TRANSPORT
how to interact with other road users – it can safely share a road or path with pedestrians, cyclists and animals, knowing when it is safe to move, and when it has to stop.”
CARS IN THE SKIES As citizens move towards access rather than ownership of vehicles, the hope is that the concentration of vehicles on the roads will go down, but for many cities this is going to be a slow process. For travellers, relief in an ever-more crowded world will come from, yes, flying cars. If you have seen Blade Runner – set in a dystopian Los Angeles where space- age ‘Spinners’ rise up from the ground and whizz between tower blocks – you’ve have had a taste of things to come. Uber’s Elevate subsidiary, for one, is
planning on lift-off for its aerial taxi service in LA, as well as Dallas Fort Worth and Dubai, by 2020. The programme would be in partnership with NASA, which enforces a Space Act agreement, a new kind of air traffic control system for low-flying, possibly autonomous, aircraft. Mayor Eric Garcetti said in a statement: “LA is the perfect testing ground for this new technology, and I look forward to seeing it grow in the coming years.” If plans pan out the way they are hoped, UberAir will be fully operational in time for the 2028 LA Olympics. Racing ahead is Germany’s autonomous,
two-seat, 18-rotor Volocopter, which took to the skies of Dubai in summer 2017 as part of a test mission for flying taxis. Crown Prince Sheikh Hamdan bin Mohammed has already given it a whirl, and hopes to bring it to the people of his emirate in the next five years. It would mean that, instead of a slow drive on dusty roads from the airport to your hotel, a traveller could be landing at a ‘voloport’ on the roof of their chosen building within minutes. Airbus is also joining the fun with its
aircraft, Vahana, which can land and take off vertically. Development is reported to be in advanced stages with live flights promised for some time this year. More exciting still, is Airbus and Italdesign’s Pop Up concept vehicle. A true ‘transformer’, it’s a flying car with wheels and a quadcopter set-up that is predicted to “unite the aerospace and automotive industries”.
124 BBT January/February 2018
of tomorrow with risk assessment barometer compared to cycling
COMMUTER KIT
■ SMACIRCLE S1 FOLDING ELECTRIC BIKE Low risk GREEN
Now available for pre-order, the world’s smallest folding electric bike can be carried in a backpack. Made of carbon fibre (it weighs just 6.9kg) it takes about 2.5 hours to fully charge and can travel at 12.5mph. £1,499
smacircle.com
■ USCOOTER ELECTRIC SCOOTER BOOSTER PLUS Risk level GREEN
This foldable electric scooter weighs 10.4kg, can travel at 18mph and will cover 21 miles before you need to power it up again. You’ll need to keep your laptop in a backpack though so you can maintain control with the twin grip handle. £760
uscooters.com
■ 2ND GEN BOOSTED BOARD Risk level ORANGE
With a range of seven miles and a top speed of 22mph, this self-propelled skateboard will allow you to zoom between meetings without breaking a sweat. It will even go up hills (so long as they are not too steep). US$1,499
boostedboards.com
■ SOLOWHEEL GLIDE 2 Risk level ORANGE
■ MARTIN JETPACK Risk level RED There will no doubt be some daredevil
CEOs who choose to arrive at their office via jetpack. This particular model will be suitable for flights of up to 30 minutes and can go as high as 2,500ft (if you have the nerve). With a quad rotor, spark ignition engine, it is powered by automotive gasoline. £TBC
martinjetpack.com
Difficult to master, this electric unicycle is essentially a wheel with a pair of fins that you stand on while it whizzes along at 15mph. Like a Segway, all you have to do is lean forward to go faster. US$999
solowheel.com
Italdesign CEO Jorg Astalosch, said in a statement: “Today, automobiles are part of a much wider eco-system: if you want to design the urban vehicle of the future, the traditional car cannot alone be the solution for megacities; you also have to think about sustainable and intelligent infrastructure, apps, integration, power systems, urban planning, social aspects, and so on. In the next years, ground transportation will move to the next level and from being shared, connected and autonomous it will also go multimodal, moving into the third dimension.”
INTO THE HYPERLOOP The third dimension may take the form of the air above cities, the space above our planet, or the ground beneath our feet. Bil- lionaire Elon Musk, of course, is one of the great transport visionaries of our time – with a fortune made from founding PayPal and a desire to use it to change the world. One of the projects that is most likely to change the way we travel for work is his Hyperloop – a planned system of subterranean tunnels that connect cities with hyper-fast trains that are propelled through tubes at 760mph. Instead of wheels and rails, it uses ‘magnetic levitation’ for frictionless motion, while passenger pods are directed with ‘electric propulsion’. With Hyperloop One trainsets, the journey between Liverpool and Glasgow, for example, could be reduced from 3.5 hours to a mere 30 minutes. In September 2017, ten routes in five
countries (the UK, US, Canada, India and Mexico) were shortlisted as potential can- didates for Hyperloop One (see table, p127). After a series of successful tests in the desert outside Las Vegas earlier this year, Musk anticipates a launch date of 2021 for the first line. Attracted by Hyperloop’s poten- tial, Richard Branson stepped forward last October to invest an unspecified amount in the project – enough, in fact, for Musk to rebrand his baby, Virgin Hyperloop One. Branson was reported as saying: “As a train
owner, I felt this is something that I want to be able to operate. At the moment our trains are limited to 125 miles an hour. [With the Hyperloop] you can have a pod outside your office that you and your colleagues can jump
BUYINGBUSINESSTRAVEL.COM
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