TICO Costa Rica EV

Tico means native Costa Rican, here we decribe a Student project designing a rugged affordable vehicle for a Costa Rican home grown transport industry.

Tuesday, July 11, 2006

Studio Poster

Friday, July 07, 2006

Getting to know Costa Rica

Ive not been fortunate enough to visit Costa Rica...Yet.
To understand this new location in my world I started looking through Google.
The best links ive found are.

The Information in wikipedia is limited compared to my China experiences. This site describes some of the historical and cultural info, relevent to our project.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Costa_Rica.
Wikipedia is also gret for EVs

The CIA world factbook is a heartless series of facts and figures. I use ther resource because i believe we can get some positive information form an otherwise questionable institution. The interesting Data is about Population, education on the people side and industries, infrastructure and transport networks that exist there.
http://www.cia.gov/cia/publications/factbook/geos/cs.html

I havent delved into Lonely planet as yet, but theses guys have never let me down. The Issue here is I find that "Tourists consume tourist culture", travellers have slightly less pleasent experiences and very few people actually have home stays and work on the farms.
http://www.lonelyplanet.com/worldguide/destinations/central-america/costa-rica/

The American NGOs like costa rica so there are a bunch of sites where i found stories of great adventures with some community service involvment. Emailing some of these guys may get some first hand experiences, like exactly how hard it i to dragg a bogged car out of the mud...

Maps of Costa Rica

I went looking for some maps of Costa Rica,

The best maps I've found are put together by Columbia University with their
Gridded Population of the World and the Global Rural-Urban Mapping Project.
http://sedac.ciesin.columbia.edu/gpw/country.jsp?iso=CRI

Some other maps are inlcuded on Lonely planet, Wikipedia and CIA world Factbook.

Tuesday, July 04, 2006

What is TICO?

Tico is a colloquial term for a native of Costa Rica.
(http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tico)

Global Car manufacturers focus on luxury and performance vehicles. This perpetuates the economic isolation of un-wealthy communities.
In this studio we will design a rugged affordable vehicle to overcome transport needs for Costa Rican citizens
This studio will be concerned with sustainable addressing concerns of Equity and Environmental issues.