Engineering Evolved (2023) Season 1 Episode 1
From the roar of the earliest internal combustion engine, to the smooth, silent start of today's electric vehicles, there is no form of transportation technology more ubiquitous to human society than the car. Journey through a labyrinth of microchips and motors to see how some of the world's first combustion engines on wheels transformed into slick and sophisticated self-driving vehicles. How will the engineering milestones of today, impact the look of both cars and cities of tomorrow? As engineers continue to push the limits of what's possible, could gas stations, pedals and even vehicular accidents one day be a thing of the past?
#documentary
From the roar of the earliest internal combustion engine, to the smooth, silent start of today's electric vehicles, there is no form of transportation technology more ubiquitous to human society than the car. Journey through a labyrinth of microchips and motors to see how some of the world's first combustion engines on wheels transformed into slick and sophisticated self-driving vehicles. How will the engineering milestones of today, impact the look of both cars and cities of tomorrow? As engineers continue to push the limits of what's possible, could gas stations, pedals and even vehicular accidents one day be a thing of the past?
#documentary
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TVTranscript
00:00The following program is rated PG and may contain mature subject matter.
00:05Viewer discretion is advised.
00:07Since the invention of the wheel, humans have pushed the boundaries and possibilities to go faster, higher, and deeper than ever before.
00:35The engineering evolution of cars, ships, planes, trains, submersibles, and rockets has been a monumental journey of inspiration, innovation, sometimes failure, and success.
00:48So how did we get to where we are now, and where are we going next?
01:14There is perhaps no piece of technology more ubiquitous to humanity than the car.
01:20These are essential parts of our everyday mobility. They're technologies that inform industry, and we rely quite heavily on them.
01:29The automobile has become a dominant feature in our daily lives, impacting everything from work, travel, and even leisure.
01:38Over the decades, manufacturers have constantly strived to push vehicles past their limits.
01:44When Tesla unveiled their self-driving functionality, it was really game-changing.
01:50They were different from anything the public had ever seen before.
01:54Seemingly small innovations have led to major milestones in engineering, helping us go further, faster, and with more autonomy.
02:03But the way in which we use cars is at a pivotal time in history.
02:07Now we find ourselves in the middle of the biggest automotive revolution since Henry Ford's first production line started mass-producing his vehicles in 1930.
02:17There were a lot of technologies that needed to come together to have an effective automobile.
02:22But just a century later, the next revolution has begun that could drastically transform how they're made, what they're capable of, and what they look like.
02:32A new evolution has begun, which could see roadways teeming with autonomous vehicles, where pedals or steering wheels are a thing of the past.
02:41Electric vehicles that charge in mere minutes, and cars that run exclusively on solar power could be just on the horizon.
02:48Some of the most innovative minds on the planet are channeling their energy into creating the cars of the future.
02:56I mean, there are people working on automated cars, like driverless cars, how to manage them on roads through censoring and signaling.
03:04And to a point of like, there used to be a Bruce Willis movie, like fifth dimension things where you used to like fly cars around.
03:10And things of that nature are not too far away.
03:13While the craziest concept vehicles aren't available yet to drive, there are a plethora of amazing electric vehicles on the market today.
03:21From Porsche's luxury Taycan Turbo S to the more affordable Chevrolet Bolt, almost every major car company offers their own versions.
03:30Electric vehicles are seeing a surge in global popularity at a time in history when nations are setting aggressive targets in an effort to reduce global emissions.
03:40So in response to this, and I think this is something that we see both in the United States and around the world,
03:47So in response to this, and I think this is something that we see both in the natural resources sector and in with other technologies,
03:54engineers are looking at other alternatives to see how far we can push the sort of low carbon or the greenness of our vehicles.
04:03There are 14 companies that dominate the industry, with factories all over the world, producing over 85 million vehicles in 2022.
04:12In many of these factories, the construction is done almost entirely by industrial robots.
04:18This incredible feat of engineering has been evolving since the 1960s.
