• Question: What do you think the future of transport is?

    Asked by minnie to Omar, James, Al, Emma, Ivanka on 15 Mar 2012. This question was also asked by amuletspade.
    • Photo: James Vokes

      James Vokes answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Omar will know more but I think the future is in hybrid engines. These are engines that don’t just draw their energy from petrol or diesel. After that I think you’ll see less and less fossil fuel based engines and more that you charge at home or that you go to “petrol stations” but instead of getting petrol you get Hydrogen pumped into your tank which we can burn to move the car and all we’re left with is harmless Water.

    • Photo: Omar Mustufvi

      Omar Mustufvi answered on 15 Mar 2012:

      Good question. Nobody really knows what the future of transport will look like, that is why its so exciting to work in this field because the situation is changing all the time and people are thinking up very clever solutions.

      It is a very complicated situation because even if we solve the fuel issues for vehicles there are so many more aspects to consider for example the population of the world is increasing and more and more people are buying cars, this is causing so much traffic problems that people have been stuck in jams for days! So not only do we need to find more efficient fuels for cars, we need to improve the global infrastructure so that we rely less on them. An example of this could be using automated vehicle trains- you might have seen this in the movie i Robot (and how it can go wrong!).

      In terms of technologies, I believe we will continue to use a large mix including conventional engines which are being developed to be the most efficient they have ever been and some even run on biofuels which are less polluting, batteries, fuel cells or hybrids. So much research is being done on battery technologies but there hasn’t been any game changers yet- batteries are expensive to produce (they contain rare elements) and have a very small energy density compared to oil based fuels (you need a battery pack 20 times the size of a fuel tank to give you the same mileage). There are some companies though like Tesla which are claiming to have much more efficient batteries than anyone else so we need to wait and see (their first full scale production vehicle goes on sale this year).

      I can write an essay on this subject so I will have to stop here for now!

    • Photo: Al Bartlett

      Al Bartlett answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      Hello Minnie and Amuletspade,

      As the world is more environmentally concious than ever before, the designers and inventors are focusing more and more on green technology to harness power to make the various machines carry out their function. I think its vital to understand that green technology such as hybdrid engines and solar power may be useful for one form of transport but not for others.

      I can look at this question frrom an aviation point of view – Aircraft designers are always looking at ways to save fuel, reduce costs, improve flight times and carry more passengers or cargo but this is really a case of giving with one hand and taking with the other.

      Its probably worth summing it up like this:

      best performance = more fuel = more aircraft weight = less cargo = increased costs / decreased profit

      We have to reach a compromise somewhere and until we can design a fuel that gives us the great performance we need whilst only leaving trace gases behind (environmentally friendly) and also weighs less than AVTUR (Aviation fuel), we will have to reach the best solution we can with the fuels and engines we have available. Its not a perfect solution but the design industry within aviation is massive and potentially worth billions of pounds to airline companies.

      As far as technology is concerned, The world is becoming a smaller and smaller place becuase of airlines. We have already developed technology that could move a plane from The UK to Australia in a an hour but it is not sufficiently developed yet to enable passengers to fly safely. This design is called a ‘ScramJet’ and can fly at up to twelve times the speed of sound.

      This video explains the ScramJet in detail and its advantages / disadvantages:

      I hope this helps you.

    • Photo: Emma Bould

      Emma Bould answered on 20 Mar 2012:

      I think maybe the future of transport (and by that I mean 50+ years perhaps away) is Teleportation. I don’t know much about it, but I remember hearing they made a breakthrough a couple of years ago using Laser light and something that wasn’t living! I think the limit we have at the moment is how go generate enough power to do it without “frying” someone with the power.

      I managed to find a link to a BBC news article if you are interested: http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/sci/tech/3811785.stm

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