Clean slate cars

I thought this topic deserved it's own thread and for the purposes herein I shall define a car as point to point transportation for personal use, motorized, and by land.
Should the cs city have cars or be car free?
What should they look like, how should they be powered, be driven? can they fly? (pleaaaaaase can they fly?)

Some links to think about:
http://faculty.washington.edu/jbs/itrans/dualmode.htm
http://www.theoscarproject.org/
http://www.airshiptg.org/index.htm
http://www.templetons.com/brad/robocars/

I have to say, I do love those minority report wheels.

I'm not sure if this idea should be in the airship thread or here but is this crazy or just stupid?
How about a single seater personal hybrid airship?
An all electric vehicle with the gas bag volume of a decent size van could lift about 300kg, an aptera mk0 has a curb weight of 388kg, put together in a lifting body with some ducted electric props driven from the same batteries you just might be able to get a vtol/stol electric airship of your very own that you could park in a regular parking space.

How would you protect the airship from puncturing in the event of an accident? If there's a lot of airships flying around, eventually they'll bump into each other.

Or maybe they could have electronic guidance systems that prevent any illegal or unsafe behavior when in the vicinity of other air vehicles. If you wanted, you could switch it over to autopilot completely.

Each house or apartment complex, instead of having a garage, would have a small landing pad on the roof. Automated storage and retrieval systems would bring your [insert witty aliteration referring to flying blimp here] right to you, and off you go.

While I do believe that autonomous robot based transportation should be accounted for in any clean slate urban design (with very limited mass transit, if any) one of the important factors of the robocar is how it adapts to the dirty slate -- making the most of the existing cities with their existing road infrastructure, and doing it with private money rather than central planning.

In a clean slate, you would want to choose whatever form of track and vehicle is cheapest, but you would still want to have private ownership of vehicles, since innovation is immensely greater in a private competing marketplace with lots of customers and lots of sellers. This is so compelling that you might even not choose the cheapest combination of track and vehicle but rather the most flexible. Some specific design (monorail, rail, tunnel etc.) constrains what the competitors can offer, while "general paved surface" may allow more variation and innovation.

Transit turns out to be inefficient, except when you have "rush hour" times when everybody wants to move. To handle rush hours, transit needs high capacity vehicles but these vehicles are highly wasteful at all other times of the day. The best solution may be to design to not have rush hours.

I think I would mostly agree with you, a clean slate transport solutions has to be a broad coalition of competing technologies as there is no one magic bullet solution. High speed mass transit can provide the base load as it were but more flexible point to point technologies will always be needed and though autonomous personal rapid transport systems could mean that a lot of that market could be serve by rental I think that your right to say that there will always be a significant owneres market, and that that's a good thing, that it will drive development, innovation, and competition with competing transport technologies. As for rush hour, the best solution may be to eliminate it, but then the best solution to climate change is a nuclear war to kill off two thirds of the human race , doesn't mean it's a feasable solution though. At best you could encourage more flexible working hours, move to a so many hours a week worked whenever the worker wishes to work them, but I think most people would end up still doing a working day. In the end I really don't think you can plan out human nature, and really what you have to do work towards it.

As for M.O.P.A.S (My Own Personal Airship), I was envisioning that they would all be computer flown as the pilot would have to sit at the center of gravity, between forward and aft helium bags, with the dynamic stability bag above his head and wheels either side of his footwell, therefore he could only see the world by virtual display. For areodynamic reasons I think the body of the craft would have to be a hard composite shell, as the craft itself would have to be a lifting body such as a x24-A type shape capable generating enough lift to compensate for the remaining weight of the craft after it has assended to flight height on vtol thrusters and begun forward flight. As for accidents, well two things, firstly there's an account somewhere on wikipedia of DERA testing a prototype hybrid airship by firing automatic weapons, mortars, small missiles at the thing and finding it pretty much indifferent to them, i.e airships can take a lot of punishment before they fail.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Airship#Safety
Secondly the failure mode of helium hybrid airships is pretty gentle, a slow leak will just bring you gently to the ground, a power loss would have a glide landing.

If robocars or other personal transit produce an urban area where distance is almost non-relevant -- ie. you can pop into a small vehicle and get anywhere in the core in under 10 minutes -- you might eliminate rush-hour because this is a very spread out (but still very connected) "core".

