Mobility—the superficially simple but actually hugely complex business of getting people and goods from A to B—is set to morph, splinter and evolve in a million different ways. Let’s take a Deep Dive.
🚗 We’ve all heard that electric and self-driving cars are the future. But flying cars, aeroplane taxis, electric planes and aeronautical ride sharing could all also be on the agenda soon.
🛴 Individual mobility could also be in for shake-up, thanks to the likes of hoverboards, evolutions of the Segway and other new personal transportation devices.
🚈 Mass transit, meanwhile, will need to evolve to cope with growing populations and expanding cities, and will form a vital plank of smart city development.
🚀 Meanwhile, particularly if humanity’s environmental devastation of its own habitat continues, we might need to start looking to the final frontier, and finding cheaper and more efficient ways of launching ourselves into space.
QUOTABLE
“The reality about transportation is that it's future-oriented. If we're planning for what we have, we're behind the curve.”
—Former US secretary of transportation Anthony Foxx
BY THE NUMBERS
83%
According to a recent global study from communications networks company BAI Communications, 83 percent of people consider innovative transportation to be a key feature of a smart city.
11.5kg
Japanese luxury car maker Lexus unveiled a prototype maglev hoverboard, driven by supercooled superconductors, in 2015. Unfortunately it weighed 11.5kg and needed its liquid nitrogen coolant topping up every 10 minutes—so not terribly practical.
$10,000
Silicon Valley company Arx Pax’s Hendo prototype hoverboard, based on similar technology to Lexus’s, cost the 11 backers who paid for one on Kickstarter $10,000 each. The company ultimately wants to use the technology to help buildings levitate so they can avoid natural disasters.
100km/h
The Lilium electric air taxi, developed by a German startup, is currently capable of travelling at up to 100km/h. The aim is to raise that to 300km/h, and the vehicle’s range to 300km.
750km
The AeroMobil 4.0, a flying car produced by a Slovakian startup, will have a maximum range of 750km.
QUIZ
Segway’s recently announced S-Pod personal transportation device allows users to be whizzed around on two wheels while sitting down. But what’s its potential maximum speed?
A. 30km/h
B. 40km/h
C. 50km/h
Scroll to the bottom of the email for the answer.
DID YOU KNOW?
Ready To Ass-cend
The world’s largest aircraft at 92m long, the Airlander 10 is a hybrid airship that can fly for five days with super low emissions. With a striking appearance that has inevitably resulted it in being nicknamed the “flying bum,” there are plans to go into commercial production soon.
THE EDIT
5 Stories To Get You Up To Speed
6 Major Ways Transportation Will Change By 2045 Business Insider
Uber-For-Planes Startup BlackBird Raises $10 Million To Replace Road Trips With Flying Private Forbes
Pilotless Air Taxi From China's Ehang Takes Flight In The US For The First Time The Verge
What It's Like To Ride In A Self-Driving Lyft Quartz
How To Build A Smart City Transport System In 3 Phases Here Mobility
WATCH
The Future Of Mobility
How will people engage with future transportation systems? A number of academics present their vision for the future of mobility at the UK’s Royal Institution
THE FULL PICTURE
This Affects Us Most
Asia needs urban transportation to evolve more than most places: of the 20 most congested cities in the world, 12 are located in the continent (12 and a third if you include the Asian part of Istanbul).
MOVERS & SHAKERS
The People Helping The Rest Of Us Move And Shake Better
The Big Name Elon Musk The ubiquitous inventor-businessman-trash talker is of course best known for pioneering electric vehicles through Tesla. But potentially more game changing are Hyperloop, a type of maglev vactrain within a sealed tube that could potentially travel at up to 8,000km/h; and SpaceX, through which, with typical modesty, he hopes to colonise Mars.
The Game Changer Carl Dietrich
US-based, Chinese-owned company Terrafugia is developing both the Transition, an aircraft that can drive on roads, and the TF-X, a car that can fly. The vehicles are the vision of company founder Carl Dietrich, who left Terrafugia last year; the company was bought by Chinese automotive group Geely in 2017.
The Visionary Michael Mauer
Mauer is the man responsible for developing the design of the Taycan, the first all-electric car from Porsche, which was unveiled recently. With the Taycan, Mauer continued the Stuttgart automaker’s strategy of making it the sportiest in its segment, defining a new architecture for purely electric vehicles.
DIVE DEEPER
FEATURE
5 Things You Need To Know About The Future Of Space Travel
Physicist and TV presenter Brian Cox shares his thoughts on missions to Mars and the future of humankind
Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling Ride sharing service Grab co-founders Anthony Tan and Tan Hooi Ling have simplified the often chaotic transportation systems of Southeast Asian cities for millions of people, and given work to millions of drivers. Launched in Malaysia in 2012 and subsequently relocated to Singapore, the company has since expanded with mobile payment system GrabPay and food delivery service GrabFood. READ MORE
Alamanda Shantika Santoso Gojek, of which Alamanda Shantika Santoso is co-founder, is Grab’s big rival for the Southeast Asian ride sharing market. Formerly the driving force behind growing the Indonesian company, these days she focuses on new venture Binar Academy, a coding college that offers scholarships to underprivileged students. READ MORE
Lawrence Hui Lawrence Hui’s first company, Cove, is a car sharing app that allows people to drive themselves. Buoyed by its success, he also co-founded Moveco, which allows users to earn rewards by sharing the mobility data with a range of industry stakeholders through blockchain. READ MORE
Angeline Tham As every Manila resident will tell you, the traffic there is a nightmare. But not so much if you’re on a motorbike—which prompted Angeline Tham to launch Angkas, an app that provides on-demand motorcycle taxis to people across the Philippines. READ MORE
FROM THE ARCHIVES
Did you miss our Deep Dive on the Greater Bay Area? Read it here.
ONE FINAL THING
Virgin Galactic is set to launch tourist space flights soon. Unfortunately it has been due to launch tourist space flights soon for rather a long time.
Founder Richard Branson has announced their imminent launch at least six times: in 2008, 2009, 2011, 2013, 2014 and again this year. In fact, in a 2014 interview, his then 90 year old mother Eve said she was going into space herself. When asked when, she replied: “I think it’s the end of the year… It’s always ‘the end of the year’.”
NEXT WEEK
Why Job Interviews Are Useless
That's it for this issue. Have a productive week!
The Deep Dive is a weekly close-up look at an idea, issue or trend that’s shaping Asia’s future. This issue was written by Richard Lord, with production by Samantha Topp and Denise Ng. It was edited by Lee Williamson.
We’d love to know what you think of this issue, and future topics you’d like us to cover. Please send your comments to editor@generationt.asia. And if you missed it, don’t forget to check out last week’s Deep Dive, on How To Live Forever.
