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The future will be ride sharing self-driving, hybrids.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Haighus wrote:
Plus, as mentioned earlier in this very thread, lots of personal vehicles is just not going to be suitably efficient and sustainable for the future. Especially not flying cars with their likely massive fuel requirements.

Even from a purely economic perspective, fuel is not getting cheaper and congestion is a big issue, and then there are the environmental and renewability considerations. Urban areas will need to increasingly rely on efficient mass-transit public transport, like subway systems, as populations increase in size.

There is definitely a role for autonomous vehicles, but I think in 30 years most city dwellers will be getting on the driveless bus or autonomous train rather than into their driverless car.

Fuel is getting cheaper though - Solar is getting cheaper everyday.

Electric vehicles have their own issues, which are exacerbated by the limitations of flying vehicles. Batteries are not very energy-dense compared to petroleum fuels, which means a much reduced range for the same weight. Lithium is also valuable and scarce on Earth.

Until humanity develops a better battery technology to power electric vehicles, electric flying cars will be very short ranged and impractical. A better, more sustainable battery is also a requirement for widespread ground electric vehicles too to be honest, because of the scarcity of lithium.

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:

 Dreadwinter wrote:

 Xenomancers wrote:
Eh - we are probably talking about decades long multi billion dollar projects here. Lets get real. In 30 years - there is a good chance robots will be flying us around in flying cars. This debate is pointless. The future is flying cars....not trains.

They said this 30 years ago.

They barely knew what a computer was 30 years ago. We are experts with computers now. The tech is already there so it's only a mater of when it becomes efficient in cost. 30 years is a long time for this to develop. Just say it outloud in 30 years it's going to be 2050. 2050!

The tech isn't there and over 30 years ago we were on the moon. I'm not seeing a point.

Bladerunner 2049....

What is a Fictional Movie?

I'll take Realistic Futures for $1000.

 Ouze wrote:
Flying cars are probably not going to happen until some unknown technology appears. But I agree that cross-county high speed rail is much less likely then autonomously driven low power electric vehicles, perhaps even rentable, winnebago like vehicles that allow you to travel in much more comfort than current air travel.

Do you envisage something like a road train which travels relatively slowly but reliably and comfortably? I'm thinking highway speeds of 70 to 100 mph.

It's certainly technically feasible. A kind of upgrade of the current Greyhound Coach concept.

The thing is, I don't think people want to spend days being driven across the USA however comfortable the journey might be. Hence HST which could take you coast to coast in less than a day. (But this returns the argument to the beginning, and we will start to go around in circles.)

Greyhound is based on cheapness and accessibility rather than speed and comfort, and it's in decline.


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Here's an interesting infographic mapping feature from The Guardian.

https://www.theguardian.com/cities/2019/apr/03/mapped-historic-public-transit-systems-v-their-modern-equivalents

It's a number of North American cities rail transport maps "then and now". You can pull the dividing line across to see how things have changed.

I know this isn't long distance HST, but it's relevant to the general topic of rail travel.

What the artist should do next is maps of Tokyo, London and Paris.

Taking time to travel isn't a problem if the journey is nice enough or productive enough, and cheap enough.

If I can sleep overnight and wake up in a different city that's fine. Ditto if I can get a days work done in comfort and end my shift at my destination, and so on.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Haighus wrote:

Until humanity develops a better battery technology to power electric vehicles, electric flying cars will be very short ranged and impractical. A better, more sustainable battery is also a requirement for widespread ground electric vehicles too to be honest, because of the scarcity of lithium.

I can see electric flight being great for short run, light payloads. Like drone based package delivery. But I don't think it'll extend to anything bigger than a pizza.

Norway is planning to go 100% short haul electrical by 2040, but they've got a special situation with their terrain -- lots of mountains, lots of islands, lots of snow and ice. This all makes flights of 15 to 30 minutes very useful. I think we're a long way off from longer distance electric flights.

Well, Germany has HSR since the 1990s.
The newest is between Munich and Berlin. It takes 4 h, before 6 h.
The trains (ICE) are usually 250 to 300 km/h.

 wuestenfux wrote:
Well, Germany has HSR since the 1990s.
The newest is between Munich and Berlin. It takes 4 h, before 6 h.
The trains (ICE) are usually 250 to 300 km/h.

