The Cost of Poor Human Driving Ability
Something like 40,000 people die in traffic accidents in the US every year. The number is over one million per year globally.
There are over 5 million non-fatal injuries from car crashes each year that require medical attention in the US.
In 2010, the NHTSA estimated that the total costs from these events were $836 billion, or ~$2700 per American per year.
But these costs are just the tip of the iceberg because most of the cost of transportation, at >$2 trillion per year, comes from adjusting to human inadequacies.
Passenger Cars
Impacts of Safety on Car Design
Modern cars are hefty. A Suburban can weigh over 6,000 pounds, and even a Honda Civic weighs nearly 3000 pounds. A slow-speed, unregulated four-person vehicle might only weigh a few hundred pounds.
The root cause of this weight difference is the structure and associated safety systems. Crash requirements require a certain amount of structural strength to protect passengers. Airbags and robust seats add more weight. More weight requires more power to move, so the engine and systems like transmissions and tires must be beefier to meet performance requirements, further driving up weight.
Aerodynamics is the other major factor in powertrain sizing. Structures that are good at meeting crash standards aren't the most aerodynamic. The most efficient small vehicles, like a velomobile, look much different. Cars can have more aerodynamic shells after removing safety constraints.
A Velomobile; Source: Wikipedia
Weight imposes external costs as well. Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. The previously mentioned Suburban causes ~16x more road damage than the Civic. A lightweight vehicle would barely register. Our roads would last significantly longer with less maintenance (and traffic delays).
Humans being awful drivers leads to a massive increase in vehicle costs and weight, makes cars more dangerous to people outside of them, and imposes significant costs on infrastructure like roads.
The Forces Cars Must Overcome
Rolling resistance and air resistance are the primary forces cars fight. Engineers size motors and powertrains accordingly.
Rolling resistance, which is the energy lost between the tires and the ground, mainly through the tire or ground squishing, is represented by the equation:
rolling resistance = mass x gravitational force x rolling resistance coefficient
Cutting mass or using stiffer tires can reduce rolling resistance.
Air resistance is a little more complicated:
air resistance = 0.5 x drag coefficient x air density x frontal area x velocity^2
The best performance comes from aerodynamic shapes (low drag coefficient) and small frontal areas. You can slow down to reduce the velocity component, but most prefer to get places quickly.
Towards an Ideal Design
It should be possible to decrease the weight of a car by 10x without sacrificing speed or internal volume. Both the frame and the powertrain need addressing. There are several key features:
-
Aerodynamic Shape
Losses due to air resistance already dominate a heavy car's energy consumption at highway speeds. Lightweight vehicles, like bicycles, can see aerodynamic losses exceed rolling resistance at 10-15 mph. Lightweight cars must be aerodynamic to keep the powertrain size small. That probably means shapes like teardrops or submarines. Long and skinny vehicles are better than cube-like ones to keep the front cross-section small.
-
Electric Powertrain
Electric vehicles can scale down more gracefully than internal combustion cars because internal combustion engines have strong scale effects. It can also be challenging to meet emissions requirements in small engines. Engines have more unforgiving shapes and require cooling air that increases drag significantly for very aerodynamic shapes. Batteries should win because they are efficient, cost-effective, and require minimal cooling.
-
Light-weighting Frame and Shell
A shell only needs to protect riders from the elements rather than shield them from crashes with multi-ton vehicles. And aerodynamic shapes put less stress on the enclosure.
A lightweight shell and a small powertrain don't require a strong frame for support. The passengers should be a significant portion of the weight.
These requirements end up being very strict. A blocky car with excessive drag would require a much bigger powertrain and increased frame weight. Even minor crash safety standards could cause weight to cascade up by increasing drag and frame weight.
Adding Up the Costs
The cost reduction should be greater than 10x under some conditions.
