How Transportation Will Change In The Next 10 Years
Technology keeps on changing the different aspects of our lives. Some aspects, it changes completely while some aspects, it helps evolve. We reap the fruits, the seeds of which are always sown by science and technology.
The world has become a much different place compared to even how it was 40 years ago. My parents sometimes tell me stories about their childhood and the kind of world they lived in, and it truly amazes me. There are a lot of things that we take for granted today which didn’t even exist back then.
The internet has catapulted us to an age of information. Technology also did for transportation what it did for communication. It enabled the widespread adoption of different modes of transportation which brought the human species closer than ever and made the world just that much smaller.
But our transportation systems are still not enough to match our fast paced lives. We need to do everything faster, be everywhere faster and that doesn’t always happen. That’s why scientists and engineers are always hard at work to advance technology so that, that can become possible.
A lot of stuff is in development right now which will change the way we travel just in the coming 10 years. Looking back, we will probably see today’s time as stone age. Let’s take a look at some of these emerging transportation modes.
1. Autonomous Vehicles
Much is being said and done in the area of autonomous vehicles. If you still managed to somehow not hear about them, let me tell you that researchers have been working on vehicles that drive themselves without any human intervention whatsoever.
In fact, the first generation of autonomous vehicles, popularly known as self driving cars have already hit the road. Tesla, led by Elon Musk has been leading this space. Tesla’s self driving cars have driven hundreds of millions of miles already, getting better and better everyday.
Uber is yet another company that is bringing this technology to their cars progressively. The cars require a human to be present behind the wheel at the moment but this is bound to change.
In the coming 10 years, we will see completely autonomous vehicles (cars, buses, trucks, you name it) on the road. People will steadily transition to the self driving vehicles and soon, driving a car or a truck will be a thing of the past.
2. Hyperloop
Perhaps one of the most exciting things to happen in transportation after the airplane is the Hyperloop. It is the brainchild of Tesla founder Elon Musk. The man sure has decided to shake things up for the world.
Hyperloop is a mode of transportation that is similar to a rail system with quite unique differences. Firstly, it contains pods to house people in. These can be a long series of pods like a train or singular pods depending on the individual systems.
Secondly, these pods travel in tubes that are in a near-vacuum state. This allows the pods to travel at speeds faster than an airplane. Also, the pods glide above the tracks using magnetic levitation which helps the system become more efficient and much faster.
These tubes in which the pods travel can go above the ground on columns, underground and theoretically, even through oceans! Hyperloop with its faster than airplane travel will surely make travelling within a country and outside of it, much more convenient.
Several companies have already sprung up which are trying to launch their own modified versions of the hyperloop concept. Some of them are Hyperloop One, Hyperloop Transportation Technologies and TransPod. In fact, Dubai wants to be the first in the world to launch a Hyperloop system by the year 2020 with construction starting in 2018.
3. Flying Cars
Now, you might think that I am crazy thinking that flying cars can be a reality in the next 10 years but I want you to consider this: Had you imagined in 2006 that we would be seeing driverless cars in 2016? I’m pretty sure you hadn’t.
Many independent teams and companies have been working on flying cars for years and now it seems that more are joining them. The most prominent among them is Larry Page, co-founder of Google who has invested $100 million to develop flying cars.
Many experts predict that in the next 3-4 years, we should see prototypes appear everywhere with rampant testing going around everywhere much like how it was for driverless cars in the last 2 years or so.
And 10 years from now, we might actually see the world’s first flying car for the public. When the masses adopt is anyone’s guess. Any flying car of the future will probably be an autonomous one considering we may have fully autonomous vehicles within 5 years.
yup...the biggest problem with flying cars has been the idiot behind the wheel. Autonomous Tech solves that problem.
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So what we need now is an integrated system of flying cars and hyperloop...
Get in your flying car. Either tell it to go to a nearby destination or, if you want to go somewhere a long ways off, go to the hyperloop terminal. It does that..then it enters the hyperloop (it's hyperloop capable or enters a freight module)...
WHOOSH...anywhere in the world in a few minutes to a few hours.
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upon arrival...exit the hyper loop and fly the final leg to your destination.
"roads' will be obsolete. Individual landing pads at each building will be much cheaper.'...
surface transport will be entirely recreational...foot, people or animal powered..
You sir, just might have predicted the future!! :D
perhaps implementation will begin soon. Months...not years. Ve Haf ze technology..
The Hyperloop is in full swing. The flying cars thing is still being worked on.
hyper loop does NOT need to be high speed. Imagine one connecting all buildings in a town...Weatherproof. It be like stepping out of an elevator.
the hardest thing about the flying cars is the autonomous software to fly it.
we could have had flying cars since sixties if not earlier.
When it comes to the autonomous cars, the adaptation will depend on how the law will evolve, and how insurance companies will deal with autonomous cars (in that regard, it's a good thing that tesla is compiling massive amounts of data, which are already showing that autonomous driving is safer than cars driven by a human driver.
Once autonomous driving becomes possible, this in itself will create enormous changes to our lives:
1 Say goodbye to expensive parking. You will most likely have your car find an ideal between fuel consumption and cheap parking, it will just drop you off, park somewhere cheap (potentially even returning home) and than pick you up when you want.
2 That it ofcourse considering that you will still own a car, autonomous cars could be used as cheap taxi's, which rather than standing idle throughout the day, can drive all day long. This will make it a sensible idea for many people to go carless.
with aircars..why have roads?
come to that...a hyperloop is cheaper to build than roads..
about a tenth actually.
so have hyperloops connect to anything/everything we now have roads connect to.
I hadn't heard of hyperloop yet. What an interesting way to travel!
New things get invented so often lately, I am quite curious to see how we live 20-30 years from now.
The world will be quite different from today in the next 20-30 years.
In the future I would like to see solar roads to compliment the autonomous vehicles.
This is something that some countries are already working upon.
I have to bet on autonomous coming before the other two.
We are having problem dealing with drones and flying cars wait have to wait for that to be sorted out.
We will have complete autonomous cars by 2020 (as experts are saying) and we will have the first operational Hyperloop in 2020 (if everything goes well). So these two might happen at once.
As for flying cars, that might take 10 years.
Hyperloop in 2020 will be exciting
Very much looking forward to self driving cars. I would like to be able to read a book on the way to work.
haha me too. A lot of time is wasted behind the wheel. We can use that productively if the car does the driving itself.