Thats nothing. The Brits have had high speed rail since 1804!

 Kilkrazy wrote:
Norway is planning to go 100% short haul electrical by 2040, but they've got a special situation with their terrain -- lots of mountains, lots of islands, lots of snow and ice. This all makes flights of 15 to 30 minutes very useful. I think we're a long way off from longer distance electric flights.

Back in March I was in Germany for a school trip and we visited an Airbus facility. We had a tour guide who was far, far more than "just" a tour guide however, and my classmates and I had a good 10 minute discussion with this bloke over their "prototype" electric passenger airliner.



We're a long way off from manned, commercial aviation flights of any kind. The problem so far has been battery size. It doesn't matter at this point how efficient/powerful/small the power plants are, the batteries take up about 80% of the fuselage right now. It is such that they have not begun building flying models or anything, they are still on the drawing board, because at basically no size, does a passenger carrying flight vehicle make economic sense to build (much less operate, which is partially why they aren't as actively developing this as they otherwise would be).

Per the person we were talking to at AB, full electric passenger carrying aviation is "probably 20-30 years" down the road yet.

Norway orders 60 electric 2-seater planes for use as trainers.

https://osmaviation.com/osm-aviation-aims-for-a-green-future/

Obviously 2-seater trainers are not proper passenger vehicles, but a twin-engine, 6-seater starts to look more useful for the kind of very short hop journeys common in Norway.

I agree this is a very different prospect to long-haul airliners.

I think you're going to see electric aircraft become common in civil aviation long before even short-haul airlines get in on the act.

Speaking as a pilot who has been casually following the subject, electric planes are not even close to practical reality. The battery weight is just too high and the power is too low, essentially what you're getting is a slow and efficient glider that uses all of its payload capacity for the batteries to support a small engine. That's fine if your goal is short training flights where you're never far from an airport, it's ok if you have to land and recharge after an hour, and you're never carrying anything besides a student and instructor. That's not so useful if you want to make long trips and carry passengers. Looking at the specs on this plane, which seem pretty optimistic at first glance, you're talking about $350,000 for a plane with similar cruise speed and ~150 miles less range compared to my 45 year old plane that cost $45,000 and it only gets there by giving up the back seats (and the useful load to fill them). And let's just say I am extremely skeptical of the performance they're claiming with only a 90hp engine and that weight.

What I expect to see much sooner than electric aircraft is alternative fuels such as the various plant-based ideas. That's a drop-in replacement for existing fuel in most engines and aircraft and the main limiting factor is conventional fuel prices reaching a point where investment in alternative fuel infrastructure becomes profitable. And because energy to weight ratio is such an overwhelmingly important concern for aircraft it's one of the few cases where alternative fuels really make sense.

The problem as always is the political corruption and boondoggle that accompanies such projects. The US likes to spend trillions of dollars on pointless wars, not infrastructure. China kind of figured out how to do large scale infrastructure, instead of pouring gobs of money into military adventurism. Mericans don't want "socialism" to build infrastructure....unless it to build a stupid wall.

Much of the United States has cities that are a few hundred miles away from each other, its not meant to replace coast to coast travel. Right now, if I want to go from Cleveland to Chicago I can drive 16 hours round trip, or spend hundreds of dollars and fly in an uncomfortable plane while wasting 4 hours at the airport, (got to get there early and go through security). Seriously you spend more time in the airport then in the air, (well thats if they don't somehow route me through TEXAS.....this has happened, I hate flying) If I could hop on a train comfortable train with WIFI and be in Chicago on a whim in an hour or 2 for a reasonable price. Yeah, I'm all in! I'd probably go to NYC more frequently too.

Its more likely that self driving cars will be the future though. Those long drives will be a breeze once I can get int the car and take a nap or get some work done.

 Andrew1975 wrote:
Its more likely that self driving cars will be the future though. Those long drives will be a breeze once I can get int the car and take a nap or get some work done.

Assuming America can get over it's fear of 'DA EBIL SOCIALIZM!!!!1!' long enough to keep the roads maintained and passable, anyway.