Electric-assisted velomobiles can weigh as little as 75 pounds. Some models can go 175 miles per kilowatt-hour in all-electric mode (~5900 MPGe). These vehicles aren't practical people carriers because they only go 30-40 mph and lack creature comforts. They also aren't cheap because they are mostly handmade with fancy materials to be light enough for a human to pedal. Electric motors and no expectation of human exertion allow slightly heavier, mass-production-friendly materials and techniques. A modest battery pack of a few kilowatts in a modern cell-to-pack configuration might only add 50 pounds. The efficiency won't be as eye-popping at a mass of a few hundred pounds and a higher speed, but it could still easily be 10x more efficient than a Tesla Model 3 and 40x gasoline cars. There are heavier cars manufactured in China that cost $1000-$2000, so the most bare-bones models could come in the same price range. Faster models would cost a few thousand more. These single-person vehicles would be incredibly affordable, costing only a few cents per mile.
Energy consumption for HVAC and self-driving software can become significant as vehicles get more efficient. But, the cost of AI computing has been falling dramatically. It seems safe to assume that energy consumption and cost will be affordable a few years after automation is cracked in full-size cars. Waste heat from the computer can help heat the cabin when it is cold, and the air conditioning will need to be very efficient! The engineering in these systems probably means the difference between a great vehicle and a mediocre one.
4-8 passenger vehicles will weigh more and might not be 10x lighter than minivans or Suburbans because they have to handle ~1000 pounds of passengers and cargo.
Robotaxis can offer more cost reduction through increased asset utilization if the upfront cost reductions disappoint. All vehicles could eventually increase travel speeds to save passengers time.
"Fuel" costs would fall more than 10x compared to oil-powered vehicles.
Regular maintenance would be near zero for bare-bones vehicles. They would likely be replaced instead of repaired, like cell phones or laptops.
Non-combustion air pollution from tire and road wear would decrease significantly because of lower vehicle weight.
Insurance costs would also fall dramatically due to the rarity of crashes, the significantly lower repair/total cost, and collision intensity falling because vehicles carry 1/10th the energy compared to a traditional car at the same speed.
An order-of-magnitude cost reduction (or greater!) seems possible, especially when counting reduced injuries and pollution.
Customer Preference
American car culture is enduring, and some will hate featherweight teardrops zipping around. The answer is to make cheap transportation even more American by making it convenient, abundant, and nearly disposable, similar to how buying clothes has evolved.
The first models might only carry goods and be single-person size. For ~$2000, you could have a personal errand vehicle to pick up groceries, laundry, takeout, etc. In America, you should be able to hire a private taxi for your burrito for less than $0.25. Most people will probably own these given the price point, small form factor, and convenience versus a slower shared fleet vehicle. Why would you walk out to the street to unload a fleet vehicle when your own can pull into the garage? And these vehicles can start before the roads are safe. There are already startups working on prototypes, and their viability should improve rapidly as the software improves.
There will also be many that prefer cheap transportation. The group might include lower-income groups that suffer from unreliable cars, current mass transit riders, those under 16, those getting too old to drive, and parents of young children. Some examples of the benefits are:
-
Infinite Activities and Drop-offs
One challenge for large families is that you are never home and spend significant portions of the day driving between places or waiting if every kid has multiple activities. Or a parent might be managing 3-4 drop-offs and pickups because one school is a good fit for one kid but not another.
A single-person vehicle could safely transport each kid to their activities and school and always be waiting so the kids never have to. Parents will own these to have control. It would be silly not to have one for each family member given the price point and ~4 being able to fit in one car garage or driveway spot. One larger family car could transport everyone at once.
-
Outcompeting Public Transportation
Buses, subways, and railways will look like dinosaurs.
-
Aging in Place
Older people could stay in their homes much longer with budget chauffeurs and errand-running vehicles. The vehicles can also be more ergonomic or easily handle mobility devices. Cheap vehicles mean more variety at low cost because the fixed overhead is a fraction of traditional cars.
-
Convenient Commuting
Commuter models would be like sprinters, set up to travel rapidly for <100 miles with small battery packs and extremely aerodynamic shells. Their lightweight and small form factor would reduce toll costs and induce high-capacity toll lanes specializing in high-speed commuters.
America can leave behind expensive cars to embrace the next level of cost and convenience.
Policy Paths
The transition from human driving will take time. Cheap, lightweight people movers are currently illegal in many situations, so regulation is a barrier. Most vehicles need to be autonomous before the shift can happen.
