During the start of this century, no one might have guessed that a graduate project by two students at Standford would dominate the self-driving technology.
Or that a Ph.D. student of Standford who dropped within 48 hours, would propose a freight transportation that in the future has potential disrupt the entire aerospace industry.
What will happen in 2020 and beyond down the line, you, me or anyone can’t figure out clearly. There, however, are few clues that tell us those amazing things are waiting for us in the future. Through this article, I’ll be giving you glimpses of some of those amazing thing.
Transportation technology like Hyperloop has become well known as people know that it can transport many people to a great distance in a nick of time. But there are other as well which you may or may not be aware of.
So be ready, fasten your seat belt as in today’s brief session, as we have the list of top future transportation technologies:
- A 24×7 Chauffeur
- Neither a Car nor a Bike
- Next is the Next Smart Mean of Travel
- A single driver will be driving multiple cars at the same time!
- This Is the Boring Company which is Working on an Interesting Concept
A 24×7 Chauffeur
If you will look at the most innovative invention of this decade you will find a lot of inventions related to vehicles and the driverless car is, for sure, going to be in the top spots. Google, Tesla, along with many other auto manufacturers have spent billions of dollars to make this technology see the light of a day.
A self driving car will be housing state of the art object detection system that will use LIDAR [Laser + Radar] like devices to detect vehicles, pedestrian and road signs. These cars will be sharing information with each other by using Vehicle to Vehicle communication.
The autonomous cars of Tesla and Google, at present, have Level 3 feature – explain level 3 – and Elon Musk announced to bring Level 5 autopilot within 2 years in cars of Tesla.
Neither a Car nor a Bike
Nothing annoys more but a road jam where you, in your car, are stuck and a biker is zig-zagging in spaces between vehicles. If you want to commute alone in a high traffic area, why do you need an SUV?
Size, thus, is another problem in cars. BMW, Toyota, Nissan and GE know that well and are making their cars smaller and smarter.
Toyota, for example, launched a three wheeler i-road by combining motorbike and car. This is ultra-compact – 870mm– and fits in a quarter of a normal car space. I would definitely prefer this over a car and a bike for jam-packed roads.
Similarly, General Motors launched a Microcar EN-V with an autonomous driving system.
What do you think about these cars?
Next is the Next Smart Mean of Travel
This is autonomous, modular and electric and is of the size of a car but can carry 10 people (4 sitting and six standing). The concept I’m talking about is Next which is an intersection of Uber and City bus. Margaret Rhodes of Wired captures the essence of the concept beautifully:
Imagine a Next pod pulling up to your house in the morning, before scooping up your neighbor, and then, once it’s on a main road heading for downtown, affixing itself to another couple pods. Everyone goes to work, together.
During your trip to the office, if you feel like having coffee, what you have to do is that you just have to call another Next coffee pod (may be owned by Starbucks). It will directly reach and join the pod you are traveling in.
Everything on the go! Bar, shopping, ice cream, restaurant, toilet. This dynamic modularity is way better than a city bus in peak traffic hours.
A single driver will be driving multiple cars at the same time!
Has the above heading got you curious? If not, let me ask you a question: how would you feel if you travel 200 miles while sitting on driving seat without driving the car?
Sound counterintuitive? That’s why this concept of road trains in interesting.
All you have to do is – find a lead vehicle and link your car with that. Multiple vehicles can join this way to form a car train. All the other cars in a car train will follow the first vehicle. These cars will communicate with each other using V2V technology.
When you connect your car with such a train, you are free to type replies of emails, talk to your GF, you can have lunch and you can even take a nap!
You can detach your vehicle from such a train once you reach near to your destination. This concept is already popular and Google has plans to implement this in its driverless car computer.
This Is the Boring Company which is Working on an Interesting Concept
Think of the adrenaline rush when you will be traveling in your car at a speed of 200mph inside a tunnel! And you won’t be driving the car, you only be sitting in the driving seat!
This crazy idea is the brainchild of Elon Musk. He wants to create a network of tunnels connecting multiple cities. Pods inside these tunnels will work like an elevator to take you and your car from one city to another.
The Boring Company, another company by Elon Musk, is working on this concept. It has a massive 400 feet long boring machine called Nannie which at present is boring test tunnels testing in California’s SpaceX headquarter.
I can doubt other concepts I shared with you today not seeing the light of a day. But here the guy behind this idea is Elon Musk and he has a habit of making these crazy ideas work.
Besides, we also have found 5 future roads which will totally made for these future transportation inventions. Check out these roads here.
Feature Image Credit: Hyperloop Transportation Technology