People Movers

One of the intersting subthemese of green tech is that electric vehiles fundamentally change the engineering nature of the passenger vehicle The ratio of engine weight to vehicle weight is much lower because of the reduced power transmission chain. The batteries in an electric vehicle may well outweigh the engine! This opens up a lot of opportunities to rethink how much car you really need for point to point transfer. This is not of course realized by Hybrids which bring an extra engine along for the ride.

One of the paradox of the modern car is that the vehicle outweighs its cargo by a factor of ten or more. That means by definition that 90% of the energy of the car is expended not in moving the passenger, but in moving the car itself! It makes sense then that if you can reduce the weight of the car, by definition you are saving energy.

The ultimate in sensible powered transport engineering of course is the motorcycle; its basicallly a rolling engine with a driver strapped on. However most people are too pussified to drive them; so a reasonable compromise between the motorcycle and the modern rolling tank might look like my ameteur rendering above -- essentially, a commuter bumper car. With a front wheel drive and a rear chamber for battery storage and cargo, you have something between the modern conceit of the automobile and the tuly optimized two wheeled vehicle.

Of course the bicycle is still the undisputed greenmobile. In fact I think the moped will be a strong contender for future transport. But it fails in several modern benchmarks: cargo capacity, range, safety and weatherproofing.

If car manufacturers use electric power as license to think small, city traffic could be reduced considerably. What you lose of course is the ability to take on passengers. Expanded rear-end extensions could allow for passengers, or trailer attachements could be appended for transporting cargo or groups of people, but with smaller vehicles -- vehicles so light that they could be "wheeled up" to park them in a vertical orientation -- the need for shared transport goes down. Computer assisted navigation could, for instance, allow a child to safely "drive" themselves to school, given that the computer does most of the driving; the vehicle could even drive itself home once the child arrives!

Group transports, whether in a "taxicab/bus" scenario or for extended voyages could be accomplishted with trains of transport units that could be stored in the garage or rented for special occasions. Anyone who's been in India can testify that the autorickshaw, which is essentially a tricycle that uses a motorcycle-scale engine and seats a driver and two passengers (or three cramped) takes much less space on the road than a conventional car. A moduar design in the same school of thought could work quite well in the West.

 I am of course no expert in vehicle design (or 3D) and whipped these prototypes out just to prove the point. Thinking green does not stop at the production/distribution level of energy distribution. It should also include the degree with which our vision of what a car needs to be has determined how much energy we are used to transport ourselves, as opposed to how much energy we are burning to transport our transportation.

If you are interested in electric vehicles, please see the excellent cult documentary "Who killed the Electric Car"? It might seem extremist but it actually has a lot of thorough research, evidence and game changing evidence.