Felix Kramer, Founder of the California Cars Initiative, talks about the electrification of transportation which involves the convergence of the power generation industry and the personal transportation industry. He explains how an electric mile is cheaper and cleaner than a gasoline mile. Electric car technology will lead to energy security as countries can become independent of overseas energy sources. There are even benefits to power plants and the grid. Kramer also discusses a new initiative – the “big fix” involves starting an industry that will retrofit existing gasoline vehicles so that some, or even all their energy used can be converted to electric.

Michael Schrage is a research associate at MIT Sloan School’s Center for Digital Business. Watch him share his thoughts about transportation technology and how every device can be made smarter. Schrage believes there will be policy battles around allocating costs and responsibilities for carbon footprints, and also offers perspective into dealing with traffic congestion.

Peter Diamandis, chairman & CEO of X-Prize Foundation, discusses the price improvement curve towards affordable space travel. He explains a new X-Prize idea for improving technology around beamed power propulsion, where energy is beamed to a rocket and the rocket converts the energy. See more below from an interview with Diamandis.

Doug Malewicki, President and Chief Scientist of AeroVisions, Inc. provides his insight into the Sky Tran. The Sky Tran is comprised of little vehicles for two passengers that range from 35 mph in a neighborhood up to 150 mph in the inter-cities. It is elevated micro-freeways/guideways above traffic and can eliminate commuter congestion because of cost. Hear more from Malewicki about the Sky Tran.

Joseph Sussman, MIT professor of Civil & Environmental Engineering discusses the use of congestion pricing as a way to change people’s driving behaviors.  With congestion pricing, certain trips will cost more than other types of trips.  Sussman explains that there will be a lesser need of building more infrastructures that are built for peak hour capacity by enticing people to drive outside the peak hours.  Hear more from Sussman.

CalTech Chemistry Professor, Nate Lewis is working on a process called artificial photosynthesis, which takes a function of a plant (energy from sunlight and converting it into stored chemical fuel) and creates a fuel that can provide energy for people to use in a common form. Hear more from Lewis on this innovative idea.

Geoff Wardle, Director of Advanced Mobility Research at the Art Center College of Design believes we could see vehicles that are able to drive by themselves within 10 years. The latest car models have seen crash avoidance technology like auto-brake, blind spot indicators, and parallel parking assist which are great strides in the direction of cars being able to drive themselves. Hear more from Wardle below.



Now that hybrid cars are standard, an aviation expert argues that it’s time to put hybrid engines in the air.

Alternative energy advances have been remarkable. However, new technology, processes and products must be evaluated against the expense of bringing them to market. With a difficult economy, limited budgets and engineering resources, airplane manufacturers find it much more difficult to invest in developing new technology during tough economic times. Unfortunately, this means innovation can be delayed, perhaps when we need it most.

Innovation is sometimes inspired by incremental operational or cost benefits. It may also come as a result of a significant outside threat. Recently, several political, economic and industrial factors have combined in a manner that threatens aviation gasoline’s long term viability. If innovation in aviation can progress, alternative energy may offer an answer to the potential halt of aviation gas production. Will these offerings be ready and broadly available in time? Are petroleum-based solutions going to share the stage with new biofuels? And, what about the high profile electric and hybrid technology that has swept through the automobile industry? Can aviation benefit from that learning curve and make a faster transition?

Electric motors are highly efficient, robust and do not lose power at higher density altitudes. They are also quiet and emission free. Perhaps most important for aviation, electric motors are relatively light weight. A 200-horsepower electric motor weighs only one-third that of an equivalent horsepower internal combustion engine. These features are certainly compelling. The critical question is how to efficiently get energy to the electric motor. For that, you need a battery.

