Source: Tom's Hardware UK – Keywords: UAE, London, PRT, Green, Conservation Category : Miscellaneous
Soon, London and Masdar City will give the rest of the world a glimpse into the future.
Personal Rapid Transit (PRT), has been around as an idea for some time. Instead of highways and cities filled with human controlled cars running on oil and gasoline, PRT takes the emissions and the driver out of the equation, filling the roads with electric-powered, self-driving transports. It may sound like something out of a science fiction movie like Minority Report, but two countries will soon make this green idea a reality.
According to MIT's Technology Review, Masdar City in the United Arab Emirates and London's Heathrow International Airport will soon implement their own PRT systems. Bristol-based Advanced Transport Systems is building the PRT system for Heathrow. The system will be a complete circuit of driverless, electric-powered cars. How does it work? The cars are powered by the same lead-acid batteries found in many hybrid/all electric cars today. To drive themselves, the cars stay on a concrete track, and use laser-based range finders to adjust themselves on the road and maintain safe distance from other PRT vehicles.
The Masdar City PRT system is part of something much, much bigger. Masdar City is meant to be a zero emissions paradise. The carbon neutral city will be six square kilometers (roughly 3.73 sq. miles), and house 50,000 people. The PRT project was given to a Dutch company called 2getthere and is slightly different from the one in Heathrow. While it's still electric-powered, the batteries are composed of a more advanced lithium iron phosphate. As for the guiding track, magnets are placed every five meters and the PRT cars use them for location and self-orientation. Both the London and Masdar City projects are ultimately computer controlled.
"Really, all it is is a car," says Scott McGuigan of CH2M Hill, the company overseeing all of Masdar City's construction. "It's a simple vehicle [for] six passengers. It's designed like a car, but obviously it's powered by solar energy with batteries. You program what station you want to go to, and [the vehicle] will directly take you to that station," he says to NPR. "If you look at things like Blade Runner, etc., that we had 15 years ago, it's really bringing that to the fore now."
Masdar City will be environmentally friendly on several other levels as well. From recycling 80 percent of all water to utilizing solar power to converting nearly all waste to energy, Masdar could be the utopia the rest of the world will be based on.
Follow this link if you want to see a concept video of Masdar City.
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Emission-free, eh?
Where you getting the electricity from? Unless there's a massive hydrogen fuel cell underneath Heathrow powering all this all, the lack of emissions here will increase emissions at the plants as they have to step up electricity generation.
Plus those hybrid fuel cells generate a carbon footprint in production beyond anything their use could ever reclaim.
It is, however, a step in the right direction.
Yeah, never understood that. Even if you have a electric car, you still need to charge the thing using electric from your house or at some station... So basically all you are doing is going round in circles with the carbon issue. And some geniuses are even trying to make planes run on batteries - madness!
I say produce all electricity using nuclear because it's cleaner as well other, solar and air etc. and then use it in the home, hybrid car, and trains and any where else that it's safe to use. Where it is not safe or you can't do it any other way like planes and maybe one or two other situations try to make them more efficient like the plane A380.
Global warming aside the fuel is running out soon anyway so these spastics should be looking to the future and Nuke is here to stay as a energy source not to kill other humans.
Right now too much emphasis is on the economy, any people will kill others just to make their country rich just look at China - killing their own babies... So hybrid is a waste of money and don't do much for the environment although it may make one feel good about themself and give one false believe into thinking they are doing their part. As for changing light bulbs, well, many people just doing it to save cost they couldn't give a poo for the environment. For good to prevail the governments around the World need to take control of these utility companies like they have done with the banks and other financial institutions... (by the way I commend the Russians for taking control) but that is not going to happen till it's too late at present there's just not enough profits to be made.
Lots of people are feeling the effects of extreme weather, when it's too late, it'll be all the sympathy and other worthless hot air that are meaningless and unhelpful - things will become too little, too late.
Wait and see.
Jon.
^^^
Nuclear isn't the answer either, at least not nuclear fission as its stands. Uranium is still mined from the ground (hence it's a non-renewable energy source), and although enriched fuel rods have enough "juice" in them for a long period of use, eventually they do get "used up" and the waste product is horrific.
The future is Hydrogen - either nuclear fusion, Hydrogen/Oxygen explosive reaction (to generate heat for steam) or simply burning the stuff - the only waste product with burning Hydrogen is water (and some Nitrogen-based compounds but not much), which in turn is a fuel source for the Hydrogen.
As always though, it's *how* you get that Hydrogen in the first place, but you could theoretically limit nuclear fission plants to generating the electricity needed to split the water only. Hell, if wind, tidal and solar power efficiencies improved you could use that to power the water splitters and then you have 0 carbon output!