Category: Transport Tech

The Japanese regional railway JR Kyushu has become the first company in Japan to build a luxury sleeper cruise train, spending close to 3 billion yen (US$29.9 million). The Seven Stars cruise train comes equipped with the latest motion control technology, 14 luxury guest rooms, two deluxe suites, three presidential suites, a lounge car, dining car and bar. “The idea for a cruise train came from our company president, Mr. Koji Karaike,” Simon Metcalfe from JR Kyushu tells Gizmag. “It was something that he had dreamed of doing since he…

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There are a good many ways to get from the train station to work in motor-assisted style, including folding bikes or scooters and one wheelers orskateboards, but last mile transport choices are not so plentiful if your journey includes zipping through dirt tracks and forest trails. Poland’s Jack Skopinski, the force behind the EV4 tilting electric quad we covered last year, has come up with a stand-up contender for the off-road-with-ease crown – some electric off-road rollers with rubber tracks. Skopinski says that his so-called “off-road rollerblades” were designed and built in response to customer demand for personal…

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Personal electric VTOL (vertical take off and landing) commuting may not be far off, thanks to accelerating improvements in battery technology. Joby Aviation has put forward an incredible two-seater plane concept that uses 12 tilting electric propellers to provide multirotor-style balanced VTOL capabilities. Once it reaches cruising speeds, these rotors fold away into aerodynamic bullet shapes, and the aircraft can reach speeds of up to 200 mph (322 km/h) and ranges of up to 200 miles using four additional cruise-optimized props on the backs of the wings and tail fins.…

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Over the past few years, the world has gotten to know some pretty cool electric vehicles: ludicrously quick Teslas, solar-powered planes, sport bikes with Italian styling. To add to the pile, Nissan now introduces the BladeGlider, a Zeus juice-powered razor blade on four wheels. Released in Rio de Janeiro this week, the prototype version of a concept Nissan first showed in 2013 is a 268-horsepower sports car with a heart of green, powered by a 220kW lithium-ion battery. The BladeGlider comes with rear-hinged dihedral doors (because conventional openings have no…

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One of the biggest limitations of electric buses is range. Now, though, a US company has eked out over 250 miles (402 km) from one of its electric buses. The Proterra Catalyst XR is said to afford the best efficiency rating ever for a 40-ft (12-m) transit bus, at 22 mpg (12.8 l/l00 km) equivalent. Electric buses are already in use in, or due to roll out to, a number of major cities around the world, including Gothenburg and London. Despite this, the technology is still relatively embryonic and so continues to be…

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The Indian Space Research Organisation is entering the next generation of space travel. The ISRO on Monday successfully launched its pint-sized Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV-TD) prototype from the Satish Dhawan Space Centre in Sriharikota, according to an announcement from the space organization. The first test flight marks a milestone for ISRO, which started developing its concept for a reusable launch vehicle  nearly a decade ago. Miniature Rocket The RLV-TD is just 23 feet tall, and weighs about 1.75 tons. For comparison, SpaceX’s Falcon 9 launch vehicle stands 224 feet upright, and weighs over 600…

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The Transit Elevated Bus Ever spotting a frustrating problem in your daily life? While you are still silently enduring the inconvenience it brings, some sagacious minds have been trying to solve it. As trafic problems haunt cities all over the world, a novel bus design recently presented in front of the public sheds a beam of refreshing light on the problem. Early this year in May, on the 19th China Beijing International High-tech Expo, inventor Youzhou Song published a intriguing design of a “tunnel-shaped” bus. The design is named “Transit…

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Japanese telecom SoftBank and automaker Honda have announced a unique partnership to develop technology that would allow future Honda vehicles to both talk to its drivers and read their emotions. At an event in Tokyo on Thursday, SoftBank founder Masayoshi Son invited attendees to imagine robots, with super intelligence, devoting themselves to humans. Taking it a step further, Son asked people to imagine a future in which cars themselves become supercomputers before vowing that Honda would be the first to adopt such technology. As The Verge notes, the two will do…

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I am from a different land—a different time, maybe—where the car people resist the circling. No circles at all costs, they say. Straight ahead is the way forward. But in this place, across the sea, the cars circle in all directions, within and without each other, a tango of mystery. This place is Swindon, they tell me. It is in south England, a land recently torn asunder. They call this swirl of movement the “magic roundabout”. But how does such sorcery work? The roundabout in its common form is already…

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A new hydrogen fuel-cell electric vehicle prototype has been launched with a claimed fuel economy equivalent to 250 mpg (0.9 L/100km). Dubbed “Rasa,” the new car has a lightweight carbon-fiber monocoque shell, in-wheel electric motors, a bank of supercapacitors charged by braking-regeneration, and a host of other features that enable it to travel up to a claimed 300 miles (483 km) on just a 3.3 lb (1.5 kg) tank of hydrogen. A road-legal two-seater engineering prototype, the Rasa by Riversimple Movement Ltd UK has been designed from scratch to meet the company’s brief of…

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