It can be a pretty difficult task predicting the future of movement, as “Back to the Future II” writer and director Robert Zemeckis will testify. After all, it appears that the hover boards made famous in that cult movie are not yet the real deal, and flying cars remain the stuff of utopian dreams.
Indeed, efforts to embrace new modes of travel can also prove challenging in the real world. A podcar system designed for Foster + Partners’ Masdar City development in the United Arab Emirates looked likely to set a new precedent for personal rapid transit, with 3,000 fully autonomous capsules promising to make the taxi extinct. However, the complete network remains unrealized due to a lack of financial viability, and the scheme remains little more than a shuttle, akin to the ULTra PRT system at Rogers Stirk Harbour + Partners’ Terminal 5 at Heathrow Airport.
Despite such setbacks, it appears that inventors and industrial designers around the world are not feeling too downcast. They are busy working on prototypes for vehicles that could change the face of urban infrastructure forever, and, given their potential impact on the built environment, architects would be wise to sit up and take note. Here are three concepts in development that might just become the planes, trains and automobiles of the future. Don’t look down, hold on tight and prepare to take your hands off the wheel …
PlanesAutonomous Drones by EHang
Drones were an extremely popular Christmas present this winter, but most of them couldn’t carry much more than a bunch of LEDs and a Bluetooth camera. That could all change if EHang has its way: the Chinese company has unveiled a prototype for the EHang 184, a drone copter capable of carrying one person weighing up to 220 pounds for around 23 minutes.
The drone promises to be fully automated to take the frankly terrifying prospect of piloting this vehicle through crowded skies out of our incapable hands. The blades fold up when not in use, so the craft takes up about the same space as a car. How might architects design cities if drones like these become our primary modes of transportation? Helipads on every domestic roof? Vertical drone garages to replace multistory parking garages? Pedestrian plazas and parks instead of roads?
Perhaps Norman Foster’s proposed Droneport in Rwanda will soon be joined by an upscale, urban counterpart …
TrainsThe Hyperloop by Elon Musk
In October, it was announced that a test track for the Hyperloop — a high-speed tubular transportation system conceived by inventor and entrepreneur Elon Musk — would be constructed in Quay Valley, a proposed solar-powered city in California. This full-sized prototype, set to cost $150 million, will utilize powerful magnets within a low-pressure tube to transport empty capsules up to 760 miles per hour — close to the speed of sound.
Proposed Hyperloop test track in Kings County, Calif.; via Dezeen
Musk’s initial plan was for a 400-mile route, to be constructed between San Francisco and Los Angeles, allowing people to travel between the two west-coast cities in only 30 minutes. But the inventor’s ambitions do not stop there: the team behind the Hyperloop has plans to roll the system out across the world, with a route between London and Glasgow in the United Kingdom reducing travel time between the two cities to 30 minutes. Never mind the rail network, this plan has the potential to make domestic air travel redundant …
Mercedes-Benz driverless car concept; via Business Insider
AutomobilesDriverless Cars by Tesla, Google, Audi … and Apple?
Not one to rest on his laurels, Elon Musk has also been developing one of the world’s most advanced driverless road vehicles and says that Tesla’s technology should allow “complete autonomy in approximately two years.”
Musk’s company Tesla is fighting for supremacy in an increasingly crowded market. Google and Audi are both well on the way to full autonomy with their own designs. As if those two weren’t enough, the tech juggernaut that is Apple will enter the fray soon, according to Musk. “It’s pretty hard to hide something if you hire over a thousand engineers to do it,” said Musk, calling Apple’s plan for an autonomous vehicle an “open secret.”
According to the BBC, Musk also predicted vehicles that could not drive themselves would become a “strange anachronism” before too long. This prediction remains to be seen, but these advancements look likely to transform the urban environment in a fundamental way before too long. For more, read Architizer’s analysis of how driverless cars will transform our cities.