Transportation – Page 15

Analysis, Automobiles, City Planning, Transportation

These are the 20 most congested cities in the world

February 18, 2019

The transportation data firm INRIX Research released on Tuesday its annual rankings of the most congested cities in the world.
Cities were ranked based on delays caused by congestion, adjusted for each city’s population.
Moscow was named the most congested city in the world for the second year in a row, and Europe had more cities in the top 20 than any other continent.

The transportation data firm INRIX Research released on Tuesday its annual rankings of the most congested cities in the world.

The company measured the amount of time lost per capita in 2018 due to the difference between traffic at the busiest and least busy commuting times each day. Cities were ranked based on delays caused by congestion, adjusted for each city’s population.

Moscow was named the most congested city in the world for the second year in a row, and Europe had more cities in the top-20 than any other continent.

Continue reading… “These are the 20 most congested cities in the world”

Batteries, Electric Vehicles, Transportation

Harley-Davidson’s newest electric concept is aimed at city dwellers — and could help the struggling brand reinvent itself

February 11, 2019

HD Electric Concept 2.1

Harley-Davidson has unveiled two electric-concept bikes as it tries to rebound from four years of declining sales. Harley-Davidson

Harley-Davidson has declared that the future is electric — and it’s quickly scaling up a pipeline of electric bikes.
Two new concepts unveiled last week at the X Games in Colorado wouldn’t require a motorcycle license and could be charged with a normal wall plug, the company says.
Courting new riders, including city dwellers and millennials, is key to the company’s turnaround plans.

Continue reading… “Harley-Davidson’s newest electric concept is aimed at city dwellers — and could help the struggling brand reinvent itself”

Automobiles, Electric Automobile, Electric Vehicles, Human Behavior, Transportation

The 4 lingering obstacles to electric vehicle adoption (and what might overcome them)

February 8, 2019

Electric vehicles continue to grow in popularity, though not as quickly as electricity providers would like. EVs represented only 2.4 percent of sales in the U.S. in August, according to Auto Alliance, and a Chinese study published that month found that only 18 percent of motorists in China are willing to consider an EV.

So one of Exelon’s internal startups has set out to identify and hurdle the barriers to EV adoption.

“We’ve done a lot of testing and experimentation in this space,” said Caroline Quazzo, a manager for EZ-EV, an Exelon subsidiary that offers software and services to utilities to help them promote EV adoption. The utilities stand to gain from supplying the fuel.

As with the 5 obstacles to selling a solar home, most of Quazzo’s obstacles are rooted in ignorance (my word, not hers). At the Smart Cities Symposium in Chicago last week, Quazzo described the following obstacles:

Continue reading… “The 4 lingering obstacles to electric vehicle adoption (and what might overcome them)”

Automobiles, Big Problems, Transportation

L.A. may charge drivers by the mile, adding freeway tolls to cut congestion

February 8, 2019

Morning commuters face heavy traffic on the express lanes on the 10 Freeway. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority’s focus on congestion pricing could lead to similar lanes on other freeways across Los Angeles County. (Irfan Khan / Los Angeles Times)

For years, Southern California lawmakers have tried to steer clear of decisions that make driving more expensive or miserable, afraid of angering one of their largest groups of constituents.

But now, transportation officials say, congestion has grown so bad in Los Angeles County that politicians have no choice but to contemplate charging motorists more to drive — a strategy that has stirred controversy but helped cities in other parts of the world tame their own traffic.

Continue reading… “L.A. may charge drivers by the mile, adding freeway tolls to cut congestion”

Alternative Transportation, Aviation, Boeing, Transportation

Boeing shows off their futuristic autonomous flying taxi!

February 5, 2019

Uber has been a boon for us (especially on Saturday nights in Mumbai), helping us reach places quickly, conveniently and economically. But, they created a problem, sort of. More cars on the roads mean increased traffic in major cities.

Well, Boeing is kind of working on this matter, to find a solution. Flying taxis! Not really innovational, we know. But, we may be closer to this becoming a reality than one would think, as they successfully completed their first test flight.

Continue reading… “Boeing shows off their futuristic autonomous flying taxi!”

Alternative Transportation, Automobiles, Aviation, Boeing, Science & Technology News, Transportation, Uber

12 awesome flying cars and taxis currently in development

January 31, 2019

These flying cars want to take your commute to new heights

We were promised that the future would bring flying cars, right? We were. And the good news is that tech entrepreneurs around the world are finally getting started on creating what are commonly known as VTOL (Vertical Take-Off and Landing, pronounced vee-toll) vehicles designed at car size.

Of course, no one is ready for flying cars quite yet. There’s no infrastructure to support them, and a whole new set of auto laws would have to be drawn up to regulate them (like personal drones, but a thousand times worse). The first commercial VTOLs we will see won’t be hanging out at the local auto dealer—they’ll be taxi services built to shuttle people from part of a city to another.

Here’s all the current projects that want to put you in the seat of a flying car.

Continue reading… “12 awesome flying cars and taxis currently in development”

Alternative Transportation, Automobiles, Aviation, Transportation

Japan is getting serious about flying cars

January 31, 2019

The country’s once-envied government skunk works has set its sights on speeding up the arrival of aerial taxis and trucks.

Japan often appears stuck in yesterday’s vision of tomorrow. Flip phones are common enough that they’re cited as the exemplar of a phenomenon called Galapagos Syndrome, referring to the country’s tendency to stick with technologies endemic only to its islands. Another anachronism, Yahoo, remains wildly popular. Tokyo of the 1980s may have inspired the futuristic cityscape of Blade Runner, complete with flying cars, but the fax machines that were cutting-edge when the film came out remain ubiquitous tools today.

