Electricity, the world’s silent workhorse for a century, is about to conquer new worlds.
While electric cars are coming on fast, their acceptance will speed up geometrically in the next decade, according to an extraordinary new study by RethinkX, a San Francisco-based research group and think tank. Indeed, the group is predicting a true revolution in electrified transportation.
In this revolution, futuristic companies with a lot of talent and a lot of money -- like Uber, Google and Amazon -- will be seminal players. Old-line car companies and the oil companies will have to deal with a new order in which their roles could be dramatically diminished.
The big winner in this transportation future is electricity. Even the electric airplane -- an idea about as old as aviation -- is surging forward.
RethinkX raised the curtain on the future of ground transportation in its new study, Uber raised the curtain on the future of the electric airplane this month at its Elevate conference in Dallas. More than 500 aviation enthusiasts attended the conference: dreamers, designers, builders -- and even venture capital investors, who have already signed their checks. Dozens of designs for small electric airplanes, using multiple rotors and batteries, were on display. Enthusiasm was incandescent.
This July small, electric pilotless aircraft -- crosses between drones and helicopters -- are scheduled to go into service in Dubai. They are supposed to ferry single passengers from their hotels and other gathering points to airports and recreation centers in the largest and most populous city in the United Arab Emirates.
These small aircraft, with electric motors and batteries, have an endurance time of about 30 minutes. EHang, a Chinese company, developed them.
If Uber, and more than a dozen other U.S. companies have their way, similar aircraft will one day take their place in the skies of America and other advanced nations. Uber hopes to test-fly an electric airplane in 2020.
According to RethinkX, the private car is about to disappear, or to be rapidly reduced in importance. The report -- which might boost the stock of futuristic companies and electric utilities, and depress the stock of oil companies and old-line car makers and oil companies -- is making waves in the far reaches of corporate thinking.
Tony Seba, co-founder of RethinkX and co-author of the report, told me that mainstream analysts are not yet on board with the changes which will rock the automobile, oil and electric industries. They have not understood the impact of technological convergence, he said.
He sees a future, about to happen, in which driverless electric cars, owned not by individuals, but rather by transportation companies like Uber, flood the streets, to be summoned by phone and directed by voice: “Take me out to the ballgame.”
Seba, an MIT-trained engineer and student of what he calls “disruption,” told me he expects a convergence between electric vehicles, automated driving and ride-sharing will come soon, reducing the number of vehicles on U.S. roads from 247 million in 2020 to 44 million in 2030.
“The average family will save $5,600 in transportation costs,” Seba says.
Apart from the transport companies, the big winner will be the utilities which will see a demand growth of 18 percent, Seba predicts. He believes present infrastructure can accommodate this growth surge because demand will be mostly off-peak. Related: Expert Commentary: How Hedge Funds Play The OPEC Deal Extension
There are similar expectations of a golden future for small, electric, vertical takeoff airplanes, incorporating drone and other technologies. The limit for the aircraft, which use lithium batteries, is the batteries. But the enthusiasts gathered at Uber's conference say flight is possible now with present-day batteries and these will only get better.
Richard Whittle, a leading aviation journalist and author who chaired an Elevate session, told me, “It was a pretty impressive event.”
While the arguments by Seba and his co-author James Arbib, a Silicon Valley entrepreneur and philanthropist, point to an electrified transportation future, I have one question: Will people give up the personal, primal pleasure of owning a car?
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Seba and Arbib think so, pointing out that people used to take pride in their LP and CD collections, but now they access their music electronically.
The future is pulling up on a highway near you; it may also be flying overhead.
By Llewellyn King for Oilprice.com
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There are also very strict and rigorous requirements for licensing of pilots. I can't imagine that the licensing requirements for these electric vehicles would be less stringent. If anything they should be more stringent.
And the big, big elephant in the room for any electric powered vehicle is the battery technology. They simply do not have the energy density that fossil fuels have. So they can store less energy and they also take hours to recharge. How is that even remotely practical?
And before anyone pipes up with "technology will improve", all I can say is that you have to assume that batteries will eventually be improved to the point of practicality. I see no evidence that that will ever happen. I could be wrong, but if it does happen, it will be a random event and not something anyone should count on.
No thanks, I will just stay safe on the ground and hope one of these idiots does not fall out of the sky on top of me.
The laws of physics can't be replaced with wishful thinking....
People, just realize - where there are problems, there are opportunities waiting to be taken.
if no one pushes the envelope simply because of the negative thought patterns then no innovation will occur.
In case you haven't been keeping up with tech, perhaps you should take a much more deeper look at what's happening with battery technology. And more importantly the path that it's on at the moment. But that's not to say things will change overnight, of course.
The same thing that's happening with driver-less vehicles will HAVE to happen with personal flying vehicles - no human control allowed because we know just how badly some human beings behave in cars today. That's the only way that personal flying vehicles can become reality. So that takes care of that whole list of problems mentioned by zipsprite and seconded by others. We already see this in Drones. Plus there'll be no need to park the flying vehicle at one's place of abode because there'll be no need to OWN it. Just think about that.
There are solutions to problems. So please stop being so negative.