While people will still want to work together, the ability to do a lot of work remotely (including from inside one's vehicle on trips to or from the common workplace) reduces the need for everybody to arrive at the same time, possibly eliminating it.

Whether such a distributed core is good or not is another question. You can have walkable zones but for trips over 1/2 mile one would expect it all to be in a vehicle. It might be much worse though, people might do trips over 500 feet in a vehicle if they are convenient (think about how in office buildings, people often take the elevator just one floor.)

I'm slightly confused why you think mass transit systems are more wasteful than individual transport devices, i.e. cars. With a population of millions, and spread out working schedules, high-speed transport systems will be running at optimal or near-optimal efficiency all the time.

Infrastructure-wise, it's immensely less-expensive to install mass transit.

Innovation in the private vehicle sector - point taken. Honestly though, innovation in private vehicles is generally just borrowed from other areas. Just look at GPS navigation, music and electronics, and most of it is just a luxury.

I was wondering of the possibility of having an underground train road. In other words, trains aren't much different from big cars connected to a wire. This would allow more versatility, and could potentially even allow limited personal transport, although this would be discouraged.

What would be the functional difference between a train road and driverless cars? Except for the greater infrastructure costs of the former and the flexibility of the latter?

As for mass transit, it really depends on the implimentation, if it's well planned and sufficiently supported. The numbers always work out a lot closer together than you might think which is why a mix transport system comes out best, because neither individual system has the greatest efficiency under different conditions.

Innovation is a hard thing to pin down in any industry, in hindsight you know it when you see it is about the best you can say. Gps yes wasn't built for cars, but their wide spread adoption in them has driven the market, the performance market is full of technical and material innovation, the innovation you can't see such as in the manufacturing proccess, the toyota system, etc, has made the manufacture of what are very complex machines greatly easier with vastly better reliability.
Finally though to dismiss the real sea change underway in the automotive industry as automakers move inexarably towards electric drivetrains and composite lightweight materials to produce maximum efficiency vehicles as a luxury is I think churlish.

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Finally though to dismiss the real sea change underway in the automotive industry as automakers move inexarably towards electric drivetrains and composite lightweight materials to produce maximum efficiency vehicles as a luxury is I think churlish.

It's a slow march, hindered by second agendas.

Composite lightweight materials come from aircraft and military innovation. Maximum efficiency being the goal of today's major automakers is also fallacy.

Obviously GM and Chrysler couldn't find their arse if it was handed to them but what I was refering to was the slow inexorable inevitable transition over the next twenty years to the sort of vehicles described which you can see the beginnings of already.
I think you may be confusing innovation with invention to some degree, the composite materials may have been invented for military purposes as highly expensive lightweight construction but it will be innovation in the motor industry that will make it a much less expensive mass produced construction material. Much like the gps story.
The point is if you look in the right places there is tremendous innovation going on in the autoindustry, and if you look at where the industry as whole is headed over the next twenty , forty years, you can see both an inevitable path but also one fill with vast potential for future innovation.

Alright I understand where you're coming from. We're nearing a point where maximum efficiency = profitability, but companies like GM and Chrysler are holding us back with their intentional baby steps of efficiency, when what we need is a leap.

Often the terms innovation and invention can be used interchangeably. However, innovation is usually finding a new method or use, while invention is creating something entirely new.

lkm -

Quote :

well planned and sufficiently supported

I would hope everything that is done in our city will be.

GM and Chrysler are going to the wall, largely as a result of such management imcompetence. If one or both of them are still in existence in five years time I'll be fairly surprised.

Search Inductrack. It can still levitate at speeds as low as 2 mph.

All those magnets might be a problem though.

very cool, but the problem with trains are the track, the problem with track is it can only take you where it wants to go which is why there'll always be some sort of need for point to point transport.

We can embed the wires into the streets.

Small electric bikes/planes for personel transport, airship/plane hybrid busses for public transport (assuming we're in the open air and not underground, pnuematic tube trains if we are), and Airships of course for cargo (again, assuming we're in the open air and not underground, pnuematic tube trains if we are),

That opens up another question: at what age should people be allowed to drive/ride/fly? In India it's 10 (how I envy that), whereas in Britain it's 17.

whenever they show that they are competent drivers. Set ages are rather silly, although maybe a minimum age of 10 would be a good idea.