Change could happen for several reasons:
-
Rapid Supply Growth for Self-driving Technologies
Robotaxis should see rapidly falling costs and increasing availability. New cars will come equipped with better and better driving software. And cheap retrofit kits will keep improving. Historical adoption of luxury features that trickle down from premium models probably isn't a good mental model for valuable software with low marginal cost.
-
Human Drivers Could Become Uninsurable
Most responsible people will give up driving for a technology that will likely be >10x safer and lower their insurance cost. Drunks, wannabe NASCAR drivers, and impatient people who can't handle software's cautious driving could make up a higher proportion of the risk pool, making human driving an increasingly expensive luxury. Jurors might award even larger payouts to victims of crashes caused by drivers who callously choose to drive themselves.
-
Public Opinion Towards Driving Shifts Rapidly
Today, car crashes are just a part of life, and the people advocating against cars (and human drivers) are the same types of folks who want you to live in a cube and eat bugs. However, attitudes could shift, especially if access to self-driving technology is affordable. Wrecks could go from an everyday thing to an anti-social choice perpetrated by unlikeable demographics (drunks, racers, neurotics).
-
Road Space Concerns
Road space is likely to be another obstacle as falling costs increase the demand for driving. But, lanes can be much smaller if long, skinny vehicles are cheaper and software is good at lane keeping. Standard interstate lanes are 12'. A typical car is 6' wide. Tripling lane capacity with 4' lanes is possible. Standard 6' wide cars could pay the toll for two lanes. Following distances could be much tighter in autonomous vehicle lanes, doubling capacity again. Faster average speeds can juice the numbers more. Elevated tollways could be much lighter and cheaper if they aren't carrying such heavy vehicles.
Maintaining 12' human-driven car lanes would have very high opportunity costs. A conventional vehicle lane could be as suspicious as an empty bike or bus lane is today.
-
Electrification Forces Changes in Road Taxes
Gas taxes are less fair as the electric vehicle market grows. Fuel taxation already unfairly favors larger vehicles that do disproportionate road damage compared to their fuel usage. A long-time policy desire has been to move to a Vehicle Miles Tax (VMT). It could account for vehicle weight.
-
Exposure to Non-Human Carrying Vehicles
Once people see little teardrops picking up their takeout, it is easier to imagine one carrying them or their family members!
These are only a few reasons why the status quo might be unstable in the face of better technology.
Freight Transportation
Freight is as critical as moving people. Industries like trucking should benefit from automated driving technology because driver-related costs and insurance are 45% of the total cost per mile. Electric drive trains will save some on fuel, but the point of freight is carrying heavy things, so there is less mass bloat to pare down. Costs can fall significantly, but other strategies are needed to shrink the powertrain and drive 10x cost reductions.
The central challenge is improving rolling resistance without reducing loaded mass. The obvious answer is to emulate trains with steel wheels on a steel roadway to lower the rolling resistance coefficient. Diesel trains are ~3x-4x more efficient per ton-mile, and regenerative braking with battery electric powertrains can supercharge this by recovering a high proportion of the energy.
Trucks carry more freight than trains because of their flexibility, even though they are significantly more expensive per ton mile. Any solution has to preserve that flexibility. The features of a concept might include:
-
Steel Wheels
Steel wheels keep losses low, reducing the powertrain size and energy usage.
-
Steel Halfpipe on the Surface or in Tunnels
The raw steel cost in railroads is negligible as a share of new track cost. Extra steel for a simpler half pipe that allows faster turning could be an advantageous tradeoff.
-
Stripped Down, Aerodynamic Carts
Truck cabs can go away. The smaller powertrain can easily fit within the "floor."
-
Rubber Wheels for Streets
Some models could have retractable rubber wheels that allow local travel and save time and money by avoiding transfers. Rubber wheels would be slow and only meant for the "last mile."
-
Utilization of Government Right-of-Way and Open Access
One reason for the trucking industry's competitiveness is a low barrier to entry. Trucks are inexpensive, and the road network is open to anyone who pays taxes and tolls.
Railroads that own right-of-way can create natural monopolies and are vulnerable to groups like unions or regulators capturing part of the monopoly surplus. Rail networks also tend to be underutilized, driving up fixed costs. Toll roads, where private companies pay the government for right-of-way and agree to open access, could be a model to emulate.
