IEEE Future Directions
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New vehicles will be driving in a different context, performing different tasks, hence it wouldn’t be surprising to imagine quite different sort of vehicles, more like container ships than the cars we are used to today.
The push towards the standardization of the moving platforms makes economic sense. These will be cheap to manufacture (a very limited number of components can be used to assemble a moving platform, some estimated 1/10 of the number used in today’s cars) and the use of addictive manufacturing, 3D printed, light (carbon fiber) will further lower the production and operation cost. The moving platform will not need to be designed to sustain 250km/h hence no need for oversized brakes, suspensions and tyres (notice that today’s car have to be manufactured to be safe at their maximum speed even though they are unlikely to reach such a speed and for sure will not operate at that speed: this requirement translates into much higher cost, a complete waste in terms of use).
Today’s cars are spending most of their time parked somewhere. Hence the need for curbside parking, parking lots, garages… Not so in the future. For companies offering Mobility as a Service, the less time a transportation platform is sitting idle the better, hence we can expect very little use of parking space. Rather we can see a rising need for loading dock where pods, baggage and goods can be transferred onto the moving platforms.
Just to give an idea of the many changes that might occur, vehicles will no longer need light beams, since they don’t need an illuminated space to move around. Rather, they will be illuminated so that people on sidewalks can see them!
