CHANGING LANES: THE FUTURE OF TRAVEL

Around 500 years ago, Leonardo da Vinci wound some springs up, added a brake and installed them into a cart. When the brake was released, the springs would uncoil, pushing the cart without human assistance. It’s considered the precursor to the car, as well as the robot. We’re more used to the concept of flying cars and super-fast global travel thanks to the silver screen these days but realistically, how will you get to where you’re going in the near future? MVPro’s writer, Joel Davies, peers into his crystal ball.

CARS

Let’s start with the most popular. Let’s start with something we know. It’s a fact that we’re switching to electric cars. Most manufacturers, depending on the country and government, have to stop producing traditional fossilfuel reliant vehicles and start making electric-only ones by 2030. Ten years is the blink of an eye for a company to overhaul its product. It involves the logistical terror of sourcing new materials, adapting production facilities, designing new concepts and finally making and marketing the end-product. You will have noticed by the adverts over the past five years or so that it is happening, however. All major automotive manufacturers - even Harley Davidson – are doing as they’re told because they simply have to. And it’s not so bad for the makers - the Guardian recently found that electric cars will be cheaper to produce than fossil fuel vehicles by 2027i. Self-driving cars, the next major evolution of automotive vehicles, is less assured.

How on earth is a car able to drive itself? Thanks to good old fashioned machine vision. Invented in 1961, LiDAR, or light detection ranging, is a remote sensing method that can be used to map objects and structures including height, density and other characteristics across an area. Light is emitted from a rapidly firing laser and reflects off of objects like buildings or in this case, cars, people, roads and pavements. The reflected light energy returns to the LiDAR sensor where it is recorded and with machine learning algorithms creates a 3D map of the surroundings. Covering all angles of a car, it is, in effect, how self-driving cars “see” where they’re going. It’s then up to the onboard computer, packed with AI algorithms, to decide what to do with what it sees, just as a human brain would.

That is how it works and the complexity is apparent. Whilst large American companies like Google, Uber, Apple, and Tesla have invested years and millions of dollars, many other innovative companies are rising to the challenge. In Europe, the self-driving vehicles’ market is expected to grow exponentiallyii creating new jobs and developing profits of up to €620 billion by 2025 for the EU automotive industry. This is enough motivation for the major producers, including BMW, Mercedes and Audi to be developing prototypes, with mixed results. In any case, the EU is debating and deciding on laws about the novel technology. It has even set out a handy roadmap for when we can expect self-driving cars to be on the road.

Why even have self-driving cars? It’s not only to avoid the burden of driving, as some would see it. The adoption of self-driving cars is driven by factors like avoiding human error – the main cause of traffic accidents that kill 25,300 people a year on the EU’s roads. There are also positive benefits in that new digital technology can reduce traffic congestion, emissions, air pollutants and even in improving the mobility of transport for those who need it.

Let’s think even bigger for a moment. The oncoming wave of consumer-level autonomous vehicles cars, as supplied by the likes of Tesla dominate the headlines. But consumers don’t spend that much time on the road, at least not compared to the drivers ferrying around the things we need. According to EU rules, a professional driver can operate a vehicle for 9 hours a day, 56 hours in a week and 90 hours in any 2 consecutive weeks. Statistics show that at least 300 people are killed each year as a result of drivers falling asleep at the wheel and around four in ten tirednessrelated crashes involve someone driving a commercial vehicle. A driver who falls asleep for three or four seconds on a motorway can travel the length of a football pitch, and half a mile in 30 seconds.

That’s why, as you would have seen in the Industry News of the previous edition, that Plus, the so-called “WorldLeader” of self-driving trucks secured a $220m funding round. Two weeks ago they returned to the headlines, announcing that they were going to go public through a $3.3 billion SPAC deal. That’s just the US.

On the European side, there is Einride. With its Pod, it became the first fully electric, totally autonomous transport vehicle to operate on a public road in the world. Created in Sweden, the company has around €27.2 million in funding and its electric self-driving cargo trucks can be controlled remotely by drivers. It offers a fleet of slick, white vehicles, sized in ranges from haulage, distribution and city, offering 24, 9 and 16-ton carrying capabilities and all the bells and whistles you could ask for. Its completely driverless technology was enough to convince Coca-cola - the two partnered in 2019.

Commenting on the company’s recent $110 funding round, Robert Falck, CEO and co-founder of Einride said, “We are proud to be backed by some of the world’s most notable investors as they support our mission of becoming the leading provider of freight transportas-a-service. Their network, reach and experience will be invaluable as we further accelerate our strong momentum as the leader in autonomous and electric freight transportation, and as we expand into new markets. Einride is dedicated to transforming road freight transport as we know it, making it more cost-efficient, safe, and sustainable”.

