Can we “Recycle” Transport?

It is difficult to make “recycling” of the transport itself terribly meaningful (at least given our interpretation of “reuse” above). However, there are a couple of key areas that do require attention.

Recycling Packaging

Even the best designed reusable containers and packages are not going to last indefinitely. One only has to look at the condition of the shipping containers we see on lorries every day to realise that these take some serious punishment. There aren't many with pristine paintwork and many have a dent or two in the sides. While scruffy and tired looking metal boxes are all very well sitting in a pile at the docks, we probably wouldn't take kindly to them appearing on our front door in that condition. One of the big challenges with any system that relies on frequent reuse of containers is to avoid turning our kitchens and doorsteps into scruffy loading bays.

Whereas shipping containers have to withstand huge weights and forces when stacked five or more deep in the hold of a ship in a force ten gale, the boxes coming to our homes don't have to be quite that rugged. They will almost certainly be made of plastic rather than metal - but even this will scuff and wear over time.

We must therefore give careful thought to how the bulk of the material in a worn-out package can be efficiently recycled. Two approaches should be carefully considered.

Recycling Vehicles

A huge amount of money is being spent on developing cars and, albeit to a much lesser extent, goods vehicles that are powered by renewable sources. There is therefore a very good chance that whatever vehicles are built for the proposed transport system, within a couple of years, many of their components - engine, brakes, batteries and so on - will be obsolete or at least no longer comparable in performance to those in new vehicles.

In the same way that aeroplane design is now modularised - with “wing” specialists, “fuselage” specialists and engine manufacturers all having control over and developing their sub-system independently, so we should be splitting the design of any radical new system into functional components. As long as standards are agreed for how these fit together each can be developed by those with focused expertise in each area.

Of course, it's not just so that each component can be “best of breed” that such complex systems are broken into functional units. This becomes necessary when projects are so large and complex that a single company cannot afford to or should not be allowed to become the sole source of the solution. For many years, the ability to specify which engine manufacturer you want to supply the engines for your new airliner has kept Rolls Royce, General Electric and others on their toes. This encourages competition, both in product innovation and in cost reduction.

These factors suggest that we should be trying to design modular vehicles. If we're already committed to the concept of flexibility in the load balance - flipping between different proportions of goods versus passengers - then we should also be flexible about other major components - especially the engine and the fuel tank/cell/battery.

Vehicles whose engine is easily replaced are not only future-proofed but are also much easier to maintain. Ideally, a new engine would be one more type of item that the delivery service could deliver. This would make it much cheaper to keep a huge, widely distributed fleet of vehicles operational. Faulty units would simply be transported back to a central depot as if they were any other type of goods.

Battery technology is inching rather than leaping forwards. Batteries are a particular problem as their ability to hold charge tails off over time. The chassis of such a vehicle however, could easily last ten or twenty years if properly maintained. If our vehicles were to have removable batteries that would make them not only able to be upgraded as battery technology improves but also to carry a variable amount of charge and to be recharged in a moment or two simply by swapping a flat battery for a freshly charged one.

Here we need to borrow a couple of ideas from our air forces. In-flight refuelling tankers use some of their cargo space for enlarged fuel tanks and by passing this fuel to other planes can keep them in the air as long as needed (or at least until something else runs out - like the pilot's ability to stay awake). This in-flight refuelling concept is something that we could usefully apply to electric vehicles to counter their otherwise limited range.

Also, note that the maximum take-off weight of a refuelling tanker plane is a constant - regardless of how much of the total weight is fuel that the tanker will use itself versus “cargo” fuel to be delivered to other planes. The fuel is just part of the overall cargo. The nice thing about batteries is that they can be any shape and they're relatively easy to join together. If batteries could be treated as just another type of cargo that can be carried by a flexible transport system, each load of such cargo could contain within it one or more batteries. These would hold enough charge to allow the vehicle carrying it to deliver the rest of the cargo.

A similar principle is used in supporting expeditions - such as those to the South Pole on foot. An advance party (often exploiting vehicles) will position supply drops on the route. The walking or sledging teams then only have to carry enough supplies with them to reach the next drop site. There they pick up new supplies and press on.

Why not do the same with electric vehicles? It's all very well stating that battery technology will improve to the point where range is no longer an issue but, regardless of how good the battery is, you will still have to carry twice as heavy a battery if you want to go twice as far. We've already highlighted that the “overhead” of stuff that has to come along for the ride in order to get our payload to its destination is a big problem.

Range becomes a non-issue and efficiency increases if our delivery vehicles travel short distances between loading points - where part of the load they take on is the power they need to get to the next such loading point.

Key Opportunities

These include the following design approaches.

Action Required

Here we are taking the lessons from two extremes. Firstly, kids toys such as Lego and Meccano show us modular flexible design. We can also learn a lot from fields of life where people and systems are stretched to the limit. In war and in expeditions to the ends of the earth there is no “slack”. Everything has to be optimised or you are at an unnecessary disadvantage against your enemy - whether that's a rogue nation or the Antarctic winds.

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