Railroads Could, but Probably Won't
Electric carts could operate on existing railroads. Companies are trying this! It would make rail more competitive on shorter routes, improve delivery times, and allow for smaller intermodal terminals. But, there are many barriers to implementation.
Regulation and unions have prevented railroads from reducing train operators from two to one after spending billions of dollars on automation. Automated track inspection is a similar story. The railroads are organized around large, high-volume customers and divested many local tracks helpful for a point-to-point system. Any significant growth in market share would probably require massive investments to double-track more corridors. And railroads have very little competition or pressure to innovate in their core business.
Real change would probably require painful competition from falling trucking prices that spurs action from unions, regulators, railroad executives, and investors.
The Future of Ground Transportation
It might be difficult to fathom that a mature sector like ground transportation could be 10x cheaper and have 10x greater throughput on existing right-of-way. But that is what the combination of electrification and driving automation software can unlock. Car designs should rationalize if we remove crash safety standards.
Electric freight carts in high-utilization half pipes would be nearing ocean freight in cost per ton mile while being much faster and more flexible. The defining mega projects for the 21st-century economy could be tunnels crossing the Bering Strait and Strait of Gibraltar or a true Pan-American (freight) highway. Containers could move between Asia and North America with air freight delivery times and ocean freight prices.
Faster and cheaper ground transportation would increase much-needed competition in ocean freight and air travel. Congested ports or airport procedures that require significant non-air time would be untenable.
Competition for central cities will also increase, and suburbs should grow. Attracting residents will be even more about quality of life and amenities.
Virtually all automobile externalities are downstream of poor driving and subsequent weight increases. Deleting crashes also deletes injuries and pollution.
Rapid personal transportation has long been a utopian vision but hasn't come to pass outside the automobile. Pods on tracks are too capital-intensive. Starting with bicycles requires too much effort from the passenger and isn't comfortable enough. Modern driving software and electrification simplify a successful model while allowing customers to keep what they love about autos. The era of the car and truck has barely started.
Human Driving Increases Transportation Cost 10x
2024 October 14 Twitter Substack See all postsWhy ground transportation still has a lot of legs.
The Cost of Poor Human Driving Ability
Something like 40,000 people die in traffic accidents in the US every year. The number is over one million per year globally.
There are over 5 million non-fatal injuries from car crashes each year that require medical attention in the US.
In 2010, the NHTSA estimated that the total costs from these events were $836 billion, or ~$2700 per American per year.
But these costs are just the tip of the iceberg because most of the cost of transportation, at >$2 trillion per year, comes from adjusting to human inadequacies.
Passenger Cars
Impacts of Safety on Car Design
Modern cars are hefty. A Suburban can weigh over 6,000 pounds, and even a Honda Civic weighs nearly 3000 pounds. A slow-speed, unregulated four-person vehicle might only weigh a few hundred pounds.
The root cause of this weight difference is the structure and associated safety systems. Crash requirements require a certain amount of structural strength to protect passengers. Airbags and robust seats add more weight. More weight requires more power to move, so the engine and systems like transmissions and tires must be beefier to meet performance requirements, further driving up weight.
Aerodynamics is the other major factor in powertrain sizing. Structures that are good at meeting crash standards aren't the most aerodynamic. The most efficient small vehicles, like a velomobile, look much different. Cars can have more aerodynamic shells after removing safety constraints.
A Velomobile; Source: Wikipedia
Weight imposes external costs as well. Road wear is proportional to the fourth power of axle weight. The previously mentioned Suburban causes ~16x more road damage than the Civic. A lightweight vehicle would barely register. Our roads would last significantly longer with less maintenance (and traffic delays).
Humans being awful drivers leads to a massive increase in vehicle costs and weight, makes cars more dangerous to people outside of them, and imposes significant costs on infrastructure like roads.
The Forces Cars Must Overcome
Rolling resistance and air resistance are the primary forces cars fight. Engineers size motors and powertrains accordingly.
