How Will DLT Make The Transport Industry a Driver of The Global Economy

In a previous article, we talked about how countries are preparing for the transition to an autonomous transport system, and also about the obvious leaders in this technology race. Now we will concentrate on the science fiction in the transport field that breaks into our lives. You can find out how all it will change the status quo of the world economy leaders reading this article.

How the flying cars will look like

German Daimler has invested €25 million in a perspective project e-Volvo, which pledges the world to create a double electric aircraft Volokopter. This is an electric-powered passenger quadcopter with a vertical takeoff and landing. Testing of aircraft with 18 screws will begin next year.

And the Slovak AeroMobil company presented a serial version of its flying car, announcing the beginning of the pre-orders for this model, which the first owners will get in 2020. The price of such a flying machine is about $1.3 million. The developers promise to release the 500 copies of "roadable aircrafts".

Lilium Aviation in 2017 in Germany has successfully tested the first in the history two-seater electric car with vertical takeoff and speed up to 300 km/h. And the Israeli company Tactical Robotics is preparing to launch a flying taxi CityHawk with an up to four people capacity. The “wonder machine” is able to take off vertically, like a helicopter, but it is equipped with a jet engine on the hydrogen fuel. The flying car will use the Fancraft technology that has been patented by Urban Aeronautics. Thanks to that technology the rotor blades will be interior unlike as in helicopters, which have them outside. It will allow the roadable aircraft to land and take off from almost any surface without risking for the blades to be damaged. However, we have to wait for this engineering miracle to be released in about five years.

Chinese company EHang develops a drone-taxi. Flying Ehang 184 moves at the air only by a pre-planned route that the passenger controls on his tablet, and this is the only way to control this aircraft transport.

"The world's first serial flying car" from the Dutch company PAL-V can already be booked. The company announced it in February 2017, although all the device features look like more a compact helicopter has.

Ritukar VIJAY, an autonomous systems Industry expert and responsible for developing autonomous technologies for ground-based and aerial vehicles for more than a decade, shared his predictions about the development of the new era transport in an exclusive interview for Bitnewstoday.com: "Because of some key breakthroughs in batteries and VTOL methods there are about 7 well-funded startups and established players are working in this direction. Including Uber, Airbus, CityHawk, Lilium, Kitty Hawk, eVolo and Volocopter”.

As you can see, these models are not fully automated and their end to end autonomous capabilities are not-perfect today, however; according to VIJAY the gradually automated capabilities of VTOL along with in-flight autopilots together will make such transport much more viable in the long term.

“The upside of autonomous flying cars will be massive and it will truly revolutionize transportation in a big way but meanwhile, at this time focus has to be on the ecosystem development between OEMs and shared mobility players, which has started with Uber contracting 4-5 OEMs for its flying vehicles, but the major thing to watch out for is the regulations working around it” - the robotics and vehicles developer Ritukar VIJAY says.

According to his words, Australia and Africa are open to testing such vehicles. However, he added that although flying cars are similar to flying drones for package deliveries, the flying cars will face challenges when it comes to regulations rather it will be far more involved.

Testing and development are totally top secret, and experts know much more about our future than we can imagine, and perhaps they have already determined it.

As share of the world markets

Craig FULLER, the Director of Communications for the Blockchain in Transport Alliance (further as BiTA) in an exclusive interview for Bitnewstoday.com said that, according to BiTA estimates, the DLT in transport will be widely accepted by 2026 and become an integral part of the world transport system. The expert also added that the introduction of the distributed registry technologies can radically change the transport industry: “Deloitte tweeted that in terms of decentralized database impact, in May 2017, 10 percent of global GDP would be built on top of DLT-applications. This huge and ambitious claim was made because of the transformative nature of the technology and the effect it will have on society. For logistics and transportation, it has the potential to have a bigger impact on this $8 trillion global industry”.

Greg KERR, the co-founder of the green DLT-company, in an exclusive interview for Bitnewstoday.com shared his opinion that the west will contribute to a favorable policy of scaling distributed technologies, which, as we found out, will form the basis of an autonomous transport system of any city and any country. "Treating California as its own “country,” we may see business in Silicon Valley start using this tech first and quickly out-perform their global competitors. Highly centralized single party systems like Russia and China will struggle with the distributed nature of the tech and create policies that ultimately empower the state, effectively missing the greatest benefit of the technology. The developing world where the systems are weak, inefficient or non-existent have the greatest potential for quick-mass adaptation. Look for countries like India, Nigeria, Ethiopia with large populations and limited access to banks as the places of widespread adaptation" - said the ex-Pentagon analyst.

However, according to Sloane BRAKEVILLE, co-founder of the transport logistics company based on DLT-technologies, the revolution of full-automated systems and AI is likely to begin with China and then spread further around the world. In his opinion, this country is already many miles ahead thanks to the government programs such as facial recognition.

In an exclusive interview for Bitnewstoday.com Sloane BRAKEVILLE, who has also launched the IBM DLT-department, confirmed the forecasts of many experts that the full automation of transport will be completed by 2040. At the same time, he also supported the Greg KERR’s opinion that some countries also deliberately hinder the development of these technologies: “We’re seeing a trend of automation already, but too many old-world leaders are profiting from the lack of automation. As the guard changes, we will see a growth in automation. There are fully automated marine terminals already, but we are still far from building the infrastructure that will be required to automate ground, rail, and air”.

Craig FULLER believes that the improvement and automation of transport infrastructure in the coming decades will inevitably accelerate the development of the economy itself. The expert also added that these changes may have a negative impact on some sectors of the economy thus they can lose the status quo or just disappear at all.

In this case what comes first: the technology will be to lead, or the market will set the demand for the new technology? Will the automatization of society give a new direction for the economy development? Here, experts are considering opportunities at both sides.

KERR argues that technology development will be driven by market needs, government policy and regulation. And he adds that the economy of the future will reward efforts that have a positive impact on the human condition and the environment. "Machine aided transport will be much more efficient than today’s human operated systems. These efficiencies will reduce waste and maximize resources”.   

Sloane BRAKEVILLE believes that this process of interaction between technology development and economic growth is interdependent. According to him, the automation will lead to logistics costs reduction, which will positively affect the entire trade globally, and also access to consumer goods. The expert suggests that the transport autonomy is can likely lead to a new industrial revolution.