Revision as of 02:41, 8 July 2010

Current situation

Severe injuries from road accidents = 36,000 jumbos crash landing — this is reality of road transport. Likelihood of being killed on the road is something like 1 in 200 (need to find ref). Number one killer of young people [1] and by far the leading cause of accidental death [2].

• 28% of greenhouse gas emissions [3]
• Land use in cities. Roads cover a huge percentage of urban land (need to find figures, probably about a third). A more space-efficient transport network (like PRT) would allow for more greenery
• According to Wikipedia, within the EU, 44% of goods are transported by roads and 85% of people

Financial cost of road traffic accidents estimated at over $120 billion in the US and over $193 billion in the Europe Union. (Found in slideshow from Delphi Automotive Integrated Safety Systems - need to find source).

Alternatives

• Trains
  • Light rail
    • [4] Trains could be a lot cheaper to build if high-tension cables are used
  • Maglev
    • • Gravity vacuum maglev (almost no energy required)
  • Possibility of shared vehicles. (Similar to the schemes that exist with bicycles in many cities - DublinBikes etc.) The winner of the 2009 Buckminster Fuller challenge was a system of small electric cars and scooters which would be docked at points around a city (where they could charge). You swipe a card and one of the vehicles unlocks and you drive it and drop it off at another dock. There are plans to bring this in for several cities [5].
• Aircraft
  • Personal aircraft. Flying cars like the Terrafugia Transition etc.
  • Sub-orbital passenger craft
  • Autonomous helicopters already exist like this mini-helicopter designed at MIT. Impressive video of small, autonomous, quadrotor helicopters. Think of the possibilities of little helicopters to deliver packages; like an automated FedEx. Hummingbird Unmanned Rotorcraft is autonomous and has a much better fuel-efficiency than any other helicopter and also goes at a higher altitude, which would be better for solar power. Other unmanned helicopters include the RQ-7 Shadow. Bell Eagle Eye is an unmanned tilt-rotor vehicle.
  • Spacecraft etc.

• Free flight

• Human powered - International Human-Powered Vehicle Association is a dynamic organization of hobbyists designing and testing human powered land, air and water vehicles and even submarines. Some of the stuff there is pretty amazing: somebody flew 74 miles in a pedal-powered plane, somebody else broke 82mph in a recumbent bicycle. What's more, the community of people doing this are very much in favour of free and open design. Human powered vehicles will probably remain something people do mostly for fun, rather than as part of an economic infrastructure.

http://www.aerospace-technology.com/projects/skycat/

Cars

Note that enough people really like driving cars that it will not become fully automated.

Electric/fuel cell vehicles are finally catching up with the performance of petrol cars. The Tesla Roadster proves this: cheaper to run than an ordinary car, 125mph top speed, 0-60mph in 4 seconds, 244 mile range, 3.5 hours to charge.

The main issue is energy storage - how do you store energy in a way that's as dense as the caloric energy in petrol? Batteries? Ultracapacitors? Flywheels? Fuel cells? Compressed air? A combination of these? Batteries have environmental issues of their own, and need to get lighter. Ultracapacitor technology is getting better, but still is nowhere near the density of petrol; nanotech will help here. Fuel cells have high energy density; ultracapacitors have high power ddensity, so perhaps a hybrid (like the one Riversimple are working on) is the most promising.

The other issue is energy efficiency. Regenerative braking technology is now pretty good. Carbon fiber is 4 times lighter than steel and 5 times stronger. It is 14 times more expensive, but you would make that back in fuel costs coz it's lighter. Carbon fiber is progressively getting cheaper and being used more and more in cars. Third generation photovoltaics in windows and paint will allow cars to produce their own energy on-the-move.

Open-source cars. OScar, "c,mm,n". Riversimple's open-source, carbon fiber, fuel cell Urban car (plans here)and their much sexier LifeCar.

Vehicles that tilt (like the Audi Snook concept) can take corners much tighter

Self-driving cars

There is a competition to be held July-October 2010 in which 4 unmanned cars will drive from Italy to China delivering goods [6].

Center for Automotive Research Stanford (CARS) doing a lot of work in this area, including cars that are driven by humans, but have smart systems so they "cannot crash"

• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=80MlnZcXCwo
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=exdUD02JryI
• http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3YUjlKA6tVU

Impressive video of an autonomous car doing controlled high-speed parking