This tiny Dutch vehicle for people with disabilities is taking off

The Netherlands is known internationally for its bicycle culture. Now it’s besides location to another, much broadly accessible signifier of transportation: the Canta.

For radical with disabilities successful the country, the compact four-wheeled, two-seat conveyance has go the superior signifier of micromobility—a word encompassing a scope of small, lightweight vehicles typically operating astatine astir 15 miles per hour. The Canta looks a spot similar a small Fiat oregon Mini and has each the main features of a car: engine, drivetrain, roof, windows, and doors. But it is an particularly compact one: it is simply a microcar that measures conscionable implicit 3 feet wide, making it constrictive capable to beryllium driven successful the country’s wider motorcycle lanes portion besides being capable to accommodate wheelchairs and different mobility aids.

Designed specifically for radical with disabilities, the Canta was created successful 1995 by a tiny Dutch conveyance shaper called Waaijenberg Mobility. It operates astatine speeds typically beneath 45 kilometers (27.9 miles) per hr and is not allowed connected large motorways.

“We started manufacturing the Canta due to the fact that determination was a demand,” says Frank Vermin, proprietor of Waaijenberg Mobility. Many of their customers, helium explains, were incapable to get a driver’s licence owing to their disability. Canta whitethorn look similar a car. But it is classified arsenic a mobility device, which means radical tin “get mobility from doorway to door” without needing a license.

The assorted Canta models are customizable, allowing the conveyance to conscionable the mobility needs of a wide scope of riders, including wheelchair users. The Canta 2 Inrijwagen, for example, has nary seats and lowers down to let a wheelchair to rotation successful done a doorway astatine the back. Different types of controls for state oregon brakes tin beryllium installed to suit the driver. The Canta is not the lone microcar that tin beryllium seen driving astir the Netherlands, but it is lone the lone 1 with these accessibility adaptations and advantages.

The cars scope successful terms from astir €15,500 for the Canta Comfort to much than €23,000 for the Canta 2 Inrijwagen.

Older models of the Canta were gas-powered, but the latest exemplary is electric, successful enactment with municipal efforts. Amsterdam, for example, aims to beryllium an emissions-free metropolis by 2025. Micromobility tin and indispensable play a large role.

“When we look astatine non-cars, a immense abstraction of accidental for mobility solutions becomes possible,” says Horace Dediu, an adept connected the aboriginal of micromobility. “This means not conscionable much businesslike and little demanding alternatives for abbreviated trips, but besides vehicles for those who are excessively young, excessively old, oregon disabled.”

Dediu notes that “8 cardinal radical request mobility. Only 1 cardinal presently tin drive.” Everyone, helium says, “will beryllium served by micromobility.”