The end goal? Electric, self-driving vehicles of all types by 2030. How ready each company and country is for the switch remains to be seen. One thing we do know is: it’ll be quieter.

PLANES

Commercial jets, like the ones we used to use pre-pandemic to visit other places, fly themselves already. The pilots of these planes only spend a few minutes of the journey – take-off and landing - actually flying. Autopilot takes care of the rest. Having already achieved a form of autonomy, the aviation industry is thinking smaller. It’s thinking flying taxis.

Flying taxis are exactly as you imagine. Or perhaps not if you’re thinking they look like cars that hover up into the air in a Blade Runner or Harry Potter-esque way. The principal is the same, but the design is different. Electric vertical take-off and landing vehicles (eVTOL) are modelled from a combination of jets and helicopters. A sleek body with wings and many small rotary propellers, eVTOLs take off and land vertically like helicopters but cruise like jets, effectively getting the best of both. They do this via the many small propellers attached to the body of the aircraft that can tilt vertically to take off and land and horizontally to cruise. Entirely run on electricity, they’re quiet but some models like Vertical Aerospace’s VA-X4 can reach speeds of up to 321.87 km/h.

Why not use regular helicopters or jets? With one exposed, large rotary blade on top, helicopters are noisy, cannot reach the speeds of jets and come with the risk of lobbing limbs off. Jets, on the other hand, simply cannot land or take off vertically. Here enters the eVTOL. On a larger scale, what’s the point of them? Are you going to catch a flight into town to do your groceries? Yes and no. It all depends on the company. As it stands, the Googles and Teslas of the aviation world are working away to make eVTOLs a reality and each has its idea about how the vehicles should look and what they should be used for. Some companies, like China’s EHang, are designing eVTOLs not much larger than drones, with the capabilities of holding two passengers for short destination flights. Others, like Lilium’s 7-seater jet, is aimed at the longer city to city journeys with a maximum of 200 miles per charge.

The end goal of all of these companies is the same: to travel better. In most cases, that’s by doing it quicker. Vertical Aerospace anticipates the 20-mile journey from Heathrow Airport to Canary Wharf, London would take just 13 minutes compared to the usual hour by car or train. The knock-on effect of this is the lessening of congestion. According to CNN, Commuters in the 15 most-congested American cities spent an average of 83 hours stuck in traffic in 2017.

No one can complain about getting places quicker but that’s when cost rears its ugly head. Commercial flying is expensive. And when flying taxis hit the skies of a town near you, they will cost. Volocopter says that for a similar journey from central London to Heathrow, it would expect to charge £100-200. As with all novel technology, costs will fall. All of these wonderful companies won’t be around for long if they don’t.

Boeing, Toyota, Hyundai and the acquirer of Uber’s failed Elevate, Joby Aviation, are some of the big-name frontrunners to get the technology off the ground first but it is Lilium that have made the biggest recent step to making regular flying a reality. You will have seen Lilium in the last edition of the MVPro magazine when the company announced the development of its electric vertical take-off and landing jet after entering into a definitive business agreement with Qell Acquisition Corp. The $830m investment brought Lilium’s total worth to $3.2b.

At the time, Daniel Wiegand, Co-Founder and CEO, Lilium said, “We’re incredibly excited to reveal the development of our 7-Seater Lilium Jet and announce the next stage of our growth. This is a validation of all the hard work over the last five years from our talented team and our worldclass partners and investors.

“Our vision is to create a sustainable and accessible mode of high-speed travel and bring this to every community. Transport infrastructure is broken. It is costly in personal time, space consumption and carbon emissions. We are pursuing our unique electric jet technology because it is the key to higher-capacity aircraft, with a lower cost per seat mile while delivering low noise and low emissions”.

The proceeds from the transaction with Qell are intended to fund the launch of commercial operations, planned for 2024. This includes the finalization of serial production facilities in Germany, launch of serial production aircraft and completion of type certification. Although a German company, up to 14 vertiports are already planned in Florida with advanced discussions taking place with key infrastructure partners for 10 vertiports to build a network across Europe.

Up to 300 firms are working on a short-range batterypowered craft that takes off and lands verticallyiii , according to Natasha Santha of LEK consulting. It’s hard to comprehend, by simply looking at the futuristic crafts and the infrastructure that needs to be built, that they could be a reality so soon but most companies developing the technology state 2024 as their target. This includes Lilium and Vertical Aerospace. If, as Lilium claim, its Vertiports are 10x quicker and 100x cheaper to build than high-speed rail, then why not?

