February 2016: Hold on, what’s happening here – the WordPress of transport?
August 2015: And what about energy harvesting? With material science developing plastic materials structured to emulate the photosynthetic qualities of plants – we should be in for a treat in terms of re-evaluating our transport assets as energy harvesting assets. For more inspiration see this low cost solar panel article.
July 2015: So what do we do now that electrification of our rail lines are being delayed? Fear not we can go fuel cell, or maybe lithium battery! We could also make our trains much lighter, without compromising on safety, with graphene carriages…?
June 2015: Tesla getting a commercially-ready house-battery to enable the dream – enter the powerwall home battery!…and I’m hedging my bets on the Nissan Leaf to take the UK market by storm…
…but this stuff simply pales in comparison to what the legend Elon Musk has come up with for the future of rail – the hyperloop! This one is worthy of us all reading the detail in the related hyperloop white paper…
May 2015: Wow – had no idea Electrically Assisted Pedal Cycles have landed everywhere!
April 2015: All go for the world’s first environmentally friendly and emission- free private helicopter…the Volocopter!
What will transport look like in 2030?
Almost certainly in green leader countries like Germany, there will be a large number of electric cars being plugged into big batteries in their homes, recharged with solar and heat transfer electricity generation systems; lighting and heating their houses at night too…
…but what about the longer inter-continental drives? Possibly a greater taste for car rental solutions, with reduced insurance overheads by the fact these vehicles will be ‘driver-less’, robot-driven, luxury spec cars, allowing ALL travellers the luxury of relaxing on their journey without having to concentrate on the road ahead…
…and whilst local rail and bus solutions are likely to continue to play a strong role in serving radial demand into our busiest of cities (where cars, even ‘driver-less’ will continue to suffer from congestion problems in peak hours) off-peak leisure and peak commutes on the rail will be increasingly be all about high speed inter-city connections…
…[to be continued]