04:23Improving efficiency in automotive manufacturing and eliminating safety risk for humans,
04:29parts are added as the vehicles move through an automatic assembly line to receive some finishing touches until they are ready to hit the road.
04:38I think a lot of companies are trying to be part of the change.
04:41They see that this is where the future is headed.
04:43And so all of them are trying to have a stake in the electric vehicle market.
04:49This is all thanks to huge improvements in battery tech, charging infrastructure, and a major shift in public perception.
04:57The automotive industry is going through a rapid transformation.
05:01These manufacturers don't just build cars.
05:04There are also technology companies that write code and create smart products.
05:09The most cutting-edge companies use autonomous tech to identify defects in their assembly lines,
05:15using predictive maintenance to service and repair crucial welding machines before disaster strikes.
05:21Automated features also have a major impact on productivity, allowing smart factories to build a massive volume of cars.
05:29Automotive manufacturers are one of the largest adopters of robots globally, and their use of robots is only going to increase.
05:39Technology is progressing in leaps and bounds, and there is huge buzz around the future of EVs.
05:46To the general public, it might feel like electric cars are a relatively new thing.
05:51But what most don't realize is that at the turn of the 20th century, there were actually more electric vehicles on the road than gasoline-powered vehicles.
06:01In their heyday of the 1900s, you were nearly twice as likely to encounter an electric car on the road than a gas-powered one.
06:10During the 1800s, the early pioneers of electric mobility flourished.
06:16Electric cars were appealing to the early innovators as providing a cleaner, quieter alternative to horse-drawn vehicles.
06:24We need to look back to 1859, where a French scientist by the name of Gaston Blanty first invented the very first battery that was rechargeable, and it was a lead-acid battery.
06:36A battery works by converting chemical energy into electrical energy through a chemical reaction,
06:42allowing the flow of electrons between its positive and negative terminals to create an electric charge.
06:48And that electric charge then is what's used to power the vehicle.
06:53So at the time that Gaston Blanty invented his lead-acid battery, what the battery looked like was it was made of two spiral sheets of pure lead.
07:05They were separated by a thin linen sheet, and all this was immersed in a container of sulfuric acid.
07:16Blanty's fundamental concepts laid the groundwork for the more practical lead-acid batteries used today,
07:22including the 12-volt installed in the world's first mass-produced hybrid electric vehicle, the Toyota Prius.
07:30The hybrid system allows the vehicle to switch between using the internal combustion engine and the electric motor, depending on driving conditions and power demands.
07:41The most ubiquitous hybrid has to be the Toyota Prius.
07:44These were very common, and it sort of made the idea of the hybrid car a very commonplace thing.
07:51At this time, most automakers hadn't quite cracked the code on achieving the range required to make electric or hybrid cars viable.
07:59At the same time as the Prius came out, most of the other major automotive manufacturers were working on variations of a hybrid, to varying degrees of success.
08:07But nothing was as successful as the Toyota Prius.
08:10It's probably the most prolific hybrid vehicle out there, and was really a precursor for how reliable an electric vehicle could be.
08:17The major obstacle was extending battery life.
08:21But engineers working on the Prius used a technique by breaking the battery into a large number of smaller modules.
08:28That way nothing was ever being overcharged, and nothing was ever being totally depleted.
08:32But surprisingly, the evolution of the electric vehicles we see on the road today can be traced to a historical gas-guzzling sport.
08:41As the top echelon of motorsports, Formula One is a hotbed of technical development and game-changing innovation.
08:49Anytime you pin people against one another and make them compete where their stakes are high, I feel like you extract from those people the most innovative technologies.
09:01And the Formula One system that's built really pins people against each other, causes them to compete, causes them to be creative and work together, and it creates some of the technologies that we then transfer into the mass market.
09:17Underneath all the glitz and glamour of F1, millions of dollars are invested in the sport to make the cars faster, stronger, safer, more aerodynamic, and technologically advanced.