Ensuring Japan doesn’t fall behind the technological curve has for decades been the job of the Ministry of Economy, Trade, and Industry, a powerful agency housed in a squat modern office block in Tokyo’s orderly government quarter, a few blocks south of the jagged moat surrounding the Imperial Palace. The building is orthogonal in every respect, a uniform stack of concrete threaded with long, featureless corridors. The bureaucrats here guided Japan’s postwar economic miracle, a boom that gave the world the transistor radio, the Walkman, and the Prius—and almost no transformative innovations since. None of the automakers championed by METI are today on the leading edge of robotic driving. For the most part, Japan’s faded tech companies can’t lay claim to either smartphone or internet greatness.

Continue reading… “Japan is getting serious about flying cars”

Alternative Transportation, Automation, Aviation, Transportation

Boeing’s flying car has taken off

January 31, 2019

Boeing’s Driverless Flying Taxi Completes Test Flight.

A Boeing Co. flying car designed to whisk passengers over congested city streets and dodge skyscrapers completed its first test flight on Tuesday, offering a peek into the future of urban transportation the aerospace giant and others are seeking to shape.

A prototype of its autonomous passenger air vehicle completed a controlled takeoff, hover and landing during the test conducted in Manassas, Virginia, the maker of military and commercial jets said in a statement Wednesday. Propelled by electricity, the model is designed for fully autonomous flight, with a range of as much as 50 miles, Boeing said.

The Chicago-based plane maker and arch rival Airbus SE are among a slew of companies racing to stake a claim on flying cars and parcel-hauling drones, which have the potential to be the next disruption to sweep the aerospace industry. Boeing’s push was boosted by a 2017 acquisition of Aurora Flight Sciences, whose projects include a new flying taxi it is developing with Uber Technologies Inc.

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Automation, Electric Vehicles, Solar Power, Transportation

India’s first solar-powered, driverless bus has made its maiden journey

January 28, 2019

Students of Lovely Professional University (LPU) at Jalandhar has designed this bus with the uses of GPS and Bluetooth for navigation

Jalandhar (Urban Transport News): India’s first solar-powered, driverless bus made its maiden journey at the Indian Science Congress in last week Thursday. A team of students of Lovely Professional University (LPU) at Jalandhar has designed this bus with the uses of GPS and Bluetooth for navigation.

According to the project head Mandeep Singh, the camera installed on top of the bus allows for image processing. It senses the road pattern and the bus moves accordingly.

“We have been working on this project for the last five years. Around 300 students, from departments of electronics, electrical and civil and mechanical engineering, have been part of it. It was a huge project and bringing everyone together itself was a huge challenge,” said Mandeep Singh.

Continue reading… “India’s first solar-powered, driverless bus has made its maiden journey”

Automation, Automobiles, Self-driving Cars, Transportation

AUTONOMOUS CARS: ALTERING ONE IN NINE JOBS

January 28, 2019

It seems clear that driverless vehicles are coming, although the timeline for their arrival remains unclear. David Beede, Regina Powers and Cassandra Ingram of the Economics and Statistics Administration at the US Department of Commerce look at one aspect, “The Employment Impact of Autonomous Vehicles,” in ESA Issue Brief #05-17 (August 11, 2017). They set the stage this way:

“In September 2016, the U.S. Department of Transportation and the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) published policy guidelines for AVs [autonomous vehicles], recognizing their potential as “the greatest personal transportation revolution since the popularization of the personal automobile nearly a century ago” (NHTSA 2016). … The worldwide number of advanced driver-assistance systems (ADAS), such as backup cameras and adaptive cruise control, increased from 90 million to 140 million units between 2014 and 2016. Consumers have indicated a willingness to pay $500-$2,500 per vehicle for ADAS. Sensor technologies are rapidly advancing to provide sophisticated information to vehicle operating systems about the surrounding environment, such as road conditions and the location of other nearby vehicles. However, slower progress has been made in developing software that can mimic human driver decision-making, so that fully autonomous vehicles may not be introduced for another ten or more years …”

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Automobiles, Science & Technology News, Transportation, Uber

Despite Uber and Lyft, urban car ownership is growing

January 28, 2019

In a Reversal, ‘Car-Rich’ Households Are Growing

Despite ride-hailing’s promise, vehicle ownership (and traffic) is on the rise in America’s biggest, most transit-oriented cities. So how is mobility really changing?

There is no doubt that ride-hailing services like Uber and Lyft are remaking how people get around major American cities. The growing availability of shared bikes, e-bikes, and e-scooters is further changing the personal mobility story. The transformation is partly personal, offering a wealth of options for getting around town. It’s also supposed to be societal, ameliorating clogged traffic and boosting transit ridership.

Continue reading… “Despite Uber and Lyft, urban car ownership is growing”

Automobiles, cutting edge, Transportation

Hyundai’s four-legged car isn’t the future we imagined, but we’ll take it

January 24, 2019

It’s clear at this point that the future of the automotive world revolves around bleeding edge technology that’s self-driving or, perhaps, even flying. But what if it’s none of those things? What if it’s a car that walks on four legs?

Hyundai puzzled CES audiences the world over at this year’s event with a concept that focused on exactly this. It’s on-trend, with an electric power plant. But unlike the Tesla’s of the world, Hyundai’s “Elevate” concept ditches the wheels in favor of four legs capable of navigating nearly any type of terrain.

Continue reading… “Hyundai’s four-legged car isn’t the future we imagined, but we’ll take it”