The widely held perception is that batteries are heavy—very heavy—toxic, rupture easily, short circuit, catch fire, and are expensive. Research advances have eliminated many of these critical issues, at least in part. It is true that some battery configurations (and equivalent “fuel cell” technologies) are highly toxic. However, this is not universally the case. The baseline lithium ion battery chemistry is a recyclable salt, with low environmental impact. Recent advances in the internal configuration of the battery, particularly the layers, or separator, provides for a lighter, more efficient and sturdier battery. Together with new embedded battery management systems, concerns regarding energy spikes, thermal runaways and potential failure and fire have been greatly diminished. Still, are batteries ready for broad, mainstream airplane applications? Aren’t weight and cost still a concern?

While new configurations and systems are often discussed, and eventually flown in the experimental category, many do not emerge to the larger certified marketplace. For many pilots, battery-powered flight remains merely a curiosity without practical application. A careful analysis of mission profiles and typical general aviation aircraft aerodynamics indicates the current battery energy density is about half of what it needs to be. Projections range from three to five years, perhaps more, before sufficient energy density is reached for a true battery-only propulsion system. Like energy density, battery cost is also a significant impediment to broad acceptance. Unit cost and operational cost effectiveness remain critical goals for mainstream market acceptance. But perhaps the largest barrier is the rigorous FAA certification process. Innovators with a goal of mainstream market acceptance view this process as the ultimate feasibility test.

Given the remarkable benefits and acknowledged limitations of electric propulsion, is there a way forward? The “first generation” answer may be provided with the energy balance of hybrid propulsion. As battery technology matures with energy density and cost improvements, the “second generation” propulsion technology may be all-electric.

To provide for the longer endurance mission requirements of the largest aviation market segments, a hybrid solution could include a small jet-fuel powered auxiliary power unit. Much like a hybrid automobile, this solution provides enhanced efficiency and reduced cost, while avoiding the expense and weight of an all-electric battery powered aircraft. The benefits of electric propulsion are not lost, but supplemented, with the high energy density of jet fuel.

Charlie Johnson, the former president of Cessna, “The time to accelerate incorporation of this new hybrid technology has arrived. Aviation is a vital market that will benefit from the environmentally friendly, lower cost, more efficient and higher performing aircraft.”

Time is of the essence. A slow, pondering review has its risks. If actual flight tests prove out the theoretical projections, it appears that hybrid cost and performance features will be very attractive to the pilot-owner consumer. Much like the success of the Toyota Prius, the manufacturer that is first to offer a mainstream hybrid aircraft model may have an important market identity advantage.

Manufacturers are understandably cautious when it comes to adopting new technologies. Thorough, rigorous evaluation of each new innovation is an absolute necessity. New technology providers should work closely with major manufacturers and the FAA to ensure that the mandate of safety is never compromised. However, we must not hesitate to face the challenge before us. Too much is at stake. The development of electric hybrid technology will be expensive and time consuming. Hybrid technology has reached an inflection point where execution is now possible. All will benefit. Stakeholders from every corner will need to participate, collaborate, and invest—this innovation needs to make it through the gauntlet.

George E. Bye is a general aviation entrepreneur and an airline transport pilot with over 4,000 flying hours.  Mr. Bye is also an engineer and a former Air Force pilot who served in Desert Storm.  He is CEO of Bye Energy, Inc., based in Denver, Colorado.  Bye Energy is a technology innovator currently collaborating with other alternative energy providers to bring new energy technologies to general aviation.

As environmentalists, our hope is that the prestige of the Oscar received by the The Cove can progress the continuation of the Oceanic Preservation Society’s mission. As can be seen in The New York Times article, “Oscar Winners Try to Keep Whale Off Sushi Plates,” this accolade can bring renewed pressure and shed light upon this unnecessary practice of slaughtering both dolphins and whales.

Richard F. Schaden, Founder of Beyond The Edge is recognizing the award winning film, The Cove by matching donations to the Oceanic Preservation Society.  Find out more about Beyond The Edge’s donation matching initiative.

Warp six, Mr. Scott.

Whether it’s to colonize new worlds, cavort with the Klingons, or strip-mine unobtainium, many people blithely assume that our descendants will go to the stars.