09:30A Formula One engine is an apex predator of the motor world, with cylinders seeing 50,000 mini-explosions during a single lap to drive its pistons, and inside temperatures reaching 2,750 degrees centigrade.
09:45But the innovation goes far beyond what's under the hood.
09:50So there's a lot of money put into the racing industry with a focus on research and development, and there's so many different innovations and findings because of this.
10:02If we think of what our steering wheel looks like today, it's got all these buttons on it.
10:07We can control the radio without ever having to let go of that steering wheel.
10:11That really came from the fact that the Formula One driver needed to be able to operate the various features of the car without letting go of the steering wheel.
10:19Active suspension, which controls the vertical movement of the wheels using an array of computers and sensors to ensure a smoother ride, is just one of the many innovations born out of racing.
10:31The 1992 Williams FW14B revolutionized active suspension and is now used by a range of cars on the road today.
10:42Regenerative braking, developed by Curves, converts the energy of motion when the car decelerates into electrical energy, which is stored in a battery.
10:51When we use conventional brakes, we actually convert all that kinetic energy into heat and simply waste it.
10:58So with regenerative braking, instead of wasting that energy as heat, we convert it back into electrical energy and recharge batteries.
11:07Introduced in 2009 and now used in all electric vehicles on the road today.
11:13But even Formula One engineers have to nod back to those early pioneers who first got us moving using energy rather than foot or horsepower.
11:22Incredible automobile innovations can be traced all the way back to the late 1600s to mark the innovation of the first steam-powered vehicle, which led to the creation of the first steam-powered automobile capable of human transportation.
11:36These vehicles are extremely slow. They have really unreliable steam engines. They're actually not that practical.
11:45At the end of the 19th century, the development of the motor car found itself at a crossroads.
11:52Large numbers of engineers and innovative tinkerers were experimenting with engine technologies of all types.
11:59We needed a new system and that was really evident. If you look at the late 19th century, we had thousands of horses, hundreds of thousands of horses in these cities.
12:11I mean, it was just a nightmare of horse urine and horse waste. It was just horrible.
12:18As inventors began to branch out at the end of the 19th century, development would split off into three primary methods for powering personal transportation, electricity, steam and liquid fuel.
12:32There were a number of small makers, either carriage companies or, while in Europe these were often bicycle companies, that were converting the technologies that they knew, like carriages, into the automobile.
12:46For decades, gas-guzzling vehicles have ruled supreme. But now, with the onset of global warming and the need to reduce our carbon emissions, a reboot is needed.
12:57When we look specifically at electric vehicles today, we're currently at what we would call a tipping point.
13:04One of the biggest pioneers in the world of EVs is Tesla Motors.
13:09In 2003, Tesla Motors was formed and they did a couple of very transformative things.
13:15In 2006, the Silicon Valley startup announced it would start producing a luxury electric sports car that could go more than 320 kilometers on a single charge, which was completely unheard of.
13:29Tesla unveiled their first production car in 2008, the first to run lithium-ion batteries and to demonstrate this 320-kilometer driving range.
13:40A lot of that attractiveness to the Tesla vehicles were how they were designed.
13:44They really changed things by altering what people thought of electric cars. Up until that time, electric cars were not very flashy looking, but Tesla came along and promised luxury, range and, most importantly, performance.
13:57Tesla not only showed that this design was feasible, but also showed that this was attractive to the public.
14:03Although the cost of a Tesla car can be prohibitive, automaker Nissan raised the competition with its launch of the Nissan LEAF in 2010.
14:14When this came along, it was more of a price-friendly model of electric vehicle, but promised a 200-kilometer range on a fully charged battery.
14:22Powering the first model was a 24-kilowatt-hour lithium-ion battery. In 2018, the LEAF takes the crown as the best-selling full-use electric car in history.
14:34Although it would eventually be overtaken by the Tesla Model 3.
14:38The LEAF was Nissan's guess of what an electric car should be. It would be a small city car and very well made, but for many, it didn't add the excitement of driving.