Rolling resistance, which is the energy lost between the tires and the ground, mainly through the tire or ground squishing, is represented by the equation:
Cutting mass or using stiffer tires can reduce rolling resistance.
Air resistance is a little more complicated:
The best performance comes from aerodynamic shapes (low drag coefficient) and small frontal areas. You can slow down to reduce the velocity component, but most prefer to get places quickly.
Towards an Ideal Design
It should be possible to decrease the weight of a car by 10x without sacrificing speed or internal volume. Both the frame and the powertrain need addressing. There are several key features:
Aerodynamic Shape
Losses due to air resistance already dominate a heavy car's energy consumption at highway speeds. Lightweight vehicles, like bicycles, can see aerodynamic losses exceed rolling resistance at 10-15 mph. Lightweight cars must be aerodynamic to keep the powertrain size small. That probably means shapes like teardrops or submarines. Long and skinny vehicles are better than cube-like ones to keep the front cross-section small.
Electric Powertrain
Electric vehicles can scale down more gracefully than internal combustion cars because internal combustion engines have strong scale effects. It can also be challenging to meet emissions requirements in small engines. Engines have more unforgiving shapes and require cooling air that increases drag significantly for very aerodynamic shapes. Batteries should win because they are efficient, cost-effective, and require minimal cooling.
Light-weighting Frame and Shell
A shell only needs to protect riders from the elements rather than shield them from crashes with multi-ton vehicles. And aerodynamic shapes put less stress on the enclosure.
A lightweight shell and a small powertrain don't require a strong frame for support. The passengers should be a significant portion of the weight.
These requirements end up being very strict. A blocky car with excessive drag would require a much bigger powertrain and increased frame weight. Even minor crash safety standards could cause weight to cascade up by increasing drag and frame weight.
Adding Up the Costs
The cost reduction should be greater than 10x under some conditions.
Electric-assisted velomobiles can weigh as little as 75 pounds. Some models can go 175 miles per kilowatt-hour in all-electric mode (~5900 MPGe). These vehicles aren't practical people carriers because they only go 30-40 mph and lack creature comforts. They also aren't cheap because they are mostly handmade with fancy materials to be light enough for a human to pedal. Electric motors and no expectation of human exertion allow slightly heavier, mass-production-friendly materials and techniques. A modest battery pack of a few kilowatts in a modern cell-to-pack configuration might only add 50 pounds. The efficiency won't be as eye-popping at a mass of a few hundred pounds and a higher speed, but it could still easily be 10x more efficient than a Tesla Model 3 and 40x gasoline cars. There are heavier cars manufactured in China that cost $1000-$2000, so the most bare-bones models could come in the same price range. Faster models would cost a few thousand more. These single-person vehicles would be incredibly affordable, costing only a few cents per mile.
Energy consumption for HVAC and self-driving software can become significant as vehicles get more efficient. But, the cost of AI computing has been falling dramatically. It seems safe to assume that energy consumption and cost will be affordable a few years after automation is cracked in full-size cars. Waste heat from the computer can help heat the cabin when it is cold, and the air conditioning will need to be very efficient! The engineering in these systems probably means the difference between a great vehicle and a mediocre one.
4-8 passenger vehicles will weigh more and might not be 10x lighter than minivans or Suburbans because they have to handle ~1000 pounds of passengers and cargo.
Robotaxis can offer more cost reduction through increased asset utilization if the upfront cost reductions disappoint. All vehicles could eventually increase travel speeds to save passengers time.
"Fuel" costs would fall more than 10x compared to oil-powered vehicles.
Regular maintenance would be near zero for bare-bones vehicles. They would likely be replaced instead of repaired, like cell phones or laptops.
Non-combustion air pollution from tire and road wear would decrease significantly because of lower vehicle weight.
Insurance costs would also fall dramatically due to the rarity of crashes, the significantly lower repair/total cost, and collision intensity falling because vehicles carry 1/10th the energy compared to a traditional car at the same speed.
An order-of-magnitude cost reduction (or greater!) seems possible, especially when counting reduced injuries and pollution.
Customer Preference
American car culture is enduring, and some will hate featherweight teardrops zipping around. The answer is to make cheap transportation even more American by making it convenient, abundant, and nearly disposable, similar to how buying clothes has evolved.
