Separating the Mobility Platform from the A-Carrier

As I mentioned yesterday, we need to break the meme of every vehicle having a driver. One of the key points of Autonomous Vehicles is that we don’t need a driver. I’ve predicted that the vast majority of trips, probably over 99%, won’t even involve people.

Thus most Autonomous Vehicles don’t need all the paraphernalia and overhead to carry a person. Not only is it wasteful in energy, weight, and other resources, but also you really don’t want every Autonomous Vehicle to have the same cabin for you.

You will have different needs and preferences for the different trips you take: how many people are you traveling with? Are you going to be snoozing, reading, texting, laptopping, cuddling, or enjoying a great movie? Do you need air conditioning, or heating (we were traveling on a bus in Denali National Park in Alaska, and the heater took up 2 rows of seats because it had to be able to keep the interior of the bus at 50 degrees even when the outside temperature was -50 degrees, and it sounded like a jet engine when it was on)? Do you need 4-wheel drive (as we do to get to some of our favorite kayaking sites)? Is it a short trip to the store or a long journey for a vacation? How much stuff will you be bringing along (we moved all of our non-furniture belongings in 8 trips of our Honda Pilot)?

The reason we leased our Chevy Volt is that we anticipate that the technology of batteries and electric cars will change dramatically over the next 3 years, so this way we can just switch to the best technology available then. By separating the A-Carrier from the Mobility Platform, we are insulated from the changes, and I certainly anticipate a rapid proliferation of innovative technologies in both Mobility Platforms, with faster and more efficient new transport modes, and new A-Carriers for all purposes.

Also, I don’t want to have to change my seat every time I move to a new transport mode: if I take the train to New York City from Long Branch, as I discussed before, I go from my car to the train to a subway to a taxi to get where I’m going, with walks and waits in between each. With Continuous Convoys and En Route Sequencing, Autonomous Vehicles will provide much faster service, whisking me from one leg to the next – we’ll see later that some of these transfers will be at high speed, so I couldn’t do them by walking even if I wanted to.

Specialized A-Carriers will accommodate a wide variety of needs: cold for groceries, freezing for ice cream and frozen pizza, hot for fresh pizza delivery, and fragile for glass and electronics. I predict we will see a host of new applications: you will send recyclables directly to the appropriate facility as soon as you finish with them; you will get food fresh from the farm for each meal; your medications will arrive just when you need to take them -- invent your own favorites. I’ll describe many more when we get to Sustainable Communities. J

Airports are one of the transition opportunities I talk about later. Imagine an airplane where you go to your seat while the A-Carrier is still in the airport, then when the airplane arrives the A-Carrier with arriving passengers is unloaded in a couple minutes; and your fresh A-Carrier is loaded in another couple of minutes: you don’t have to wait for it to be cleaned, serviced, and fresh food and drinks loaded; you aren’t held up by people blocking the aisles and trying to stuff their oversize luggage in the overhead compartments; plane turnaround could be minutes instead of hours, and you don’t have to wait in lines and mill around. I believe Autonomous Vehicles will greatly speed up your airport experience and transform it beyond recognition, hopefully anyway. J

Separating the Carrier from the vehicle has already been wildly successful in the freight business, which has been transformed by standardized Shipping Containers.

Before the advent of containerization in the 1950s, break-bulk items were loaded, lashed, unlashed and unloaded from the ship one piece at a time. Containers up to 3,000 cubic feet carry up to 64,000 pounds of cargo at once. Containerization has reducing shipping time by 84% and costs by 35%. Now more than 90% of world trade in non-bulk goods is transported in Shipping Containers, an estimated 1.19 billion metric tons annually.

A container ship can be loaded and unloaded in a few hours compared to days in a traditional cargo vessel. It takes a few weeks instead of months for a consignment to be delivered from India to Europe, and with reduced breakage and theft.

Cargo Containers have triggered such revolutions as on time guaranteed delivery and just in time manufacturing. Raw materials arrive from factories in sealed containers less than an hour before they are required in manufacture, resulting in reduced inventory expense.

People have been very innovative in using the shipping containers once they have finished transporting cargo, for example they can make inexpensive homes.

I predict that A-Carriers and Autonomous Vehicles will transform local transportation even more than Shipping Containers have for global trade.

Further, I predict that A-Containers will have an even bigger impact on Sustainable Communities, and I can’t wait to talk about these innovations.