Two of the automotive buzzwords of recent years have been vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure communications. They promise greater safety for drivers. They also promise greater convenience and better traffic flow. But this technology has been a long time in the making. Where do we stand with these promises, and will they become reality any time soon?
Travel around the globe at 7,200 km/h. From London to New York in less than an hour. And all by train, not by plane. This is the proposed concept of the “Hypersonic Train” that German engineer Andreas Scholz describes in his new book “The Hypersonic Railway”.
Automated Valet Parking - this is a buzzword that appears frequently in the media these days. Press releases from companies promise that we will soon be freed from the task of finding a parking space in a garage. In the future, we will simply leave our cars at the entrance and they will be parked automatically. There are many different technologies competing for this future market. Where do we stand in this evolution? In this article, I will try to give an overview of the current state of the technology.
CargoCap is an innovative system that seeks to reduce the amount of delivery truck traffic in our cities. Fully automated capsules travel through a tunnel system connecting major logistical destinations within cities.{{ double-space-with-newline }}In this article I will present this idea and try to give an outlook on its potential advantages and disadvantages.
The Wuppertaler Schwebebahn is a public transportation system in the city of Wuppertal, Germany. It has been connecting the city’s major destinations for more than a hundred years. Because of its ingenious design, it is loved by the people of Wuppertal as well as by visitors from all over the world.{{ double-space-with-newline }}How did such a marvelous piece of engineering develop in an otherwise little-known area of Germany, and not in the big cities of today? In this article, we examine the history of the Wuppertal suspension railway and the unique situation that led to its creation.
Delivery drones have been in the news for the past few years. Now they are starting to be used in the real world. In the Chinese high-tech city of Shenzen, delivery drones are now delivering food.
When you think of modern concepts for transportation, you are probably thinking of the Hyperloop. It promises to connect the centers of major cities much faster than air travel. The idea is to run magnetic levitation trains in a vacuum inside a tube. Many people find this idea fascinating because it sounds like science fiction come true. But is the idea really that new? In this article, I will show you some historical projects that predate the idea of the Hyperloop by more than a hundred years.
The latest hype in the car industry is the autonomous car. It seems like the dream of a vehicle that can drive on its own is within our grasp and that is is only a matter of a few years until we can buy one. This will free us of driving ourselves and will enable driverless taxis, make private cars superfluous and replace all local transport. At least this is what we can read these days in the newspapers. But is it true? This article tries to examine what impact the introduction of self-driving vehicles might have on our streets, our cities and our lives.