Detroit, Michigan (CNN) It’s the home of Henry Ford and the first moving assembly line, aptly nicknamed the “Motor City.” Known around the world as a leader in transportation innovation, Detroit, Michigan got the world rolling, says Alisyn Malek, urban mobility expert and city native.
It’s these inventions of the past that could help inform the future and lead the way for new scalable and accessible modes of transportation – ones that will look vastly different than what rolled off Ford’s assembly lines more than a century ago .
Transport is one of the biggest sources of carbon production and is responsible for around 37% of global greenhouse gas emissions. As city planners look to the future, many focus on sustainability, including a move away from traditional gas-powered vehicles.
As Managing Director of Newlab Detroit, a global mobility innovation hub, Malek is part of a team that brings diverse expertise together to create transportation solutions.
CNN recently spoke to Malek about what travel will be like by 2050.
The following interview has been edited for length and clarity.
CNN: What are some of the key pillars of mobility?
Malek: Some of the key pillars that are really critical to success are accessibility. How easy are the mobility solutions to reach? How often are the services running? Which areas are covered? Can people really get where they need to go or have their goods delivered to them easily? It’s really about making sure everyone has a few options. And when we look to the future, we also have to think about sustainable transport.
CNN: How do you imagine people in 2050 to get from A to B?
Malek: When I think about 2050 and how we will move forward, what excites me the most is the variety of options we will have at that point. People will still ride bikes, people will still take buses – but really it’s about the ability to choose the best option for the journey they need to take.
When I think about 2050 and the types of technologies that could come to the fore in transportation, I think we’re going to see iterations of things that we’re already seeing today, like electrification. And I think we will see that other new technologies will find their way. What is critical, however, is that they find an opportunity that aligns with the business needs.
CNN: We are already seeing autonomous vehicles being tested in parts of the world. Where do you see this technology in 2050?
Malek: A lot of what we hear in the news today regarding autonomous cars is a system that is mostly capable of driving itself. It uses sensors to look around the vehicle, and then it has special onboard computers to take basic map information and figure out how to get from point A to point B. These technologies are currently being tested and developed, I think it’s very exciting to see the progress.
But as we look to 2050, I think we’re going to see this technology really take off in the commercial arena, where you have shorter rides. If we think of being able to drive in any city, on any dirt road, on any country road – that’s a lot to try to validate for. So when we think about where these options can scale first, it’s going to be these easier areas. In some cities, it may seem like transportation from an airport to a downtown area, so your next cab or Lyft ride could be autonomous.
CNN: What is your impression of eVTOL (Electric Vertical Take-off and Landing) aircraft or air taxis?
Malek: The technology is absolutely there. It works out. We need to make sure it’s safe, verified and really validated in the same way as planes. When you think of passenger transportation in new forms, there’s a much higher bar in terms of safety that needs to be met. And that’s part of the work that’s being done right now. But I think that in the next 20 years we will see more eVTOL use in goods transport.
In November 2022, Volocopter successfully flew a manned mission of its all-electric eVOTL air taxi under regular air traffic conditions in Paris (pictured).
CNN: Will we see and have a Hyperloop network (high-speed pods moving in tubes) operational by 2050?
Malek: Hyperloop as a technology is very interesting. The idea is that you reduce things like drag and friction to move efficiently. If you’re thinking about making Hyperloop a reality, you need to think about how to build that infrastructure, how to make it accessible, how to map it to a business case, and how to make sure it’s resilient to change. So when we look at the future possibilities for Hyperloop, we don’t ask ourselves, “Is the technology ready?”. I would say it is there. It’s really about whether the infrastructure is ready and how we adopt and deploy it.
CNN: Do you think supersonic air travel will return to the skies?
Malek: So we’ve seen supersonic planes in the past and I think we’ll see supersonic planes in the future as well. If we think about the advances and also the increase in global travel, I think there is a demand. What has changed since the 2000s when we saw this before is a push toward sustainability. So now the question isn’t just whether we’ll see supersonic aircraft, but whether they’ll run on carbon neutral fuels? And I think that really needs to be a critical part of the conversation as we look at this opportunity in the future.
If we think about short-term flights that are only overland, you usually won’t use supersonic jet because you will hit a lot of people under the plane with the bang, so there will be a lot of crossing ocean type of flights. And then when you cross country, either getting people onto the rails like we’re seeing in France, or helping people find electrical connectivity options – maybe it’s eVTOL, maybe it’s an electric regional aircraft – but really a variety of options, helping to connect to that end goal.
CNN: What are your hopes for the future of transportation?
Malek: When I think about my hopes and dreams for the future of transportation, we really focus on what we as humans need from our transportation systems and start with that as our organizing principle. Historically we started with “What do cars need, what do airplanes need?”. But planes and cars are only for us.
And as I look into the future, it’s not necessarily a technology, it’s really this philosophy: how we use different solutions that are the right size for the kind of task they’re trying to accomplish.