Institution news
Carbon emissions from road transport in the UK have remained almost static for the last 20 years, but Government statistics suggest that they have actually begun to rise slightly in recent years. Improvements in efficiency have been offset by increased road miles, particularly in the thriving online delivery market. In addition to this, London and many local authorities around the country have failed to cut air pollution to below their legal limits and this is a problem most related to road transport. In our drive to reduce our carbon emissions and clean up our air, road transport pollution stands out as a problem that we have barely begun to address.
There are the rumblings of a revolution on the horizon, however. This week saw the publication of the Government’s Road to Zero Strategy and the National Infrastructure Commission’s plan to revolutionise road transport, progress in the industry look set to accelerate. Last Thursday, giving an opening address to Shell’s Power Progress Together conference in the London Stadium, CEO Ben van Beurden said he would welcome a proposed ban on sales of petrol and diesel vehicles from 2040, or even bringing it forward to an earlier date, something unthinkable for an oil and gas company to say just a few years ago. Although, as other speakers throughout the day pointed out, a 2040 phase out is unambitious compared to many other nations who have already announced earlier bans.
Attending this event, however, it was difficult not to be excited by the future of transport. The Roads Minister, Jesse Norman MP, said that we are on the verge of a technological revolution that will define our society for generations to come. He talked about how Government needed to be central to developing new technology and cited the Year of Engineering, a campaign supported by IMechE, as one of the initiatives they are supporting to deliver their ambitions.
Before moving the debate on to more futuristic visions of transport, one of the first sessions was a discussion on electric vehicles, a technology that is becoming more and more commonplace. Gareth Dunsmore, Nissan’s EV Director, said that they now had a customer base of over 300,000 for their electric models and this allows them to learn from driver behaviour. For example, they know that 80% of vehicle charging takes place at home. While Dustin Benton, Head of Research at Green Alliance, said that people like owning electric vehicles because at a personal level it means they are cause less air pollution and because as a country they will lead us to be less reliant on foreign oil.
Royal Mail, who have begun rolling out electric delivery van fleets, pointed to potential savings to the company as a result of switching. Graham Bennett, Head of Fleet Engineering, said they spend £150 million per year on fuel, so the reduced cost of electric charging compared with diesel is a strong incentive to switch. One of the main issues for them was that electric vans made no noise and this can be quite disconcerting the first time you drive one, so drivers require training before taking control of an electric delivery van.
Later sessions at the Shell conference focussed on more long term visions of the future of transport, with discussions centred on drones, autonomous vehicles and innovative new business models of car sharing.
One theme was the threat being felt by the big incumbents present, Shell and BMW, by the moves of the like of Google and Uber into the autonomous vehicle market. In response, both are expanding to become vertically integrated technology companies rather than mainly car (BMW) or oil and gas (Shell). Through its purchase of the vehicle charging company New Motion and the energy supplier First Utility, Shell is positioning itself at the forefront of smart grid technology. BMW, meanwhile, directly addressed the challenge of Silicon Valley by saying they are such a threat because they play by different rules. Uber and Facebook did not care about revenue in their first years, said Antony Douglas from BMW iMobility. They just got on with building massive user bases and then aimed to monetise this once sufficient users had been accumulated. Conventional companies cannot act like this. In response to the Uber threat, BMW has sought to redefine the car sharing market, by seeking to ‘make car sharing cool’. DriveNow is a new entity that allows people to use BMW’s upmarket electric vehicles for short periods of time. They see this as a way both to cater to a new and expanding car sharing market and to give people an extended test drive of their vehicles in the hope that they are enticed to buy one down the line.
As the Roads Minister said, it is a revolutionary time in transport as the whole system is rapidly becoming electrified and autonomous and this makes it a particularly exciting time to become an engineer. For example, the lack of an internal combustion engine in battery electric vehicles frees up engineers in the car industry to invent more revolutionary designs. Drones will also become more important. One of the reasons transport emissions have not gone down in recent years is the boom in online shopping. Delivery vehicles have proliferated to bring small parcels directly to your door, which is extremely inefficient. Catherine Weetman, from the Chartered Institute of Logistics & Transport’s Environment & Sustainability Forum, said that the last half mile can account for as much as 50% of logistics costs. At the IMechE, we are looking to inspire the next generation of engineers who will meet these challenges through events like the Unmanned Aircraft System Challenge.
Whatever the future of transport, engineers will be at the heart of it, shaping it and delivering it.