14:50The genius of Tesla's founder Elon Musk was that he recognized what would really launch the electric car.
14:57It would be capable of going fast and enhance the driving experience with some radical technology at the driver's fingertips.
15:05The Tesla Model X is considered to be one of the coolest electric vehicles on the market, merging functionality with luxury.
15:12The standard Model X boasts 670 horsepower and accelerates 0 to 100 kilometers per hour in around 3.8 seconds, with some eye-catching features like its falcon wing doors.
15:25But arguably the most amazing innovation about this car is its ability to drive itself.
15:31Tesla has always been very good for pushing the boundaries of where automotive technology is these days.
15:37In 2015, Tesla rolled out Autopilot, allowing for full, hands-on control for highway and freeway driving.
15:46This was the first time that semi-autonomous technology of this level was being offered in a commercial vehicle.
15:54When Tesla unveiled their self-driving functionality, it was really game-changing. It scared a lot of people and excited a lot of other people.
16:02One technological advancement that made self-driving possible arrived in the early 2000s — radar cruise control systems.
16:11Where older cruise control systems could maintain the car's speed, these new ones could also maintain a safe distance to the car in front without driver intervention.
16:22It actually monitored and controlled acceleration and braking in a range that you could program, and it was sort of ideal for highway driving.
16:31Even if the car changes its speed.
16:34The vehicle would be able to monitor if you were swaying from lanes, it could hold itself in position, and it would keep you a safe distance depending on the speed you were driving and how close you were to the car in front of you.
16:45It was through the path-breaking DARPA Grand Challenges of the mid-2000s that LiDAR emerged as the key to safe and reliable autonomous navigation.
16:56LiDAR is basically a system that measures the distance between the sensor and an object using the time that the light travels to go to the object and come back.
17:09The competition was created to spur the development of technologies needed to create the first fully autonomous ground vehicles capable of completing a substantial off-road course within a limited time.
17:23LiDAR is really using light, like radar, similar to radar, to build a map of what's going on around the vehicle.
17:32It can look at what the road surface looks like ahead of it, look at other vehicles, look at the roadway, and build a map of its space so the vehicle can understand what's around it and react to that using the computer.
17:47This was the first time that semi-autonomous technology of this level was being offered in a commercial vehicle.
17:52But to this day, both experts and the public remain split on whether or not the technology is ready to go to the next level.
18:00Tesla's autopilot system really is kind of that step towards fully autonomous vehicles.
18:07It's really a system that determines what's going on in the environment around it and responds to it.
18:15So it really has the capacity to be almost fully autonomous.
18:21In certain situations, the driver's still going to have to provide input because that system isn't perfect yet.
18:27Considered by some to be the space race of our generation, autonomous driving systems are seen as a sort of holy grail of innovation in the automotive industry.
18:36And even today, there are more self-driving cars on the road than people may realize.
18:42So when I think of autonomous vehicle, I think of it on a scale of one to five.
18:46Tesla's autopilot can be classified as a level two automation.
18:51Level two automation is like an advanced version of cruise control.
18:56The car can take some safety actions automatically, but the driver must stay alert at all times.
19:01The car can take some safety actions automatically, but the driver must stay alert at all times.
19:07Cruise control was probably one of the first ways we started to automate the driving process.
19:12And it was simply a tool that allowed us to keep a consistent speed as we drove down a certain long stretch of road.
19:19There were several fatal crashes in 2018 involving autonomous vehicles, one including a level four AV.
19:27When we design cars, we almost assume they will at some point be in an accident.
19:32And so we design those cars with that in mind.
19:36A level four automation level means that the car can mostly drive itself without any human input,
19:43but may be incapable of operating in unmapped areas or during severe weather.
19:48One major consequence of these fatalities has been a steep decline in public trust in EVs, which persists today.
19:56A lot of people think that older cars, very long or very rigid cars were what we needed to have for safety, but it's the complete opposite.
20:07There has yet to be a production vehicle that is capable of level five autonomy, which is full automation in all conditions.
