Catching a Ride in a Driverless Electric Vehicle: Masdar City’s PRT

3 by Timothy Hurst on January 20, 2011

Masdar's Personal Rapid Transit is cool and all, but will it be the next greatest thing in e-mobility?

Masdar City, the ambitious project to build a sustainable city on the outskirts of Abu Dhabi, has been criticized by some for not moving fast enough or for making too many changes in its development strategy. But planning, designing and building a sustainable city from the ground up is no easy task, just ask Masdar City Director Alan Frost.

"Four years ago, we locked into the PRT, we thought that was the strategy," Alan Frost told me when we sat down to talk Wednesday at the World Future Energy Summit in Abu Dhabi. "But now if you look at how quickly the regular electric vehicles have moved," the strategy has changed somewhat, Frost explains.

"When we first started, everything was moving, we had waste to energy, we had desal[ination], we had PV moving, everything in the renewable energy field was moving at the one time, and its very hard to lock stuff down and very expensive, because every second day something is better than what you had the day before. So when do you stop?"

Along with a public metro line and light rail, Masdar's driverless cars, or Personal Rapid Transit (PRT) vehicles were at the core of Masdar City's public transportation strategy, but that strategy has changed as the technology has advanced so quickly in electric vehicles. It's a bit like hitting a moving target. And if you miss, it can be an expensive mistake.

After touring Masdar City, I can personally attest to the fact that cruising around in a driverless electric car that is pre-programmed to take you to the next station at the touch of a button is a remarkable experience, the ooh factor doesn't necessarily mean they are the solution.

Frost says PRTs will continue to play a role, but so will electric buses and other electric point-to-point vehicles.

"We have three to five years to lock into the solution of phase I and five to ten years to lock into a permanent solution," Frost says.

And being able to make changes, has allowed Masdar to avoid jumping into the wrong technology, whether in transportation or energy generation. "If you want to put PV panels on the roof, when do you buy them? If you bought them last year, they're now half the price."

"What we've realized is you have got to lock into the absolute best technology you can do on the day, monitor it, check it, add to it, whatever, and then learn from it and go again. That's part of the secret of what we're trying to do," Frost explains.

"At the end of the day, that's part of what Masdar is all about."

Check out this video of the PRT experience made by Nick Aster of Triple Pundit. See also Ucilia Wang on zooming around in PRTs at Earth2Tech and Brian Merchant's take on the Masdar City PRT test-ride at Treehugger.

Disclosure: My trip to Abu Dhabi for the World Future Energy Conference was paid for by Masdar.

http://twitter.com/wiselineprt WiselinePRT

Frost’s comments continue to betray that
he – and, likely, the Masdar leadership – never
fully understood PRT’s role in Masdar land use
and urban design. Putting motorized transit
underground in the form of PRT meant all streets
could be narrow, naturally shaded from the
mideast sun, and pedestrian-only. Switching the
plan to allow cars and buses of any kind, even
CNG and EV, means streets will have to be widened
– as Masdar has previously announced – sacrificing
the shaded walkable streetscape in order to
facilitate ‘point to point’ city driving (and all the
urban problems driving entails, e.g. congestion,
parking, accidents, speeding, etc.). A PRT network,
with everywhere in Masdar within a shaded walk of
a station, was the daring, innovative, green solution.
Allowing cars in Masdar has to be considered a
compromise to the conventional paradigm.

Limiting PRT to the current pilot – also as previously
announced – is also a poor business move. PRT is
presumably a product (along with PV, wind, etc.)
the UAE wants to market worldwide under the
Masdar brand. While the small PRT network will
demonstrate the hardware works, it won’t
demonstrate it at urban scale. The few but vocal
doubters will continue to say PRT is unproven, and
will be able to point to Masdar to bolster their
claim. By not innovating beyond that criticism,
Masdar has limited the potential market for its PRT.
http://www.mdavidromney.com Miles Romney

Ok, I’m actually fairly upset by this implementation. It is unnecessarily expensive and error-prone, and it’s high profile, which means that any problems it has (and there will be many) will reflect badly on the PRT tech, universally.

* Trackless (which means more complex and error-prone navigation)
* Pneumatic tires (which means much more expensive to maintain)
* Individualised glass parking creches with automated sliding doors (which means loading is slower, stations are more expensive, larger and harder to maintain)
* Automatic sliding doors on the cars themselves (again, expensive and error-prone)

They need to stop thinking Disneyland, here, and start thinking about rugged, chaotic urban environments.
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