Heroin and Cornflakes

Heroin and Cornflakes has often advocated the need for a reduction in the the use of the personal car and the introduction of free clean public transport.

Recent technological news has given us hope for this scenario. If only political leaders around the globe shared in this vision. Dirty polluted cities could become history.

What we mean by clean transport is mass transit vehicles powered by non pollutant renewable energies resulting in electric powered vehicles, for example. However major sticking points in this quest have been the massive, sensitive, costly and fast-depleting batteries in electric vehicles that take the place of international combustion engines and gasoline. Electric cars run 40 to 120 miles on one charge, and it takes two to seven hours to fully recharge.

Now new technology may be about to change all this. Suh Nam-pyo, president of KAIST in South Korea, approached the challenge from another angle.

‘Why not have power transmitted on the ground and pick it up without using mechanical contact?’ he theorized.

KAIST have developed “online” vehicles which pick up power from trips, or inverters, embedded into the road rather than transmitted through rails or overhead wires. President of Korea, Lee Myung-bak’s, government gave KAIST $50 million to develop the project. The main emphasis focusing on the countries highly pollutant passenger bus service.

At the moment, online buses are running at the KAIST campus and will begin test runs soon on the resort island of Jeju. But Seoul, which has promised to set aside $2 million for the underground charging system, is within Suh’s sights. He said 9,000 gasoline-fueled buses now crisscross the capital, with 1,000 going out of commission each year. He envisions replacing those aging buses with electric models. Initial test runs are expected to take place this year.

It is a very important project which promises to resolve the problems of high energy cost and air pollution. It is most suitable for cities like Seoul but there are people who oppose its commercial production. Apparently, President Lee had a test-riding in the online electric car in February, but government support has not been decided yet.

Why?

Suh said ” I can’t understand it. We are seeing a project stalled by the rejection of some section chiefs, even though the president endorsed it. These opponents are not scientists. Previously developed electric cars need big batteries while the KAIST model requires a small battery. I am confident that the better product always beats the worse one, the more efficient technology emerges as the winner at the end.”

Maybe, but once a billion dollar company gets wind of a possible threat to its profits lobbyists are sent out to protect their interests and influence politicians.   Envisage what would happen in Washington if this idea was proposed there. Lobbyists from the energy sector, auto industry etc.. would soon be camped outside the presidents office.

It doesn’t take a genius to see the potential of this development and threat to existing technologies. A few solar panels and wind turbines rigged up and connected to an underground electric pick up grid and you’ve got the potential for a very low cost energy source and transportation system.

What about additional costs such as materials for capturing renewable energies and drivers for these vehicles? You still need to pay someone to navigate.

Regarding the former, cost is one of the main disadvantages of the use of renewable energies. Through the thesis “Preparation and study of thin films for photovoltaic applications” presented at the Universitat Jaume I, Teodor Krassimirov is aiming to make the development of efficient solar panels easier and cheaper with the use of Chalcopyrite.

Chalcopyrite-based technologies are high performance and stable.  For this reason they are considered very promising for the production of large-scale photovoltaic modules at a lower cost, which will open a viable path for a photovoltaic industry capable of meeting global needs.

The research has enabled him to “provide a material that is deposited like a film with applications in very efficient systems for storage of photovoltaic energy. A less expensive method has been proposed and more work will need to be done to optimize it but there is no doubt that an important step has been taken”.

As for the latter (navigational costs) designer Kubik Petr’s robo-taxi maybe the answer. It seats two, is powered by electric motors with passengers selecting where they want to go by way of a touchscreen in the cabin. It would not be hard to duplicate this system to buses.

Robot taxi

This robo-cab could hearken in an age where a taxi driver / bus driver is no longer needed. Of course, they could always create the Johnny Cab dummy drivers from Total Recall.  This may not be as far off as you think. Researchers at the KAIST Robot Intelligence Lab use evolutionary processes to develop unique personalities for simulated robots.

Their first robot has 14 chromosomes  that affect the robots personality and interactions with its environment. .  The next steps are to improve and generalize the genome structures to allow their use in other types of robots.

It would be easy to imagine  buses and taxis with a robotic driver uttering ‘ have a nice day’ as you depart from the buses around the world.

If we have strong politicians around the world who can override powerful lobbyists and are free from corruption, then maybe a polluted city will be a thing of the past.  Cities with an efficient clean free energy source to power a free public transport system.  The initial cost of diverting this energy source may run up a few billion dollars but we would rather see our taxes put to projects that are beneficial to all, not just a few.

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Thank you

Ann Margrain

Founder, ‘Heroin and Cornflakes’ blog.

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This entry was posted Thursday, May 21st, 2009 at 3:25 am and is filed under general. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.