these kinds of intermediate solutions will drastically speed up the transition to autonomy, since all this teleoperation creates training data, and you can start having operators monitor more than 1 vehicle, like drone operators have for years.
Tag: transportation
Istanbul island
The Bosporus is 3x busier than the Suez Canal, and getting worse. To resolve marine congestion, Turkey wants to build a ‘second Bosporus‘. The controversial project would alter local geography – and may have unintended consequences.
Hyperefficient Airplane
Celera 500L Aircraft 6x more fuel-efficient
We believe the Celera 500L is the biggest thing to happen to both the aviation and travel industries in 50 years. The Celera 500L has a maximum cruising speed of at least 700km per hour and a range of over 7000km. It also has impressive fuel economy, achieving 7 km / liter and 11 km / liter. A traditional business jet with similar capabilities to the Celera 500L, including its 6-passenger capacity, typically achieve 0.5 km / liter, making Otto’s design dramatically more economical, as well as more environmentally friendly. The Celera 500L will have an unbelievably low per-hour flight cost of just $328.
Subway station redesign
stations were re-designed to include open-air waiting areas so MTA customers can head underground only when they know a train with capacity is arriving.
US geographic mobility
People in New York travel 38% fewer total kilometers and visit 14% fewer block-sized areas than people in Atlanta. Density works.
Solving traffic jams
with autonomous driving, because humans have too slow reaction times to not cause speed ripples due to braking etc.
Urban Air Mobility
MVRDV is developing a plan for the future of Urban Air Mobility (UAM). The investigation tackles the integration of “flying vehicles” into our urban environments and envisions a comprehensive mobility concept. Addressing major questions like “How will these flying vehicles impact our urban environments? And how could they be leveraged to improve our cities?” MVRDV and Airbus are exploring the possibility of reconnecting territories through an accessible-for-all system. Avoiding the negative impact that comes with the introduction of new transportation modes into cities, the study imagines both short-term and long-term scenarios, in order to dodge any detrimental impacts from this disruptive technology.
Selfdriving Investment
self-driving is an 8T / year opportunity, and some pioneers now feel that the ground was a mistake, and personal transport is going to move to the air. Sebastian Thrun, the most respected pioneer in the self-driving car space, has largely abandoned it and now preaches that the air is where the action will be, thanks to computerized electric vertical take-off aircraft. Air travel offers almost unlimited “lanes” of traffic in 3 dimensions, with trivial costs in infrastructure compared to the ground and is considerably faster. This is just one of the things which might happen when you start trying to predict decades out. There are others which people are yet to think of which may change all these numbers in even more dramatic ways.
Ebike delivery
Around the world, we have seen how freight companies use cargo bikes to move goods around dense urban neighborhoods more efficiently. NYC’s Department of Transportation is taking a step toward alleviating at least 1 of those causes of congestion: It’s implementing a pilot program to allow electric, pedal-assisted cargo bikes to make deliveries throughout Manhattan’s central business district. The goals of the pilot: reduce congestion, and improve safety on city streets.
A designey solution to this could be the Armadillo:
Bike purists may scoff that the Armadillo looks like it was designed by an engineer. (Germany’s Berliner Morgenpost calls it “a mix of go-kart, bicycle and van.”) But these are highly functional vehicles that a lot of thought went into: – Though they can carry 300kg, they’re only 86cm wide, meaning they can easily fit on bike paths “without causing problems for other cyclists.”
Cybertruck
For the Cybertruck to succeed the way the Model 3 has, Tesla must steal the customers Ford, GM, Chrysler, and other automakers most value. To paraphrase Boromir, one does not simply walk into Detroit with such a plan. The big automakers pay very careful attention to their trucks: They know their customers well and develop each new model based on decades of learnings. Musk has a knack for rethinking the customer experience, and the Cybertruck’s radical design could appeal to drivers looking for something different. But when it comes to meeting what those drivers really need and want from their trucks, it’s playing catch up. “Tesla can figure it out, but they don’t already know. If the truck can’t deliver the functionality [drivers] need, they’re not gonna buy it.” Which means that Tesla is fixing to challenge its core competency—designing vehicles that delight and surprise their drivers—as never before.
and here’s a nice design roast:
They said if we converted the CAD file from IGES to DXF we were going to lose some data. I told them we didn’t mind.
It is also far superior to the F-150:
and perhaps could be used for lunar mining:
SpaceX could use the electric skateboard of the Cybertruck to build all the of vehicles that they need for a lunar mining operation. 30 cybertrucks could be delivered to the moon with every SpaceX Starship.
Gregor J. Rothfuss 