Entries in Mobility (4)
Personal Aviation Redux
No, your Chevy won't be able to hover like George Jetson's car in the next two decades, but a number of projects are in the works that could make daily flights a part of our more people's travel routines.
Personal aviation--the idea that everyone could own and operate their own personal flying vehicle as a daily means of transportation--is not a new concept. Sci-fi writers have proposed it for decades, and S)T touched on the concept briefly last year in a brief on mobility discontinuities for our Global Lifestyles project (subscribers only). Now, the concept is getting some new attention. For example:
Boeing's research group is designing a hybrid aimed at traveling up to 300 miles at a time. It will use precision navigation systems that would allow the average 'driver cum pilot' to fly without special training thanks to a computerised 'flight instructor' built into the cockpit.
Kyle Spector
in Mobility
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S)T in the News: Solar Cars
Image: Christian Science MonitorDenise Chiavetta, leader of Social Technologies' Technology Foresight program, talked to Daniel B. Wood of the Christian Science Monitor for his article "Could the Solar Bug Bring the Sun to the Car Market?"
Chiavetta said she sees a growing potential for entrepreneurial ventures in solar mobility.
"The interest in photovoltaic use in cars is making great headway in other countries such as Japan and Germany, but is still somewhat behind in the US, where consumers still want quite a bit of power and size and comfort."
Chiavetta also noted that with booming solar industries in such countries as Japan and Germany, market and consumer experience with and acceptance of photovoltaics will continue to grow.
"Globally, the transportation sector is facing mounting pressure to reduce emissions while increasing capacity. It only make sense that eventually more solar-enabled or enhanced transportation applications will emerge," she explains.
Hope Katz Gibbs
in Energy, Press, Mobility
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Top 12 Areas for Technology Innovation through 2025
What will likely be the most important scientific and technological breakthroughs with significant commercial value and impacts on the lives of consumers out to 2025?
To begin to answer that question, S)T's Technology Foresight program conducted a virtual, global focus group of experts in technology, innovation, and business strategy. The group included experts from the Association of Professional Futurists, Tekes, Duke University, Hasbro, Worldwatch, General Motors, Shell, Johnson Controls, and Oxford University, among others.
After consolidating input from the expert panel and analysis by Social Technologies' futurists, what emerged was our list of top 12 areas for tech innovation through 2025:
Denise Chiavetta
in Technology, New Research, Information, Health, Innovation, Environment, Transparency, Science, Energy, Mobility, Sustainability, Technology Foresight, Top 12 Innovation
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On-Street Vehicle Chargers
Browsing through a recent issue of New Energy, I was struck by a photo of a plug-in hybrid charging up at an Elektrobay electric vehicle charging station in London, much like the image below. The article, which was about synergies between wind power and electric cars, mentioned that the British company Elektromotive Limited has installed two of these on-street charging stations in London and has plans to put in 200 more, in places like supermarkets and movie theaters so people can recharge electric scooters, cars, and plug-in hybrids.
Are these on-street charging systems the sign of a near-term revolution, pushing us toward electric mobility? Will we see them scattered across the US anytime soon? It’s highly unlikely…but it is a nice early indicator of one potential future for urban transport, and watching how the effort to deploy on-street chargers plays out in London will shed light on future challenges for other cities lookin
g to do the same.
For info on where you can charge up on US roads, see this map from PlugInMap.org.
Image: frankh (flickr)
Chris Carbone
in Energy, Mobility
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