So, like voting, we'd end up with some drivers who are 10, and people who aren't allowed aged 80. Sounds good. It would take a lot of idiots off the roads.

That's assuming the tests are improved. Maybe the drivers could be 'monitered' for a year after passing?

Can't we just ban drivers altogether and let computers do it, it would be altogether a whole lot safer.

Not with our current computers.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darpa_grand_challenge
At the current rate of system development this sort of technology could be an optional extra on top of the range luxury vehicles by 2015, and a standard safety feature by 2025.

I didn't say "not with our near-term computers."

Sorry, I thought we were talking CS which as a rule of thumb is always 30 years out.
In terms of driving licenses what's needed today is more continous assesment, say biyearly retesting and grading rather than a simple pass or fail, so car taxes can be levied more heavily on the barely competent who are more likely to require the emergency services as well as allow insurers to better judge risk.

As for me not being allowed to drive at the moment, I have a plan...

Here in Britain, the laws regarding Electric bikes/trikes are out of date (they were made early 1980s). This means, since I'm over 14, I can drive an electric trike as long as I don't go over 15 mph under electric power.

What about fly wheel power?

I still haven't checked the laws.

Flywhell power is good for cars. I remember reading that a 10kg Flywheel stores the same amount of energy as 25kg of batteries. Of course that depends on the material the Flywheels made of and the type of batteries.

I was meaning an electric trike that could switch to flywheel power above 15 mph, when you dip below fifteen the motor comes on spinning up the flywheel and driving the trike, when you accelerate beyond that it switches back.

Interesting idea, I'll check it out.

In terms of trikes I've always loved the active tilting of the carver.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carver_(automobile)
Plus it looks like a fighter jet cockpit.

If you pick up a C5 there's plenty of info out there on how to modify it. According to the great wiki in the sky a modified C5 holds an electric land speed record.

At first I thought you meant the American C-5 aircraft.

The C5 electric car is exactly what we need for personal transport. We'd definitely have to modify it quite a bit for safety if we wanted to use it on large motorways though.

A fuel cell/battery electric car I feel is the best way to go for the future. With regenerative braking and other features it could conserve energy very well. Also, if solar cells are used as parts of the body, hood, trunk, roof, dashboard, rear deck, the car could actually recharge itself while sitting in rush hour traffic, or while parked. Public transportation could be made more fashionable and could be made very fuel friendly as well. Solar cells could also be used on the roof of electric buses for recharging.

I think I actually suggested something similar back in the metropolis thread.

I skimmed over that thread. I must have missed it. Nice to know we're on the same page. Honestly, I didn't plagarize you. I've been contemplating this idea long before I discovered this forum. It's more like "brilliant minds think alike!"

Going back to the beginning of that thread, I saw a tv program that addressed the safe hydrogen storage issue. The hydrogen was "dissolved" in a material that looked something like carbon. As the "carbon" was heated, the hydrogen would precipitate out as needed. If there was a tank rupture the hydrogen might smoulder but it wouldn't burn or explode.

Is the material expensive? How much space does it take up? If it's feasible, that's the answer that everyone's been looking for.

Now we just need to find a safe way to transport it. I've been thinking if we just use water as the primary source, we could just pipe it in from the ocean (that would be for areas that don't have plentiful water supplies, AZ for example). Then each station would have some type of electrolytic converter, using cheap nuclear power, to remove the hydrogen as it's needed.

I actually saw an idea for a stand alone hydrogen station. It used solar (sorry) with a converter.
Initially there would only be a few cars, so even in Arizona a few strategically placed stand-alone stations would do.
The storage material, I discovered is metal hydride. What would happen is you come into the station, unplug your "tank" or tanks depending on the weight, swap out the empty tank for a full one pay the difference, plug your full tank in and drive away. A standardized tank configuration would be required. The beauty of this is if you use a multiple small "tank" configuration you can "top off" the vehicle. This configuration can even be used for fuel cell motorcycles!
In the interim, while fuel cell technology is being developed, these type of stations could service battery-powered electric cars and motorcycles as well. Unplug a standardized battery pack, swap it out, pay the difference, plug the new pack(s) in and drive away. The "old" battery gets plugged in to the power supply and is charged up, ready for the next customer.

