Boy, do I have something for you. I am pretty familiar with the traffic situation in and around SF, as I happened to be there last year, invited to give a lecture regarding my concept of Seamless 2D and 3D Transit for the AHS (American Helicopter Society) and NASA Ames Research. The ‘2D’ part has the highest relevance in this case of course. Firstly, when car makers keep treating personal mobility as a way of selling more cars, instead of solving problems such as gridlock and poor air quality, then others should step to the plate. Secondly, Silicon Valley has a fine tradition in doing more with less. Car- and ride-sharing can be seen this way.
We no longer use bulky PCs and brick-like phones. Why shouldn’t “Less Is More” not extend to how we go from A to B? The stranger it is what tech funds came up with thus far. Many expected them to have brought robo-cars by now, replacing traditional automakers as well as local providers such as taxi and bus companies. Instead, Silicon Valley’s ride-hailing companies Waymo and Uber began using cars they got from carmakers. That’s a major mistake for a number of reasons: high operational costs (same reason why shuttle service Chariot had to halt services), gridlock worsens, it’s hard to realize zero-emission transit and the Holy Grail in personal transit: driverless. Below: the benefits of reducing vehicle footprint.
The green thumb-ups are where (city) governments will directly benefit from deploying of what I call the EV 3.0 (Tesla being an EV 2.0). 1. Highways in particular can be used more efficiently. 2. Save billions on building new roads. 3. Fiscal treatment of cars, congestion charges, road pricing, parking tariffs can be determined according to emission profile and vehicle footprint (cities like Berlin, London, Amsterdam are working towards these sort of measures). 4. Save billions on EV tax credits. 5. Way better pedestrian and cyclist safety. 6. Seriously do something about implementing international agreements to curb emissions and Climate Change.
You will get the joyous prospect of zero-emission, money-, time- and space-saving vehicles without the expensive flyovers you see in the picture on top (that still was taken from the 2002 movie Minority Report). In short: the car-equivalent of the smartphone — sleek, flexible, versatile. Want to know more, go to the outline The Beyond Carbon Auto-Mobile. I already received recognition for this by various experts. Now it’s time to move on… Would therefore love to hear about meeting fellow innovators and incubators, and other possibilities. Looking forward. Cheers, Ralph, sevehicle@gmail.com
