At present, many industries are undergoing great changes, and the transportation industry is no exception.
In a recent report, Forbes website listed three major trends in the transportation field: electrification, automation and service. These three trends will not only change the way people travel, but also the way goods are transported – and the latter will have a profound impact on most industries.
electrification
IS410STAIS2A Carbon dioxide (CO2) emitted by the transport sector is a significant component of global carbon emissions. In the United States, transportation is responsible for about 28% of greenhouse gas emissions, mainly from cars, trucks, ships, planes and trains burning fossil fuels (especially gasoline and diesel), so there is an urgent need to shift to more environmentally friendly vehicles, “electrification” came into being.
Electric vehicles (EVs) seem to be slowly starting to move to the center of the global automotive stage. As of 2020, electric vehicles accounted for only 6% of global vehicle sales, but this is expected to grow to 13% by 2025; By 2030, it will increase to 22%. As countries set their own carbon IS410STAIS2A targets, urban populations grow, charging infrastructure improves, and the cost of the lithium-ion batteries that power them falls (by 80 per cent since 2010), electric vehicles will fly even further into the homes of ordinary people.
It’s not just cars that are going electric. Indian ride-sharing giant Ola has invested heavily in electric scooters. The company plans to produce 10 million electric scooters a year, making it the largest electric scooter factory in the world.
Companies such as Daimler are investing in electric truck technology, with the eCascadia with a range of 400 km and the eM2 truck with a range of 370 km due to go into production in 2022.
Norway has been operating electric ferries since 2015, and the country is now aiming to make ferries fully electric by 2023.
automate
IS410STAIS2A Autonomous vehicles could revolutionize the way people move and goods are transported, improve road safety, ease congestion on busy roads, and possibly even change the way cities are built. When you think about it, large parking lots will be a thing of the past, as driverless vehicles will be able to drop people off at their destination and come back to pick them up when they need to.
The Wall Street Journal website also reported that the dream of driverless cars is coming true. At this year’s Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas, self-driving cars caught the eye. In her keynote address, General Motors CEO Mary Barra said her team plans to deliver a driverless car for consumers “as soon as the middle of this decade.”
Elon Musk has previously said that by the end of 2021, Tesla’s IS410STAIS2A self-driving vehicle technology will be able to reach Level L5, where the vehicle will be able to perform all driver tasks in any situation. But it turns out Musk was exaggerating. Many other automakers are working to achieve level 4 autonomy in the next few years, which is when a vehicle can only drive itself under certain conditions.
Driverless taxis are already a reality in some parts of the world. Waymo, owned by Google’s parent company Alphabet, launched a fully autonomous taxi service in 2020 in parts of Phoenix and is also testing self-driving cars in other parts of the United States. Coincidentally, at the end of January 2021, Shenzhen driverless enterprise AutoX announced that it would build the country’s first fully driverless operation center in Pingshan, Shenzhen, and carry out the demonstration application of L5 level fully driverless RoboTaxi fleet.
In terms of cargo vehicles, several companies are working on developing driverless trucks, such as TuSimple, a self-driving truck startup that is partnering with United Parcel Delivery Service (UPS) to conduct test operations in Arizona and Texas. On December 22, 2021, one of the company’s semi-trucks completed a fully driverless journey of about 129 kilometers on public roads.