During Corona, many of us were bound to our homes. From time to time, we had to move our muscles somehow. What I did was going out for walks. Because we also moved into another district, everything was new and had to be discovered.

By the end of the lockdown, we knew all of the streets and alleys and secret green pathways of our hood. Funnily we didn't know any of the shops, pubs and restaurants around us, because they were closed.

But there is one depressing view that follows you when you go through the streets of a city. Millions of parking cars. Gigantic immobile unneeded mountains of metal standing around. Some of them are three times as large as others. Their design cries "Attention, the boss is on the road".

Ever since I can't get this picture out of my head again. Many cars are on the streets again and move from place to place. But still, any parking space is filled with such a tin man.

So why are we doing this to ourselves?

EVs are not the solution

Let's look at the seemingly green alternatives first.

While with traditional combustion engines, the amount of kilometres is the most destructive part for our environment, the new electrified vehicles have batteries. And they cause the most damage while they are produced. That means many cars that stand around in a parking position (the average car is parking for 22.8 hours a day) is a highly inefficient way to use such a resource. Even more so with battery-driven cars.

There are already some approaches:

• Using the battery while the car is standing to store e.g. solar energy produced by a building roof for the night. That seems interesting at the first glance, but unflexible in the long run.

• Recycling batteries gives them a slightly better eco-balance, but it doesn't cover enough.

• The only sustainable solution is a change in our mindset. Why do we have to own cars? Why don't we share them? Why are we willing to stay in traffic jams day-in and day-out?

The problem with classic cars powered by petrol/gasoline for the environment is obvious. For every 100 km, in an average Diesel, you spend 1% of your yearly CO₂ budget. So after 10,000 km your whole annual CO₂ budget is blown into the air.

Also, cars with combustion engines are incredibly inefficient. They use only 20% of it efficiently on average. The rest is heat. Fuel cells are at about 30% and pure EVs are 64% efficient.

But let's revisit the EV's problem, the batteries. The production also uses energy. A lot. And it uses resources that are not mined sustainably at the moment. Also EVs carry their burden. Probably even similar in size - breaking even after about 100,000 km. While EVs can reach a lifespan of 1,000,000 km, that's not exactly true, but it's still not a good situation.

So the only sustainable way out is to drive less or more efficiently. And throughout the rest of this series, I'd like to dive away from these facts, that most of us already know. I rather want to explore other possibilities and models and look a bit into a possible future.

Four Ways Out, Part 1: Car Sharing

We know that electric cars are better in many ways. Among others, they are three times more efficient than combustion engines. But we have to use their Batteries more efficiently to reduce their negative environmental effects relatively. That means, we have to make use of them also in the remaining 22 hours to tackle both, efficient battery use and the reduction of the sheer amount of cars.

The good news is that the most obvious solution already exists: Car sharing. Having a pool of co-owned cars means that they are used more frequently. Their batteries - bad in production and effective during operation - work much more targeted and much longer in the post-break-even phase. Additionally, parking lots are emptier, streets are not bordered with metal blobs.

On top of that, we'd seesome nice side effects. The maintenance of the cars can be handled professionally. And the latest and most efficient technology can be deployed in higher frequencies.

People just have to get used to the fact that they don't own their car any more. One status symbol less.

Four Ways Out, Part 2: Public Transport

We've seen that there are options to overcome the design flaws of cars. But by far the most advanced infrastructure these days is the already existing public transport sector. Trains, subways and buses. However, it only ranks at number four after cars, walking and bikes. The car is used 3 ½ times more often that .

Even powered by fossil fuels, buses emit less than 50% of CO₂-equivalent than a car assuming average occupancy rates. Trains and subways are already powered by electricity without the drawback of unsustainable batteries. And this system transports billions of people to their destination every single day.

