Possible replacement for the Automobile

[lukep]

Heathrow Airport has said that they are now running at full steam ahead with their new ULTra personal transport pods & there have been no signs of accidents, problems, nor even people waiting in line for one for more than a moment...

These fast little bastards are pretty much the same ride that Tom Cruise jumped onto in Minority Report, minus the vertical wall travel.

At least in an airport environment they are completely human-free to ride, just press a button at a terminal like this one and they show up on demand:

Just press button, step inside, sit down, avoid traffic altogether and then stand up again at your chosen destination.

And they haul 4 people along a cheap roadway (no tracks!) pretty damn fast & all on electric energy... Replacing two bus routes so far so the greenies have a huge hardon for this.

Best of all; they've been proven a COST EFFECTIVE solution to replace bus routes; especially now that it doesn't need any track. (At least for small areas like an airport... They don't mention city-wide attempts nor mixing these cars with real traffic.)

So if they can pull all of this off without the need for drivers, and totally Cost-effectively, then when can we expect to start seeing these pods everywhere?

US Automakers must be loading up their lobbyist's bank cards right now and booking their flights to DC as we speak...

 

[About]

These are amazing. I remember growing up and watching/reading all sorts of stuff about the future... and nowadays it's becoming a reality, almost exactly like I remember all those years ago. Personal transport pods, android tablets, $3 salmon filets from Walmart, holy shit I love being alive right now.

Edit: The shitty thing is that major advances like this are made difficult by the nature of capitalism. Not that I don't love capitalism, but when the big wigs get together and lobby shit to death, it stalls progress. Have to hate that.

 

[taktikz]

Looks very nice

 

[Choopa Phil]

that looks awesome. It would be great to have these implemented in all major cities

 

[Big Joe]

I wonder if that would eliminate the traffic in manhattan?

 

[BigWill]

Since when is electricity green? Most of it is produced by coal.

 

[fvaldes]

and here we go...another cool thing Europe os Asia creates for their citizen and NEVER seen by us, americans...

fuck, the us is falling behind in ...everything??

 

[lukep]

I wonder if that would eliminate the traffic in manhattan?

Well right now they need separate roadways and there is little room for that in the big apple ATM. So I'd say perhaps after either a new elevated track was put in that is exclusive to these guys and cars can't go on. (Small routes first, then expanded out gradually.)

Since when is electricity green? Most of it is produced by coal.

Oh boy.

Energy itself and the grid too are both neutral. The source of the energy is either green or dirty.

The grid can be filled with wind, solar, geothermal, nuclear, hamster-driven, and other green energy sources. They have started to slowly fill up with them, ~2% of our grid is already green now.

Eventually the grid is certain to go fully green because Solar and wind are starting to outpace prices versus dirty fuels. (They already do in America if you remove Oil Subsidies!) Just too many scientists worldwide are working on this problem for it not to go the distance.

Individual companies can ensure greener fuel faster by installing their own energy generation like all of Google's projects do. (And most big web hosts like hostgator too, for that matter.)

ICEs, by comparrison, are very dirty. Even Priuses.

fuck, the us is falling behind in ...everything??

Seems to me like we already fell behind in everything a decade or two ago and most of america still has not realized it yet. Too much patriotic propaganda here.

 

[dc0ded]

Looks Great,waiting to get implemented in all big cities.

 

[taktikz]

Since when is electricity green? Most of it is produced by coal.

People don't interact with or see the coal, therefore, people consider it "green".
Anyway, eventually it'll be largely produced by actual "green" sources like solar, wind, tide harnessing, etc.

 

[Kiopa_Matt]

Looks pretty sweet, and definitely has its uses. Without some major modifications to the basic design / methodology, I have a hard time imagining this becoming widespread, and in every day use.

Sure, the Heathrow airport gets quite a bit of traffic. However, that traffic is miniscule compared to the traffic for example, leaving downtown Los Angeles at 5:30pm on a weekday. I think a bunch of little 4-man pods zipping all over the city would have a rough time handling that traffic on an automated network. Hundreds of people can walk onto a subway at one time within seconds, whereas everyone has to line up for these little 4 person, pissy ass pods?

See what happens though.

 

[Ar Scion]

Give em a separate lane. They will eventually replace all the cabs in Manhattan given the chance.

 

[lukep]

Sure, the Heathrow airport gets quite a bit of traffic. However, that traffic is miniscule compared to the traffic for example, leaving downtown Los Angeles at 5:30pm on a weekday. I think a bunch of little 4-man pods zipping all over the city would have a rough time handling that traffic on an automated network. Hundreds of people can walk onto a subway at one time within seconds, whereas everyone has to line up for these little 4 person, pissy ass pods?

See what happens though.

I've lived in LA and know what you mean, but keep in mind they'd likely have some sort of elevated track for these, at least at first. (That's what they're doing in Heathrow, at least.)

So as people start taking these pods above traffic the cars will be fewer below... And eventually the lanes will empty out as they add more pods on.

Then, as the roadway lanes become more empty, pods can have lanes down there as well.

Your issue about the subway is moot because you seem to be imagining one station for ten pods to pull up side by side subway-platform style when in reality they'd be pulling up all over the city Taxi-Cab style... No bottlenecks at deployment.

One major problem I can see happening to them however is crime.

People with less than ideal scruples can vandalize or outright steal such a pod too easily without a driver... I can't see these in a city-wide service for decades because of this problem alone.

Once again, its our lowlifes fucking it up for the rest of us. :ak:

 

[papajohn56]

People don't interact with or see the coal, therefore, people consider it "green".
Anyway, eventually it'll be largely produced by actual "green" sources like solar, wind, tide harnessing, etc.

doubtful from those. demand is growing exponentially, efficiency of those won't even reach close. the only real clean hope is nuclear

 

[lukep]

doubtful from those. demand is growing exponentially, efficiency of those won't even reach close. the only real clean hope is nuclear

Now you know that I'm as big a fan of Nukes as anyone around here, but c'mon, you're effectively saying that Wind, Solar, Hydro, Tidal, Geothermal, and all other known Green sources combined can't stack up against Nuclear.

I believe that's not quite so.

Obviously, Germany agrees.

 

[beamup]

Looks good. If they were driven without drivers... that would be another step.
God..everything is automated.. even this!

 

[Parthenon]

The fuck? This is awesome for an airport, but personally I like my sports cars.

On the bright side, we can easily condemn shitty fucking drivers and DWI convicts to these things instead of suspending their licenses :smokin:

 

[flx89]

impressive, seen a tv show about this few years ago, and it's already launched. cool

 

[GerardWon]

Where's the Fun in that?