Transport

A number of companies are now running remote-control rental car services, in which "teledrivers" guide an empty car out to you by remote control, and then you drive it around yourself. It's a weird halfway step towards fully autonomous robotaxis.

Range Energy makes truck trailers, with a clever connection to any standard tractor cab, loaded with electric powertrains to turn any semi into an efficient hybrid. They also let you push entire trailers around by hand at the depot in "shopping cart mode."

The means of carriage needn't be the means of locomotion, says Node Air, and logistics for passengers and cargo will work better with detachable pods that can connect to air or ground vehicles as needed. It's teamed up with JetX to pursue its vision.

Israeli defense company Plasan Sasa has rolled out its Wilder ground vehicle at the Eurostory 2022 defense exhibition in Paris. Designed for military patrols and special forces, the 3.7-tonne armored 4x4 provides NATO Stanag 4569 Level 2 protection.

The new technologies Honda plans to pursue in the coming decades include an eVTOL for inter-city transport, a robot that will act as an avatar for users to perform tasks remotely, and a renewable energy system for the Moon.

While the inspection of railway tracks is an important task, such inspections have to be performed when no trains are nearby. The new rail-riding Staaker BG-300 Railway Drone offers an alternative, as it just flies off the tracks as trains approach.

Where will hydrogen fit in the clean transport mix? Not in trucking, says one of the world's largest heavy duty vehicle manufacturers, which is scaling back its fuel cell big-rig research and development operations in favor of battery-electric power.

Hyundai, eager to explore commercial trucking opportunities in the US, has debuted a hydrogen-powered Class 8 heavy truck, the HDC-6 Neptune Concept, and a green-energy refrigerated trailer, the HT Nitro ThermoTech Concept.

Ector Hoogstad Architects is behind the creation of the world's largest bicycle parking center, which is part of a grand scale redevelopment of the Utrecht Centraal Railway Station in the Netherlands and boasts an innovative layout that manages the flow of both pedestrians and cyclists.

Monowheels are kind of ridiculous, largely pointless and far from a practical way to get around. On the other hand, they're also pretty fascinating – and never more so than in this short, seven-minute video detailing how the Make it Extreme team went about building one.

Pedal-powered paddle boat (pedalo) designs tends to swing between cutesy kitsch and blandly pragmatic, which is why Beau Lake's Runabout – a paddle boat that actually looks like a boat – is the most ironically out-there thing to happen to these little leisure craft to date.

The Swedish Transport Administration has just opened a 2-km (1.2-mi) stretch of electrified road that works like slot cars. The project, dubbed eRoadArlanda, involves embedding electric rails into the road surface to power electric vehicles through a contact arm hanging down from under the car.