Currently, Singapore's roads are often congested by vehicles
with single person occupying the car. There's a lot of wasted road capacity due
to the number of 3/4 empty cars. My dream for the future of land transport is
the development of modular vehicles.
Modular vehicles will be made of detachable pods consisting of driver pods, passenger pods, storage pods and so
on. The combination of required pods can be customised based on usage and
change easily so that road space can be effectively used.
For example, a family of 4 drives a 4 part pod out of their house in the morning. The father will commandeer the driver pod, the other members can each occupy a passenger pod. Each pod is connected to another, perhaps magnetically or even simply physically latched on.
The combined vehicle will first travel to school to drop off the elder child. This passenger pod can be let off and stored at the school, the pod can also double as the kid's personal storage space. Next to the childcare centre to drop off the youngest child and his pod. Followed by the wife at her workplace along with her pod. Eventually when the father drives to his workplace, he will only have to drive his single pod.
The wife's pod can also be a driver pod, which allows her to pick up the kids after school. It's basically 2 or more cars at the size of one saloon car now.
There will also be
much more flexibility in terms of usage and much higher fuel efficiency. Making the cars single occupancy reduces the size of the vehicle and opens up possibility to alternative power sources. I can only imagine the efficiency of our roads in this dream on mine.