The first models might only carry goods and be single-person size. For ~$2000, you could have a personal errand vehicle to pick up groceries, laundry, takeout, etc. In America, you should be able to hire a private taxi for your burrito for less than $0.25. Most people will probably own these given the price point, small form factor, and convenience versus a slower shared fleet vehicle. Why would you walk out to the street to unload a fleet vehicle when your own can pull into the garage? And these vehicles can start before the roads are safe. There are already startups working on prototypes, and their viability should improve rapidly as the software improves.
There will also be many that prefer cheap transportation. The group might include lower-income groups that suffer from unreliable cars, current mass transit riders, those under 16, those getting too old to drive, and parents of young children. Some examples of the benefits are:
Infinite Activities and Drop-offs
One challenge for large families is that you are never home and spend significant portions of the day driving between places or waiting if every kid has multiple activities. Or a parent might be managing 3-4 drop-offs and pickups because one school is a good fit for one kid but not another.
A single-person vehicle could safely transport each kid to their activities and school and always be waiting so the kids never have to. Parents will own these to have control. It would be silly not to have one for each family member given the price point and ~4 being able to fit in one car garage or driveway spot. One larger family car could transport everyone at once.
Outcompeting Public Transportation
Buses, subways, and railways will look like dinosaurs.
Aging in Place
Older people could stay in their homes much longer with budget chauffeurs and errand-running vehicles. The vehicles can also be more ergonomic or easily handle mobility devices. Cheap vehicles mean more variety at low cost because the fixed overhead is a fraction of traditional cars.
Convenient Commuting
Commuter models would be like sprinters, set up to travel rapidly for <100 miles with small battery packs and extremely aerodynamic shells. Their lightweight and small form factor would reduce toll costs and induce high-capacity toll lanes specializing in high-speed commuters.
America can leave behind expensive cars to embrace the next level of cost and convenience.
Policy Paths
The transition from human driving will take time. Cheap, lightweight people movers are currently illegal in many situations, so regulation is a barrier. Most vehicles need to be autonomous before the shift can happen.
Change could happen for several reasons:
Rapid Supply Growth for Self-driving Technologies
Robotaxis should see rapidly falling costs and increasing availability. New cars will come equipped with better and better driving software. And cheap retrofit kits will keep improving. Historical adoption of luxury features that trickle down from premium models probably isn't a good mental model for valuable software with low marginal cost.
Human Drivers Could Become Uninsurable
Most responsible people will give up driving for a technology that will likely be >10x safer and lower their insurance cost. Drunks, wannabe NASCAR drivers, and impatient people who can't handle software's cautious driving could make up a higher proportion of the risk pool, making human driving an increasingly expensive luxury. Jurors might award even larger payouts to victims of crashes caused by drivers who callously choose to drive themselves.
Public Opinion Towards Driving Shifts Rapidly
Today, car crashes are just a part of life, and the people advocating against cars (and human drivers) are the same types of folks who want you to live in a cube and eat bugs. However, attitudes could shift, especially if access to self-driving technology is affordable. Wrecks could go from an everyday thing to an anti-social choice perpetrated by unlikeable demographics (drunks, racers, neurotics).
Road Space Concerns
Road space is likely to be another obstacle as falling costs increase the demand for driving. But, lanes can be much smaller if long, skinny vehicles are cheaper and software is good at lane keeping. Standard interstate lanes are 12'. A typical car is 6' wide. Tripling lane capacity with 4' lanes is possible. Standard 6' wide cars could pay the toll for two lanes. Following distances could be much tighter in autonomous vehicle lanes, doubling capacity again. Faster average speeds can juice the numbers more. Elevated tollways could be much lighter and cheaper if they aren't carrying such heavy vehicles.
Maintaining 12' human-driven car lanes would have very high opportunity costs. A conventional vehicle lane could be as suspicious as an empty bike or bus lane is today.
Electrification Forces Changes in Road Taxes
Gas taxes are less fair as the electric vehicle market grows. Fuel taxation already unfairly favors larger vehicles that do disproportionate road damage compared to their fuel usage. A long-time policy desire has been to move to a Vehicle Miles Tax (VMT). It could account for vehicle weight.