Another material that is being toyed with for hydrogen storage is carbon nanotubes. This is a technology worth keeping an eye on. Considering the incredible amount of uses that are being developed for nanotubes and the fact that the raw material is so plentiful, the possibilities are staggering.

P.S. lkm, I can relate to having a nuclear power station nearby. The Palo Verde station is about sixty miles away from me.

As it turns out, the legendary sword material known as Damascus steel employs carbon nanotubes, which were created during the forging process by mixing the iron with sources of carbon. (I believe wood was used for the most part.)

It is incredible that we are just now solving the mysteries of these legendary technologies like Damascus steel and Stratavarius violins to the point where they can be duplicated today.
I stumbled upon a site where they are developing solar cells using nanotube technology. PV cells that are more efficient, durable and cheaper than present day solar cells.

http://www.azonano.com/news.asp?newsID=548.

I wonder how much that will increase efficiency of solar panels?

I don't know the exact numbers, but I suspect a significant amount. From what they were saying in the manufacturing process there end up being a lot of failed p/n connections. The nanotubes maximize these connections and make them more efficient. I can't find any exact figures but
http://www.nanowerk.com/spotlight/spotid=1535.php
talks about doubling the efficiency! Let's be cynical and say it's only fifty percent more efficient. There's still the cheaper manufacturing factor that can make this more attractive.
On top of that, we are only scratching the surface of solar technology. There are solar cells out there that are 40% efficient, but that's at peak sunlight and very expensive. Let's say this produced 10 kw on the average day. There are solar cell designs that are less efficient at peak, but more efficient at other times. These cells are cheaper to produce, more rugged and can produce more kw per average day.

I realize this isn't a very clean slate idea, but has anyone thought of building a modern steam car, a ruggedly engineered modern steam engine which you can chuck anything flammable in to get you where you're going. Perfect for remote and poorly developed locations.

It's an interesting idea, but one concern I see is emissions. If this could be controlled, I would like to suggest taking it one step further in efficiency and go with a sterling engine.

I was thinking very much as this being a solution for rural undeveloped nations where refined imported fuel sources might be scarce. A steam engine, or stirling engine, if you prefer, made from modern materials capable of being fed with any readily available combustable materials. Given that would most likely be locally grown biomass with little or no refinement rather than imported coal or petroleum, the cardon emissions would largely be zero when considered as a closed cycle. Also I can't think that this would be useful enough outside of a few niche roles for emissions to matter.

If some kind of modern steam car were to be developed for these nations, it wouldn't be that much more trouble to put some kind of modern emission system on it as well. These remote and poorly developed regions don't have a significant impact on the environment only because they don't have the benefit of modern technology like this. Carbon is one thing CO2 is another. Reusing biomass in the form of fertilizer and compost keeps the carbon within this closed system. Releasing it into the atmosphere as CO2 adds to the climate problem.
Don't get me wrong, I think helping out rural undeveloped nations is a great idea, but I think there are better, cleaner ways to go about this.

Em, I'm no biologist, but surely if a tree grows in the forrest it fixes carbon from the air and when that tree, rots, or is burnt that releases it. over the life of that tree, surely thats a zero sum game?

I was referring to the carbon staying on the ground through recycling the biomass. Yes, some carbon does get released in this process in the form of CO2, but a large amount still stays in the biomass. In the burning process, almost all is released as CO2 into the atmosphere.
Either way, you could come up with a simple rugged electric car and wind or solar recharging that would release no emissions.
Granted your system is a zero sum game, as is nature's system, but nature has signiciantly less CO2 "in play" at any one time.

The thing about steam engines though, is that they are massively rugged reliable chunks of mechanical engineering, most of the steam engines still in working life are fifty plus year old examples plowing their way across developing nations. They do seem to just keep on going. As nice as electric is, I'm not sure how you could design anywhere near the same life expectancy or assured reliablity into something cheap. Batteries alone are hellishly expensive and short on life.

Steam engines that are still working are in many cases working simply out of nostalgia. The amount of maintenance on a steam engine is huge and I assure you it is not simple or cheap. With all the valves and pistons and mechanical linkage it is not an easy thing to maintain.
Perhaps a steam turbine would work in this application. With only one major moving part this might be the way to go. However you still have the emissions issue.

Erm... H2O2 produced from Air and Water as energy storage?

I originally came up with this idea for Spacecraft.

That sounds, somewhat dangerous and dificult to do.