Call it a sign of the times. Zagato, the Italian car design consultancy which helped style aerodynamic racing cars from Maserati, Ferarri and Aston Martin, has now designed a driver-less electric car whose top speed is a mere 40kph. Come August, this futuristic vehicle will be used to transport students at the campus of the Masdar Institute of Science and Technology, the first phase in building Masdar City, Abu Dhabi's carbon-free eco-city.
The collaboration of Zagato with eco-efficient transport firms from elsewhere in Italy and Holland highlights the growing importance of vehicles that use renewable energy technology. Urban transport planners in Abu Dhabi, the United Kingdom and the United States are realising that green is good, and are joining hands with the car industry to develop solutions. The Zagato-designed podcar had been under wraps for months but was finally unveiled at the World Future Energy Summit. The conference is hosted by the state-backed Abu Dhabi Future Energy Company (Masdar), which has committed to spending billions of dirhams towards clean energy research.
At the show, Abu Dhabi also pledged to produce seven per cent of its electricity through renewable sources by 2020. With all the pomp and pageantry expected of a summit featuring speakers such as Dutch Prince Willem-Alexander, the MIT president Dr Susan Hockfield, and Switzerland's Minister of Energy, Environment and Communication, Moritz Leuenberger, the summit drew thousands of delegates from around the world, including General Motors, which exhibited its new hybrid sport-utility vehicle used as taxis in Dubai. But it was the podcar which stole the show.
Developed by 2getthere, a Dutch firm specialising in "automated people mover systems", the podcar is an electric vehicle that will act as an automated taxi to serve pre-coordinated stops. "It's private public transit," said Rein Kielstra, the project director of 2getthere's podcar based in Utrecht, the Netherlands. The Dutch firm has developed driverless, electric powered mini-buses in the same fashion, called group rapid transit, and also built more than 300 automated lorries working at Rotterdam port.
The basic construction of the 2getthere podcar was quite conventional. The vehicles run on rubber tyres and have a basic chassis. The model 2getthere showed at the Summit was a "VIP" model with leather seats instead of a more conventional fabric. There was enough room to seat four comfortably, or six if necessary, on two rows of seats facing each other. For power, the cars will be charged by lithium-ion batteries, produced in China. The batteries are expected to power more than three hours of drive time before needing to be recharged for an hour.
"Odometry" is the concept behind the vehicle's navigation system. The personal rapid transit (PRT) car will count the number of wheel revolutions and note the angle of the wheel to calculate its position. Passengers need only punch in the destination desired on a console inside the cabin, and the car will do the rest. Magnets, implanted in the surface of the dedicated roads for the PRT, will also play a major role by acting as markers to keep the cars on path.
And to avoid collisions - the car will travel at 40kph along straight paths, and 25kph when turning - sensors in the front of the cars will help it slow down or stop if it detects anything as far as 10 metres ahead. In fact, the lack of drivers is a boon both to safety and the bottom line, planners say. It is unknown how much the service will cost commuters, but the service would have been much more expensive had drivers been required. In addition, automated systems have also proven to cause far fewer accidents, Mr Kiestra added.
The evolution of the podcar, leading up to the Zagato-designed podcar for Masdar City, began nearly 40 years ago. West Virginia University introduced a driverless, group rapid transit bus system in the 1970s. But the complexity of the technology proved very expensive. It was only a few years ago that new plan for systems in other parts of the globe began in earnest. "The information technology now is right," said Luca Guala, the area manager of Systematica of Italy, which is consulting with Masdar for the PRT systems traffic engineering. "All the bits and pieces are there. Now all it takes is someone willing to build a system and make it run."
A new PRT system is proposed to serve the college town of Ithaca, New York, while London's Heathrow Airport is expected to complete its podcar service linking parking garages with the new Terminal 5 this year. Masdar planners considered a group system such as with 2getthere's bus in Holland, and the system in West Virginia. But they discarded the proposal when they discovered the energy-inefficiency of running a scheduled service during off-peak hours. With the cybercab, the cars will only run when needed.
The personal vehicle is being envisaged as one transport solution among many to service Masdar City, which plans to create its own electricity through various solar power technologies as well as wind turbines. Sustainability is a key aspect of the eco-city, and even the surfaces upon which the PRT system will travel is being scrutinized. (Asphalt is made from fossil fuels.) When the city is fully built, it will have a population of some 40,000 residents, with 50,000 additional people working there and commuting in from surrounding areas.
Once inside the confines of the city, these 90,000 will have no access to their beloved cars. Walking, biking and two-wheeled Segways will be popular modes of travel, while a light rail system snaking through the city will help them get around and to central Abu Dhabi, some 20km away. In addition, anywhere from 2,000 to 3,000 PRT vehicles could be used eventually, including modified podcars to carry freight, according to Christopher Novack, the transportation programme manager at Masdar and CH2M HILL, the engineering company in charge of managing Masdar City. When the city is fully built, there could be up to 100 PRT destinations throughout the carbon-free city.
To begin with, however, Masdar ordered 13 of the "cybercabs", as some call them, during the testing phase. Ten PRT cars and three automated freight vehicles will be used to service the needs of the Masdar Institute for Science and Technology (MIST), which starts classes in August. The cars, which will cater to some 100 students and 20 faculty members, will have two stops, approximately 150 m apart, at the parking garage and at the doorsteps of MIST. The freight cars will be able to carry a cargo up to 1,500 kilograms.
The prices of these driverless systems are affordable, get2there officials say. Since the cars are custom-made for Masdar, the first models will come with a high cost per unit. But when they gear up for mass production, they could cost roughly $40,000 (Dh146,800) apiece. The system is custom made for Masdar, and a team of engineers and planners will monitor how the podcars perform during peak and off-peak hours, Mr Novack said. "We will be looking at the results daily," he said. "It's important to learn how the intricacies of each of the technologies work." If the system works, it could be used in other parts of the city. Abu Dhabi's Plan 2030 highlights Lulu Island and the Capital District as potential zones for additional PRT cars.
The eco-city's planners say they have high hopes the PRT system could act as a catalyst to spur other city planners to follow suit. "What Masdar is all about is getting the renewable energy technology and the scientists and researchers to come to Masdar City and become leaders in renewable energy," Mr Novack said. "We expect it to explode." The brimming optimism surrounding Masdar seem a lifetime away from enviro-documentaries produced in the past few years, such as Who Killed the Electric Car?, produced in 2006. American filmmaker Chris Paine narrated the demise of GM's ill-fated EV1 electric vehicle in that cult classic. But in only three years - helped no doubt by record fuel prices - the tide seems to be turning.
Mr Paine, in fact, reportedly plans to release a sequel next year entitled Revenge of the Electric Car that draws on a renaissance of interest in electric and hybrid products from Tesla Motors, Fisker Automotive and GM. Future documentary makers may be asking instead, what happened to the gas-guzzling SUV. igale@thenational.ae
