Category: Transport Tech

In 2012 President Obama instituted new, aggressive fuel economy standards for automakers selling cars in the United States. The executive branch—represented here by the Environmental Protection Agency, basically—mandated that every car manufacturer would have to have a fleetwide average gas mileage of 54.5 miles per gallon by 2025. The Corporate Average Fuel Economy standards (CAFE to transit nerds) take the gas mileage of every car a company sells—from Yaris to Tundra, Verano to Enclave, Golf to whatever—and average it out. You want to build a gas-guzzling, smoke-pumping, V-18 for hauling…

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Well blow us down: Those scrappy engineers did it. They built that crazy straddling bus a Chinese company announced three months ago, and damned if it doesn’t work. This weird wonder—officially, it’s the “Transit Elevated Bus”—gets through traffic by driving over it. And according to the Chinese news agency Xinhua, it got through Tuesday’s test drive in Qinhuangdao without decapitating a single Geely Panda. Some specs: This thing is 68.9 feet long, 25.6 feet wide, and 15.7 feet tall. “There’s enough space on this for old ladies to have a…

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Romanian tech firm Onyx Beacon is teaming up with the local authorities in Bucharest to install 500 iBeacon devices on buses across the metropolis. It’s hoped that the new Smart Public Transport (SPT) initiative will make the city safer and more accessible for the estimated 12,000 visually impaired citizens who live there. While many of us take the act of hopping on or off a bus for granted, for those with eyesight problems it can be both difficult and dangerous. Through the installation of the Enterprise Beacons – fitted to…

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For Navy pilots who land jets on aircraft carriers, life is tough. First, there’s the bit about touching down at precisely the right time and position to have the tailhook catch the arresting wire and bring you to a stop before the runway—all 300 feet of it— runs out. And then there’s the fact flight decks don’t stay still. They heave and sway with the sea. In the seconds before touchdown, a pilot typically makes hundreds of small changes to his trajectory. The US Navy says new tech could make…

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Los Angeles to San Francisco in 30 minutes? In August, billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk announced his vision for Hyperloop, a levitating train that would shoot through a low-pressure, above-ground tunnel at 760 mph. Musk is famous for futuristic transit, such as his electric car company Tesla Motors and commercial space travel business SpaceX. But he has no intention of building a functional Hyperloop. His aim was to generate buzz with the idea, in the hope that others would develop and build it. The technology itself is old news. In 1972,…

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BMW ConnectedDrive provides drivers with a variety of services and apps for in-vehicle entertainment, information and safety. As the name suggests, the system is rooted in connectivity and, working with Deutsche Telekom, BMW is bumping up those capabilities to include high-speed LTE, a Wi-Fi hotspot and the new eSIM. eSIM technology is being touted as a replacement for the traditional SIM card that’s at the heart of your smartphone. It’s used to establish a high-speed LTE connection inside the vehicle. This, in turn, powers a password-protected Wi-Fi hotspot that can provide internet…

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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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