Exposure to Non-Human Carrying Vehicles
Once people see little teardrops picking up their takeout, it is easier to imagine one carrying them or their family members!
These are only a few reasons why the status quo might be unstable in the face of better technology.
Freight Transportation
Freight is as critical as moving people. Industries like trucking should benefit from automated driving technology because driver-related costs and insurance are 45% of the total cost per mile. Electric drive trains will save some on fuel, but the point of freight is carrying heavy things, so there is less mass bloat to pare down. Costs can fall significantly, but other strategies are needed to shrink the powertrain and drive 10x cost reductions.
The central challenge is improving rolling resistance without reducing loaded mass. The obvious answer is to emulate trains with steel wheels on a steel roadway to lower the rolling resistance coefficient. Diesel trains are ~3x-4x more efficient per ton-mile, and regenerative braking with battery electric powertrains can supercharge this by recovering a high proportion of the energy.
Trucks carry more freight than trains because of their flexibility, even though they are significantly more expensive per ton mile. Any solution has to preserve that flexibility. The features of a concept might include:
Steel Wheels
Steel wheels keep losses low, reducing the powertrain size and energy usage.
Steel Halfpipe on the Surface or in Tunnels
The raw steel cost in railroads is negligible as a share of new track cost. Extra steel for a simpler half pipe that allows faster turning could be an advantageous tradeoff.
Stripped Down, Aerodynamic Carts
Truck cabs can go away. The smaller powertrain can easily fit within the "floor."
Rubber Wheels for Streets
Some models could have retractable rubber wheels that allow local travel and save time and money by avoiding transfers. Rubber wheels would be slow and only meant for the "last mile."
Utilization of Government Right-of-Way and Open Access
One reason for the trucking industry's competitiveness is a low barrier to entry. Trucks are inexpensive, and the road network is open to anyone who pays taxes and tolls.
Railroads that own right-of-way can create natural monopolies and are vulnerable to groups like unions or regulators capturing part of the monopoly surplus. Rail networks also tend to be underutilized, driving up fixed costs. Toll roads, where private companies pay the government for right-of-way and agree to open access, could be a model to emulate.
Railroads Could, but Probably Won't
Electric carts could operate on existing railroads. Companies are trying this! It would make rail more competitive on shorter routes, improve delivery times, and allow for smaller intermodal terminals. But, there are many barriers to implementation.
Regulation and unions have prevented railroads from reducing train operators from two to one after spending billions of dollars on automation. Automated track inspection is a similar story. The railroads are organized around large, high-volume customers and divested many local tracks helpful for a point-to-point system. Any significant growth in market share would probably require massive investments to double-track more corridors. And railroads have very little competition or pressure to innovate in their core business.
Real change would probably require painful competition from falling trucking prices that spurs action from unions, regulators, railroad executives, and investors.
The Future of Ground Transportation
It might be difficult to fathom that a mature sector like ground transportation could be 10x cheaper and have 10x greater throughput on existing right-of-way. But that is what the combination of electrification and driving automation software can unlock. Car designs should rationalize if we remove crash safety standards.
Electric freight carts in high-utilization half pipes would be nearing ocean freight in cost per ton mile while being much faster and more flexible. The defining mega projects for the 21st-century economy could be tunnels crossing the Bering Strait and Strait of Gibraltar or a true Pan-American (freight) highway. Containers could move between Asia and North America with air freight delivery times and ocean freight prices.
Faster and cheaper ground transportation would increase much-needed competition in ocean freight and air travel. Congested ports or airport procedures that require significant non-air time would be untenable.
Competition for central cities will also increase, and suburbs should grow. Attracting residents will be even more about quality of life and amenities.
Virtually all automobile externalities are downstream of poor driving and subsequent weight increases. Deleting crashes also deletes injuries and pollution.
Rapid personal transportation has long been a utopian vision but hasn't come to pass outside the automobile. Pods on tracks are too capital-intensive. Starting with bicycles requires too much effort from the passenger and isn't comfortable enough. Modern driving software and electrification simplify a successful model while allowing customers to keep what they love about autos. The era of the car and truck has barely started.