Since ancient times, human beings have looked for ways to make traveling faster and more convenient. This innovation first started with the invention of the wheel, then carts and wagons, steam power, and then internal combustion engines. This innovation further continued with electric cars and autonomous vehicles like Tesla.
We all know that transportation technology is progressing at a much slower pace than some other scientific fields like biotech, nanotechnology, or AI. The perfect example for this would be the world’s human speed record, which was set in 1969, about 51 years ago, when John Yong, Gene Cernan, and Thomas Stafford flew in Apollo 10 at about 25,000 mph. Since then, the record remains untouched. There’s a lot of talk about flying at a speed that approaches the speed of light, but very little effort is actually being made to expand this area. However, this scenario is about to transform in the coming years with the advent of radical new technologies.
In this article today we will discuss some radical changes in technologies that will happen in the future transportation technology and also some examples of these future technologies.
The future of transportation involves shifting to new, smarter sources of energy. The three major themes of transportation innovation in the future would be–Smart technology, electrification, and autonomy. Throughout human history, we have learned there are two driving forces of humanity- freedom, and control. While the current transportation gives us the freedom to drive as fast or slow as our vehicle will take us, and control over our timing and direction, we still have a restriction of driving on the ground and have tonnes of laws to contend with regarding speed, flow and operation. That’s where the automation comes in!! Understanding the terms, ‘freedom and control’ is the key to understanding the future of transportation.
In the future, automotive companies will focus on making fully automated vehicles where you can just ‘punch in’ or ‘speak’ the place they want to go and the vehicle will automatically take them there. We are already seeing a glimpse of these three major themes in today’s number one electric vehicle manufacturer, Tesla. Tesla models today have all three major themes of future technology. The human population today is growing and moving into urban areas. Roadways travel designed today cannot sustain the demand for modern mobility needs in the coming future. The reason is traffic congestion on our roadways. Traffic jams and inefficiencies cost the global economy hundreds of billions of dollars annually. Also, with the current reliance on transportation on fossil fuels, transportation is a major contributor to greenhouse gas emission. It comprises about 30% of total US greenhouse emissions. We all know how these greenhouse gases are causing climate change and pose a risk to human health and safety. But these problems will be eliminated in future transportation. We will soon see a mobility revolution because new mobility services and the high cost of vehicle ownership are persuading commuters to look for alternative options. This is the reason ridesharing companies like Uber, Lyft. Ola and others are skyrocketing. The mobility revolution will be defined by three zeros: zero emissions, zero accidents, and zero ownership. And this transportation revolution has already begun. Internet of things, Big data, and zero-emission technologies provide hope for cleaner and more efficient methods of transportation.
Now let’s look at some transportation modes and vehicles of the future that will completely transform the transportation industry.
The first one on our list is the Starship Super Heavy Earth to Earth. Starship is a fully reusable spacecraft being developed by the private space company SpaceX. Starship, as it’s known, will be a fully reusable transport system capable of carrying up to 100 people to the Red Planet. SpaceX is already carrying out high-altitude tests for various starship prototypes. But how does this affect future transportation? Apart from taking us to the moon and Mars and beyond, SpaceX starship is preparing to enter a new market, suborbital flights from one place to another on earth. The concept for suborbital Earth to Earth transportation comes from none other than Elon Musk and his company SpaceX. Starship was primarily designed for transporting large payloads to Mars for colonization. Musk presented this idea in 2017, envisioning suborbital spaceflights between spaceports offshore from major cities. In 2019, musk proposed that these suborbital flights could use only the starship vehicle with no booster. In order to meet thrust requirements, a single-stage suborbital Starship would include an additional two to four raptor engines. SpaceX is not the only major private space company out there planning for a suborbital earth-to-earth transport.
