A revolution in mobility: Satyanarayanan Chakravarthy

Several years ago, I was at the immigration counter at Heathrow, London, and the officer wanted to know the purpose of my visit. I said I was there to attend a conference on mobility called “MOVE”. I had to clarify to the confused officer—it’s about driverless cars, air taxis, and the like. He’s not alone. People of an older generation are used to looking at cars and planes as belonging to the realm of transportation and would naturally be puzzled to hear the term “mobility”.

Much later, I was at a panel discussion when a co-panellist clarified the distinction between, “transportation” and “mobility”. Transportation is mode-centric, that is, what a bus service in a city would offer its riders. Mobility, on the other hand, is user-centric, regardless of the modes of transportation.

Mobility, then, has to function at different levels. The world is fast moving towards on-demand mobility (ODM), involving shared mobility, away from private ownership of vehicles. It is in this context that we have to envisage what the scenario on mobility would look like by 2047 in India.

While the known modes of transportation could get only better in the next two decades, the emphasis of this write-up is on modes that aren’t too prevalent today—micro-mobility, aerial mobility, and high-speed mobility. We will consider these below in the reverse order. Before that, we should point out two salient features of them: sustainability and efficiency. As with existing vehicles that will evolve towards electric (and possibly hydrogen) and become greener, the new forms too will decidedly be more carbon conscious. Besides, they will offer fast, hassle-free, and affordable on-demand throughput.

India is making epochal strides in the development of hyperloop technology. As we speak, we appear to be second only to China in the level of technology development on this front. From a present-day 450-m subscale vacuum tube-track with a magnetically propelled and levitated pod run nearing completion at IIT Madras’ Discovery Campus outside Chennai, we aim to leap to a full-scale demonstration up to the commercially viable speed of 600 kmph over approximately a 10 km distance within the next five years. The Indian Railways has plans to establish such a network by 2047, after supporting the development leading to the full-scale demonstration mentioned above. What’s more, the same infrastructure would hold all the way up to 1,200 kmph, which means going from Chennai to Bengaluru in 15 minutes! The cost to the passenger could be in the region of Rs 1,500-2,500 per ticket.

While hyperloop can ensure mass rapid movement of people between specific urban hubs, a less infrastructure-intensive approach that can spawn across is electric aerial mobility. The crux of electric aviation is its affordability.

Well before 2047, we can envision electric aircraft plying domestic routes primarily, at about half the present-day fares. More importantly, it will open up sectors that were hitherto unattended to, bringing up hundreds of new, small airports. The impact of this on the economy, starting from aircraft design and manufacturing, to their operation, will be tremendous.

A micro aspect of electric aviation would be in the form of eVTOLs—electric vertical take-off and landing aircraft, which can take off and land vertically like a drone without the need for runways, and fly like a plane. These will transform urban mobility.

Further, these aircraft could more easily become autonomous, i.e., pilotless, even before driverless cars become commonplace on city streets. Going forward, voice-activated, or even better, conversational, and better still, thought-activated, flights are eminently possible.

Imagine a day when you could hail a ride on your phone app, get an eVTOL to your rooftop to take you to your city hyperloop station, and you get down the escalator from the vertiport there to get into the next hyperloop pod waiting to leave every two minutes, reach the next city in 15-20 minutes, get out and up the escalator to the vertiport to board the air taxi there to land on the rooftop of your actual destination in the host city, all under an hour!

The last but certainly not the least positive development to expect in the next 22 years is micro mobility in the last mile on the ground, enabled by electric bicycles, segways, etc. that are available on-demand.

Lastly, all the above rapid transit developments should lead to a massive decongestion of cities, making cities more walkable. Life would come a full circle as people would be able to include a healthy dose of walking as part of their daily mobility mix.

Views are personal. The author is a Professor at IIT Madras and Co-Founder of The ePlane Company and Agnikul Cosmos.