Planes, Trains, and EVs
How innovations in renewable energy will change transportation
Ric Edelman: It's Wednesday, August 16th. There is now a new bus service in Scotland. A fleet of five busses travels in traffic. The busses can travel 50 miles an hour on a 14 mile route. They carry 10,000 people a week. Why am I bothering to mention a bus service in Scotland? Because this bus service operates autonomously. It's the first bus system [00:01:00] anywhere in the world. There are two staff on board. Someone does sit in the driver's seat to monitor the tech. Another person collects the tickets, but they aren't operating the vehicle. It costs $9 to ride.
In Indiana, the Department of Transportation is working with Purdue and a German company to test cement that's embedded with magnetized particles, charges electric vehicle batteries while you're driving over the road. Sweden tried this in 2018 with an electric rail. It was installed down the middle of a one mile road. This stuff's not cheap. 2 to $5 million to build one mile of this tech, but it's pretty cool. You don't have to stop for 20 minutes to recharge your car. You charge while you're driving.
We have a big need for electric vehicles to work lithium for the batteries. The demand for lithium is expected to increase sixfold over the rest of this decade, and there's not enough lithium. But they think they might have found a new source. And this could mark a new era of electric vehicle technology.
Standard Lithium in Arkansas is running a demonstration plant. A Canadian company called E3 Lithium is working with an oil and gas company to extract lithium from a depleted oil production field. Other companies in Texas and New Mexico are doing this as well.
And it's not all just for electric vehicle cars. They're also doing it for EV tolls and electric vehicle takeoff and landing vehicle. Picture a drone big enough to hold five people. It takes off and lands vertically so it can operate in cities, can take people to airports or to the beach. The FAA has just approved a plan that will introduce flying taxis as early as 2025. That's less than two years from now. So we are going from autonomous busses in Scotland to autonomous flying taxis in Manhattan. Future is going to be pretty exciting.
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