The well-known problem with this promising scenario is that the stars are immensely far away.  Consider this: The fastest vehicle ever piloted by humans was the Apollo 10 command module.  In May, 1969, it returned from the moon in a mere three days, plummeting earthward at a blistering seven miles per second. But cosmically speaking, the moon is cheek-by-jowl with our planet. A jaunt to Proxima Centauri, the nearest other star, would take 110,000 years at seven miles per second. You should hope for decent onboard food.

That undoubtedly sounds discouraging for space travel, but you might expect that our space-faring progeny will engineer rockets faster than a Saturn V. However, what they can’t do, at least according to Albert Einstein’s physics, is break the universe’s ultimate speed limit: the speed of light. So interstellar trips will inevitably take many years—at least as measured by the society that launches them. (The crew may age less rapidly thanks to special relativity, but what good is that if everything left behind becomes fossilized ?)

This is a long-standing problem for sci-fi authors who can’t afford to slow their stories while protagonists play Sudoku (or just sleep) for decades or centuries between one alien encounter and the next. So writers have peppered their yarns with plausible-sounding schemes for quickly zipping around the galaxy.

Two ever-popular schemes from sci-fi are hyperdrive and warp drive. Both beat the speed of light by manipulating space.

When you shift your rocket into hyperdrive, it makes a lane change and travels through “hyperspace”—an imaginary alternative pathway that comprises a geometric shortcut to your destination. When Han Solo barrels around the empire in Star Wars, he’s using technology that is presumably as conventional a transport medium for him as the wheel is for us. Stargate also invokes hyperdrive, as did Babylon 5. A slightly different flavor of hyperspace called jump drive was used in Battlestar Galactica and Isaac Asimov’s Foundation series.

But is hyperspace just hype? Could there really be shortcuts through space that would mimic this sci-fi trope?  There might be, and physicists call them wormholes. These possible pathways to other parts of the cosmos seem to work on blackboards. But actually constructing a wormhole and keeping it open long enough to slip a rocket through seems to require either enormous amounts of energy, or the use of something called “exotic matter,” a hypothesized material that has negative energy, if you can picture that. To make exotic matter would take incredibly large quantities of ordinary energy, and so this is one material that makes even unobtainium seem prosaic. Given the difficulties with wormholes, both theoretical and practical, it’s unclear whether a real-life version of hyperdrive can ever be achieved, so it remains problematic.  For sci-fi authors, of course, “problematic” is still better than “forbidden by physics.”

The most iconic FTL-travel scheme remains Star Trek’s warp drive, which works by distorting space, compressing it in front of the ship, and expanding it behind, thereby bringing you more quickly to your destination without having to cross swords with Einstein. Think about it: As you read these lines, you’re moving at tremendous velocity away from galaxies that are billions of light-years distant, but not because you’re on a hi-tech rocket. Your apparent speed is actually the universe expanding the space between you and those distant nebulae.

Warp drive works similarly—by enlarging the space behind your spacecraft and collapsing it in front. You literally shrink the distance to your destination, thereby avoiding the inconvenience of building ultra-high-speed rockets.

When Captain Kirk is alerted to troubles in the Gamma Quadrant, he gets Scotty to crank up the Enterprise’s cruise control to many times light speed. The Enterprise accomplishes this with matter-antimatter engines, mediated by dilithium crystals (whatever those are). How these manage to warp space is unclear, but then again, so is a lot of what goes on in Star Trek. But if you really want to distort space, you need to tow around either a black hole, or some incredibly massive, rotating objects able to drag space-time around like a teaspoon in a pot of syrup. Neither seems practical.

Faster-than-light travel has been invented because we want to send ourselves into space, and being confined for all time to the solar system is about as satisfying as the idea that you’ll never take your Maserati farther than the end of the driveway. But the universe isn’t obliged to make all our whims feasible, and FTL travel may be—like the perfect martini—little more than a nice idea.