Today’s fantasy—tomorrow’s reality.
Breathless and phenomenal—the tech pace over 150 years. A trend line through the past pales in comparison to what is ahead. And, what a flood of cash backing it!
Consider that in our exponentially innovative world, the speed of Japan’s Shinkansen has improved merely by three times in 60 years. Basic airplane design has remained the same for almost a century. Autopilot for airplanes was developed 110 years ago. The automobile configuration is 150 years old (a steering wheel, a power train, gearbox, an internal combustion engine). Engines still operate on fossil fuels. The wheel persists, and roads are hugely expensive “ground-stuck” networks. Predominantly, all transport is still either on the surface or at 30,000 feet, leaving the space between the two to be exploited as “roads-on-demand”.
By 2050, as we race to maintain life for our 10 billion, our SDGs (population, transport density, pollution, global warming etc.) have never been more crucial and overwhelming. Transportation technology in the last 200 years had very few tipping points. Right now, we can palpably experience many, and these foretell a dazzling new order. Watch the interplay between the future of energy and the future of transportation.
Overwhelming—the tech coming into play, right here in 2021: Drones and UAVs are just about everywhere, rapidly evolving in lift duration, capacity, power, and precision control. Autonomously, they now even collaborate with other drone swarms. In a decade or so, they will carry us safely and reliably across urban distances, ably assisted by AI, IoT, microsensors and nano-level navigation.
Affordable high-speed internet is still very limited in depth. Musk’s Starlink and other such initiatives promise to deliver ubiquitous internet from satellites, distributed through the air by tethered airships. Implication—all-pervasive reliable internet all the way up to the sky, assisting in-air precise traffic control. As Tesla, LG, SK Innovation battle high-density quick charge power storage, clearly heavier loads will be possible for much-extended periods. Astonishing are the advancements in man-made materials, which enable much lighter, much stronger, much cheaper airframes.
Add to this heady mix, all-pervasive solar power. As costs plummet in tandem with battery costs, the sun will be powering a lot of what is motive. Airbus, Boeing, Lockheed are racing ahead with radical designs to more than halve the weight of conventional planes. These foretell quantum shifts in range and fuel consumption and include windowless planes that literally ‘dissolve’ weight. Airbus is working on green planes run on residue-based green fuels with surface solar charging to aid power generation in flight. Virgin Atlantic is in advanced stages with LanzaTech for commercially viable sustainable aviation fuel to make air travel much cleaner, much cheaper.
Tesla, the poster boy of e-cars, is way ahead of a large pack in reinventing the automobile with electric motors, far smaller, cleaner, lighter, more powerful and accurately controllable—eliminating conventional gearboxes and transmissions. Musk’s vivid imagination is literally ‘earthworming’ its way under California via his Boring Company(!) creating vacuum rail tunnels for magnetically levitated intercity traffic. And Branson’s Virgin Atlantic just carried passengers on their own hyperloop, with potential speeds exceeding 1,000 km per hour—we are on our way to make a Delhi-Mumbai equivalent rail run in about two hours.
Musk, Branson and Co sees their playground in the most intractable challenges—disrupting energy and transportation, combustion-engine automobiles, and a core American aspiration-space travel. Fast forward to 2050. We often use our personal drones for urban travel. And we sometimes Uber one too. On virtual roads, this drone weaves its way effortlessly through other swarms of drones. I often use the Air Uber Share from my neighbourhood taxi stand for longer distances, or with more people.
These air taxis are autonomous, robotised, use vertical take-off technology, and use a blend of solar and battery power with conventional aviation fuel as a backup. And when I’m in the mood to commute and enjoy the weather, I use an electric scooter—readily available on a pay for use basis. And in order to beat street congestion, my children’s school has gyro buses travelling on spidery legs 20 feet above normal road traffic.
We still do a lot of home and food shopping on Amazon. It’s now a 15-minute drone-based home delivery from warehouses in the sky. Logistics just saw a major quantum leap in efficiency. For a recent Delhi-London trip, I had a bewildering choice of flight modes—ranging from a three-hour supersonic hyper jet from KLM, to a green Airbus that does the conventional eight-hour flight. I chose a leisurely 18-hour bed and breakfast trip on a solar-powered Air Asia cruise airship—looking down on an array of air yachts over the Mediterranean!
Back to 2021—the fusing of tech disciplines has decidedly tipped over transport-tech to reach the escape velocity it sorely needed to overcome the gravity drag of the conventional.
Rohtash Mal
rohtash.mal@gmail.com
Ex-corporate honcho and organisational yoda; now entrepreneur and stargazer