Richard Branson’s Virgin Galactic also has a vision of space travel around the Earth. Recently SpaceX Crew Dragon flew two astronauts to the low earth orbit, and Virgin Galactic’s Spaceship Two flew a crew on suborbital trajectories. The next mode of transportation that will dominate the future is again one of Elon musk’s ideas. The Hyperloop is a new mode of transportation that will move people and cargo quickly, safely, on-demand, and direct from origin to destination in the future. Being frustrated after being stuck in another traffic jam, Elon musk decided to build a tunnel boring machine and just start digging. He founded the boring company to end the problem of traffic jams. Elon’s Boring company might be the next big smart city technology with the potential to completely transform the face of transportation in the coming years. Musk has proposed a series of overlapping tunnel networks which will transport people across cities, countries, and continents on “skate” platforms or through its new electric transport system ‘Hyperloop’. This is not sci-fi; this is the future. The boring company is already in talks with different cities to start building the tunnels. The first Loop is supposed to build in Las Vegas for the massive convention center, which hosts the Consumer Electronics show every year. The loop will decrease the time taken to go from the new convention hall to the central hall, from 15 minutes to 1 minute. The visitors will be packed in Tesla’s Model X or Model 3 car. The vehicles will zip through the tunnels at up to 155 Mph. The Las Vegas convention center loop (LVCC) could be the beginning of a bigger Vegas network, potentially one day connecting to Los Angeles. Though the project faces the problem of cost, as expanding to major cities might be expensive. Elon musk’s SpaceX already did the work of cutting down the cost of spaceflight efficiently, and they did the same with the boring company. The company is cutting down costs in various efficient ways today by a factor of 10. The Hyperloop will be fully automated and enclosed, eliminating pilot error and weather hazards, thus making it transport of the future.
Our next future transport candidate is the Pop. Up next concept. It is a concept that approaches the world of flying cars with a more modular stance. Designed for the ‘distant future’ Pop.Up next Is entirely autonomous and operates solely through the use of speech and facial recognition, thus fulfilling our need for freedom and control which we discussed in the beginning of the article. Pop.Up next is different from previous flying cars concepts. It is built around a two-passenger compartment that can be attached to either four wheels for ground travel or a drone-like four-propeller system for air travel. Once attached to a drone, Pop.Up Next is capable of vertical take-off and landing, just like a helicopter, making it perfect use for busy cities and reduce the problem of traffic. Pop.Up Next’s methodology is simple: passengers plan their journey and book their trip via an easy-to-use app. The system will then suggest the best transport solution- according to user knowledge, timing, traffic jams, costs, and ridesharing demands, following the passengers’ preferences and needs. The concept of a flying car is not a new one. But the challenge with flying cars is that they be quite noisy and the wind force will be high. And imagine cars flying over our heads, creating noise. This certainly will not be an anxiety-reducing sight.
This is where Elon Musk steps again with his Boring Company. Apart from the hyperloop the boring company also plans to build a network of 3D underground tunnels. With underground tunnels, you can go as deep as you want. For example, the deepest mines are much deeper than the tallest buildings are tall. So, we can add any arbitrary number of tunnel layers to reduce the traffic congestion according to the requirements. An extensive network of tunnels many levels deep would fix congestion in any city, no matter how large it grew (just keep adding levels). Fast to dig, low-cost tunnels would also make hyperloop adoption viable and enable transit across densely populated regions safe and fast. With the help of these tunnels, you can travel from New York to Washington DC in less than 30 minutes. It is possible that these tunnels might dominate small distance transportation and commute of people in the future.
Now, as we have talked about some important concepts and transportation ideas that will most likely dominate the future, let us look at some luxurious concept cars of the future.
The first one is “The Float” by Renault. Renault has been one of those automotive manufacturers willing to push the boundaries of car concepts. The float, designed by Yuchen Cai, can be Renault’s future modular bubble car. The design is mainly focused on featuring peanut-shaped bubble pods that can connect multiple ways depending upon the need. The float uses Maglev technology similar to bullet trains to move. It is an autonomous car of the future designed to work with an app allowing it to function in the same way as ride-sharing vehicles such as Uber and Lyft.
Another Luxury future car is the Mercedes-Benz F015. The vehicle can drive itself, thus filling our criteria of being autonomous. Mercedes has picked a perfect vision for a fully autonomous car of the future and is making it possible with this car. It is a car that looks like any other car on the road but can drive itself anytime with just a speech or text command. Instead of making just a box that moves from point A to B, Mercedes is focused on making a car that evokes an emotional response and is also well designed and accustomed for the future.
The transportation revolution has begun. The above examples are just a few innovations on the horizon for future transportation. There is a lot yet to come. In this article, we talked about the most famous among them. What do you think will be the most dominant future transportation technology? Which would you prefer, flying cars or underground tunnels? Let us know your thoughts and ideas in the comment section below.
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