufacturing futuristic cars? No, you didn’t miss the memo. Verizon is primarily using the Hum Rider as a marketing ploy to promote their technology that’s used to enhance one’s existing car’s performance, one’s normal car that is.
We at United Routes were tasked with moving the Verizon Hum Rider from one area of the country to another, to help spread Verizon’s message. With the help of our professional moving team, and our custom designed enclosed auto transport vehicles, we made sure heads got turning as quickly as possible.
The Jeep Cherokee – The Timeless SUV
Since 1974, the American public, and the world at large have been enjoying the ride afforded to them by the Jeep Cherokee. Named after the Native American Tribe, and rightly mimicking their ability to navigate and thrive in the great outdoors, the Jeep Cherokee has been one of those smaller, yet very capable SUV’s that people have trusted for decades.
Though there were about fifteen years in which the Cherokee had been named the Jeep Liberty in its place, 2014 saw the return of the Cherokee nameplate that was sorely missed by people throughout the nation. One of the highlights of the new Jeep Cherokee is its terrific fuel economy. At 31 miles per gallon for highway driving, it’s nearly impossible to find such environmentally friendly numbers in other small SUV’s in its class. This just adds another reason why the Cherokee is a crowd favorite all over. The sales on the 2016 and 2017 Cherokees were so high, that projected sales of the 2018 model forced Fiat and Chrysler to discontinue the manufacturing of two of their other cars, the Dodge Dart and the Chrysler 200.
Rush Hour Has Never Been This Enjoyable
Once the people at Verizon had decided that the Jeep Cherokee was the right vehicle for the job, they were tasked with getting to be able to lift to over five feet in the air. The undercarriage was custom made with a Honda produced hydraulic lift system (over 300 feet of hydraulic lines are included!) to get the Cherokee up there.
The special effects company A2ZFX, with the help primarily of their one and only Scott Beverly handled this job, which included installing special motors into the wheels that powered the lifting mechanisms. Scott had worked on visual effects in movies like Dark Knight and Interstellar, so if there was anyone who knew about making a Jeep Cherokee look or work like a spaceship or Batmobile, it was him. All the extra parts needed to transform this simple Jeep Cherokee into the movie-like car as we know it, and the spare metal to support all of those parts came at a cost. The Hum Rider weighs in at a whopping 8,500 pounds!
Once the driver in the Verizon Hum Rider pushes the button and gets his car airborne (sort of), the lifts and wheels are at a wide enough distance where small cars can travel underneath. It also means that the driver can pass any smaller and lower cars while driving right over them. While this process is taking place, the driver has a screen that shows him exactly what’s going on beneath the cockpit. This is helped by the presence of four high-quality cameras located under the Hum Rider.
Verizon Helping Consumers Stay at the Technological Forefront
Though you may be wondering how you can get your hands on this all important, convenient and time-saving technology, it’s not being made available to the public anytime soon. Verizon is simply using the Hum Rider to demonstrate its abilities to enhance your car’s technology through its cloud-connected services. And what a better way to do it than showing you that with Verizon technology, you can literally get ahead!
Verizon is promoting it’s Hum automotive technological packages to the public. Some of the features that are included in the Hum tech pack are comprehensive vehicle diagnostics and incredibly efficient emergency assistance. One of the most popular features in the Hum technological package is any consumer being updated in real time about if their car, when borrowed and being used by their child (or anyone for that matter), is being used recklessly, like abusing the speed limit.
As many of the new cars on the market are already equipped with many, if not all, of these features, Verizon is attempting to go after those car consumers with older cars, or the ones with newer cars that simply lack these specific features.
United Routes Always Happy to Help
With experience primarily in classic, antique and exotic car transport, we don’t receive requests like the one we got from Verizon every day. Nevertheless, with our expert abilities in handling cars of every make and model, regardless of condition or value, we were confident that this run with the Hum Rider would be as smooth as any of our other ones.
Keeping in mind that the wheels and shock absorbers on the Hum Rider were of the more delicate of its parts, we ensured that it was tied down in the most secure way before closing the doors of our enclosed car transport vehicle. With careful driving and a devoted work ethic from all of our employees involved in the Hum Rider’s trip, we successfully moved the car to its desired destination. At that point, we could only stand back and watch the people’s faces as the Hum Rider’s driver sat over nine feet off the ground, and continued its job of easily driving over other cars.