The field of technology is changing at a rapid pace and we are heading towards the Fourth industrial revolution. As with many other forms of technology, the future of transportation technology is also quite fascinating. Some of these transportation technologies are really going to boom in the future. Have you ever wondered what will transportation look like in 2030? Well, one thing is sure, it will be much more different and advanced than today. In this article, I am going to talk about 5 very interesting future transportation technology that I am really excited about.
Flying Cars
Will cars fly in the future? Yes, Flying cars could soon become the future of transportation in cities.
Have you heard of Uber Elevate? It is an initiative of Uber which focuses on aerial ridesharing. Uber wants to solve the traffic problem of most major cities by bringing Flying cars into reality. The second annual flying car conference that was held in The Skirball Cultural Center, Los Angeles, in May 1918, was the place where Uber Elevate started. It was the idea of Uber’s then-chief product officer Jeff Holden.
Not only Uber but a lot of other companies have also invested billions of dollars in developing flying cars.
Uber and many other companies are developing what is known as eVTOL(Electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles). eVTOL is Uber’s main interest.
Uber isn’t the first company that has started working on flying cars. Ceo and Co-founder of Google, Larry Page, was one of the first people to see the potential of flying cars. He invested in companies like Zee Aero, Opener and Kitty Hawk a long time back. Even established companies like Boeing and Airbus are also in this game.
So you must be thinking, how are flying cars different than helicopters right? Well, helicopters are the But Helicopters are dangerous. They crash a lot. Also, they are noisy and make a lot of annoying sounds. But we don’t have such problems with eVTOLs.
Although companies are projecting eVTOLs as flying cars, there are skeptics. Many experts think eVTOLs are not exactly flying cars, they are just the next step in aviation. They can’t be driven on roads like cars.
Whether we call eVTOLs flying cars or not, time will tell. But one thing is sure eVTOLs will be the future of transportation in cities soon.
Autonomous Cars
This futuristic transportation technology is not even that futuristic. It partially has become reality as many cars now have some form of autonomy.
Autonomous cars or self-driving cars do not need a human driver to operate. According to The society for automotive engineers(SAE), there are 6 levels of automation, from 0 to 5.
The idea behind autonomous cars is not new. The title for the world’s first driverless car goes to “American Wonder”, which was radio-controlled. It was 1925 when this car was demonstrated by a radio equipment company called Houdina Radio Control Co. . It traveled along Broadway in New York City and later crashed. But we didn’t have artificial intelligence technology back then. It was actually run by an operator sitting in another car using radio signals.
Almost all major car companies are developing self-driving cars now.
Currently, we are at level 2 automation. Level 2 cars can control steering, braking, and acceleration but still needs engagement from human drivers. Once we reach level 5, cars will become fully driverless.
So why are self-driving cars essential to the future of transportation?
Well, automobile accidents are a leading cause of unnatural and untimely death around the world. In this world, approximately 1.3 million people die each year because of road accidents. A lot of these accidents happen because of human error. And there will be no human operator in autonomous vehicles once it gets full autonomy Autonomous cars will make the roads a much safer place.
Maybe in the future, we will need a special permit for a car that is operated by humans.
Hyperloop
Hyperloop is a high-speed transportation technology. It is the brainchild of Elon Musk, the CEO of Tesla and SpaceX. A hyperloop consists of three components, a low-pressure tube, a vacuum pod, and terminals.
The idea behind Hyperloop is not totally new. A lot of science fiction writers thought about high-speed travel through low-pressure tubes. American scientist Robert Goddard was the first person to envision a vacuum train concept similar to the Hyperloop back in 1909, when he published an article called “ The limit of rapid transit”.
Back in 2013, Elon and a group of engineers from SpaceX and Tesla published a paper on Hyperloop. It was 58 pages long.
Although Musk published the paper, he was too busy to start a new company and begin experimenting with the idea of Hyperloop. So his friend, Shervin Pishevar, a venture capitalist, started working on the idea and created the project called Hyperloop One, with a couple of other people. After a few years, Virgin Group also invested in the project.
Talking about the safety of the Hyperloop, computational power nowadays has advanced so much that, we can even run Hyperloop simulations on the cloud and test the safety and reliability of the system even before we start building.
A lot of companies around the world are working on various Hyperloop projects. Some of these are Virgin Hyperloop, Transpod(Canada), Nevomo(Poland),Hardt Hyperloop(Netherland), HyperloopTT(U.S), and The Boring Company.
Rockets
How would it feel if we could travel from Los Angeles to Sydney in just half an hour? Yes, Elon musk in 2017, at the International Astronautical Congress, said that his rockets will fly you anywhere in the world within one hour. That too at the same price as a commercial airline ticket.
SpaceX’s own rocket starship travels at the speed of 17,500 mph. So if it is used for traveling between two places on Earth, imagine how small the earth will become. Once it becomes a reality, it will be the fastest transportation mode ever created in human history.
Underground Tunnels
As more and more people are moving to cities all over the world, the population of our cities will continue to grow. Underground tunnels could also become preferred modes of transportation, especially in future cities, along with flying cars.
On December 17, 2016, while getting stuck in traffic, Elon Musk twitted “ Traffic is driving me nuts, and I am going to build a tunnel boring machine and start digging”
A couple of months later, he actually formed “The Boring Company”.
In 2018, he invested $113 million of his own money in the Boring Company. Las Vegas Convention and visitors authority became The Boring Company’s first paying customer. They built “The Las Vegas convention center loop”, a 1.7- mile-long underground road. They opened it to the public last year.
One drawback with this form of transportation is that it takes a long time to build a tunnel and also it’s costly. So, something revolutionary needs to happen in this field that would help build tunnels faster and with a lot less money.
Underground transportation is not a new thing. There are many metro train projects around the world that are underground. But, what if we could take our cars to underground roads through a lift? That, along with flying cars would solve most of our city’s traffic problems. Well, that is what Elon Musk wants to accomplish with “The Boring Company”.