Oc course, it has drawbacks, too. First of all, it is a central system and thus does not scale well. Additional waves of passengers are stressing the already exhausted system. Due to its central control structure, it is also unflexible. Delays cause ripple effects throughout all its cog wheels, which results in more delays. This causes the feeling of unreliability and discomfort, which might be the reason why the personally owned car still gets more adoption.

A second drawback is that the net does not equally expand into all regions. Especially the remote rural areas have a huge disadvantage in terms of distance to the next pick up point and frequency of the service. This could only be solved with more investment into the infrastructure.

Four Ways Out, Part 2: Intelligent Hybrid Systems

Some days ago, we had to use a bus from the public transport system as well as a taxi. The bus was almost empty - four passengers only, so both rides were not very sustainable and also not cheap. In Hamburg and some other cities in Germany, there are more intelligent systems now - intelligent hybrids between public transport and car sharing / taxis. The system running in Hamburg is called Moya.

This system is running small EV buses, suitable for eight passengers and they come with an algorithm powered centrally managed pickup system. As a passenger, you request a ride with a smartphone app. Then the system chooses the best drivers considering start and endpoint and alters their tour just a little bit to fit the new request in. You are not driving alone. Along the way, other passengers might be picked up as well.

This is quite an efficient way in the city. But again as a centralized system, it's hard to scale. Especially as it's also commercial, it has to be profitable. Systems like that usually don't work on the country side. But they can give a hint which systems might be a future-proof approach.

Four Ways Out, Part 2: Autonomous Driving

Let's come to solution number four, the science fiction variant.

The infrastructure around cars is massive. Besides gigantic investments in massive public infrastructure (roads, signs, traffic lights etc.), there is also the personal side. A car always has a parking space where it rests for at least 16 hours every day of the year. In many cases, this space is a garage that takes away space to live and construction resources. However, the dominant resource is the driver. Yo need one person if the car is on the road.

But what if cars became drones and drove autonomously?

They could move 24/7. We could share them very efficiently, and wouldn't even need a parking spot for them. People would get off and the car could directly drive to its next assignment.

Autonomous driving combined with intelligent services could become the future way of transport with similar flexibility like today but without the immense resource abuse.

Some drawbacks remain: People still need to give up their need to own their car-to-possess. Day in day out, people often have the same routes. Public transport covers this more efficiently than autonomous car drones. So the systems must be combined.

Travelling Further Away

Cars are everywhere. I guess they are by far the most visible means of transport. But they cover only parts of the emission and demand for personal transportation. Public transport and trains form another sector. We have that under control. The one that is left is flying.

People love going on holidays. Twice a year they use planes to get into warmer areas. Sometimes travelling 10.000 km or more spending 10 times the annual budget just for one trip. Even more problematic are the often shorter business trips, because they are more frequent and even less necessary in WFH and video conferencing times.

The problem is that there is no green replacement for jet engines yet. One day planes might be propelled with Hydrogen or E-Kerosene, but that technology takes another 10 or 15 years to produce the needed amounts, probably already too late for Earth.

Until then, the only solution might be to slow down in our holidays and to get on a train to visit your favourite Italian city or Spanish beach instead of Bali and Costa Rica.

A Future Vision

In this series, I've collected facts and figures about our transport system and possible alternatives. Cars as we know them are not the future. Flying and moving goods around contributes to the bad reputation of that sector. So what could sustainable transport look like?

For the daily moves, in the future probably everyone will have a combination of options. None of them includes owning a car. You call your vehicle when you need it and some seconds later it stands in front of your door. It drives you to every possible destination, snaps into efficient convoy flows and on mid- and long-distance trips, you switch to comfortable high-speed trains.

Sometimes, people still take flights, but usually only transcontinental. But the planes will be powered by hydrogen.

And finally, all the goods of the world economy will travel slowly with almost zero energy ships powered by wind and sunlight.

The only problem is that nobody wants to give up on comfort. No one wants to take a step back. But unfortunately, we will have to take that step back now to make some comfortable leaps forward in the future.