MISCELLANEOUS

If cars can drive themselves and taxis can fly us city-tocity unassisted, what about the other forms of transport we rely on? What about buses, boats, trains and personal transport?

TRAINS

Unless you live in Tokyo, it seems that the only time we talk about trains is when we’re discussing how late, full or uncomfortable they are. Trains aren’t due to grow wings anytime soon but they could go electric and autonomous - some already are. In Asia, they have Maglev trains, which use magnets to float carriages above the ground without the need for wheels. They are currently the fastest form of rail travel in existence with China and Japan the proponents of the technology. China’s passenger railways can travel between 250 - 350 km/h whilst Japan’s own Maglev train once topped out at 603 km/h in 2016 on an experimental track. Shanghai airport’s maglev does the 19-mile, hour-long taxi journey from the airport to the business district in eight minutes. That’s five minutes quicker than the proposed flying taxis above. There’s no mention of the technology in Europe, primarily because of cost. South Korea’s Incheon airport maglev cost £25m per km to build.

The technology is more in line with the future of switching to green energy sources, however. Other potential ideas for trains include hydrogen, with the world’s first passenger train powered by a hydrogen fuel cell that produces electrical power for traction launched in Germany in 2018. The train emits steam and condensed water only. It was created by Alstom, a French company that has now taken an order of 12 trains from France.

BUSES

For many, they can’t live with them and can’t live without them. In the EU, 55.7% of all public transport journeys are on buses, equating to 32.1 billion passenger journeys every yeariv. Following in the footsteps of their smaller relative, the car, buses are getting the electric, self-driving treatment.

In February, the southern Mediterranean town of Malaga, Spain, became home to one of the first trials of a fully functional, electric, self-driving bus. With a driver behind the wheel in case of emergencies, the regular-sized bus holds 60 passengers and follows an 8km route around the city six times a day. The project was backed by the Spanish government and developed by a collective of universities. In other cases, Volvo recently announced that by the start of 2022 it would have its electric, CAT buses on the streets of Australia. The buses, developed with Volgren, aren’t autonomous. Nevertheless, the companies are due to deliver 900 new buses by 2029.

ETC: BOATS, SCOOTERS... JETPACKS?

A lesser-used form of transport these days, aquatic vessels are getting the self-sailing experience. Promare and IBM’s Mayflower Autonomous Ship (MAS) is due to start its maiden voyage from Plymouth, UK to Plymouth, USA this spring.

When it comes to more personal transport, self-driving bikes haven’t quite happened but San Francisco based Go X piloted self-driving scooters on a 500-acre technology campus in Georgia, USA. Based on the rent-a-scooter idea, through their app, a user can hail a scooter that will scoot itself to you, saving the hassle of trying to find a scooter to rent in the first place. Go X aren’t operating in Europe, where a potentially more important piece of personal travel equipment is being developed.

Although it’s unlikely you’ll ever use one and hopefully never have to be in the vicinity of one, jetpacks are being developed. The most far-fetched concept in this article, the kit is real and not as gimmicky as you might think. Developed by the British company, Gravity Industries, its Jet Suit records speeds of up to 128 km/h with a jet engine power of more than 1,000bhp. The jetpack can reach altitudes of 12,000 feet. Still in its trial phase, the technology’s potential applications could extend to military and emergency services. The Royal Navy, as well as the UK’s Great North Air Ambulance Service, have tested the suit out.

There you have the burgeoning future of transport, with 2030 the finishing line for many life-altering concepts like self-driving cars. Whether or not these technologies come to fruition, it’s important to remember that these are all relatively recent developments that have relied on the advancement of machine vision, computer vision and other technologies. The idea of a flying car may be as old as any futuristic idea, but only within the past 10 years has it been treated as a reality. The stress is now on when not if. So, three important questions remain: how will you travel? How fast will you get there? What will you do with the time you save?

MV

i https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/may/09/ electric-cars-will-be-cheaper-to-produce-than-fossil-fuelvehicles-by-2027

ii https://ec.europa.eu/jrc/en/publication/eur-scientificand-technical-research-reports/analysis-possiblesocio-economic-effects-cooperative-connected-andautomated-mobility-ccam

iii https://www.economist.com/business/2021/04/03/ flying-taxis-are-about-to-take-off-at-last

iv https://www.acea.be/automobile-industry/buses