20:16But thanks to an increase in technological advancements, there are cars on the road today that are capable of level three autonomy,
20:23which is actually pretty close to what many people consider to be a fully self-driving vehicle.
20:30Level three autonomy uses AI and other driver assistance systems to make decisions based on changing situations around the vehicle.
20:39Although the technology can run unsupervised, a human driver is required to take over at the wheel if needed.
20:45I think that we can move towards adapting to that level of technology, but there's a lot more work that needs to be done.
20:56There's a possibility that the risk might move from the passengers inside the vehicles to the pedestrians on the street.
21:04We figured out how to drive a car at a consistent speed, which required us to figure out how to accelerate the car
21:10and required us to figure out how to decelerate the car when needed, let's say going up or down hills.
21:16We had to maintain that consistent speed.
21:18So I think the natural progression was that, hey, if we know how to accelerate and decelerate a car already,
21:24why don't we put some detectors in the front of that car that will detect the presence of some objects that might require us to decelerate quickly?
21:32And that evolution of slowing down as we approach a risk started to take shape.
21:39Companies have been experimenting with automated driving systems for almost a century.
21:45In 1926, Houdina Radio Control operated the 1926 Chandler, using radio impulses on the streets of New York,
21:55allowing remote control of some of the functions of the vehicle.
21:58Twenty years later, engineer Ralph Teeter invented the first modern cruise control.
22:03He spent 10 years experimenting with his device, paving the way for present-day GPS driving directions.
22:10In the 1950s and 60s, RCA Labs and The Ohio State University also ran promising trials with their autonomous tech.
22:19In 1961, with the space race between the USA and USSR in full swing, researchers began to ponder landing vehicles on the moon.
22:29Similar to electric vehicles, where there's this conception that they're a new technology,
22:34autonomous cars or autonomous vehicles also were experimented with earlier in the 20th century.
22:42And in this area, we're seeing knowledge transfer between different industries.
22:47So the Lunar Rover is a great example where technology used to automate and drive a vehicle remotely
22:53is something that can then be transferred and adopted and adapted into consumer vehicles.
22:59The idea of a remote-control Lunar Rover was put forward by James Adams, a graduate student at Stanford Engineering.
23:08He created the world's first truly self-driving wheeled vehicle known as the cart.
23:14Tricked out with cameras, the cart was programmed to autonomously detect and follow a line on the ground.
23:20This was the first use of cameras in autonomous vehicles, a vital element in the autonomous vehicles of today.
23:28Mainstream automakers wouldn't get involved with autonomous vehicles until the late 1990s.
23:34But that didn't stop them from creating futuristic concepts for a fantastical world where our cars drive themselves.
23:42So looking back at the initial designs for the autonomous vehicles, they were different from anything the public had ever seen before.
23:48Some would even say they looked like living rooms on wheels.
23:52Norman Bel Geddes is credited with creating the first self-driving car,
23:57which was an electric vehicle guided by radio-controlled electromagnetic fields
24:02generated with magnetized metal spikes embedded in the roadway.
24:06His concept was shown off in a GM exhibit in 1939.
24:11And by 1958, General Motors had made this concept a reality.
24:15Then, in 1964, GM unveiled the Firebird 4 at its Futurama exhibit at the New York World's Fair.
24:23The concept of the Firebird 4 had features like self-driving and it could drive itself on highways,
24:30it could turn on its own, and things that are kind of more common in what we think of as autonomous vehicles today.
24:37Despite the fact that this happened in the mid-60s, you know, we're kind of living these realities now.
24:40Some maybe lesser practical items were a fold-out refrigerator and some TV screens.
24:46But, I mean, we already kind of have TV screens in some of the, you know, more modern electric cars now.
24:52So maybe we're not so far away from refrigerators.
24:55The Firebird certainly wasn't a practical vehicle,
25:00but I think what it speaks to is what people thought the future of driving would be.
25:04So it was very much a living space on wheels.
25:06Autonomous vehicles today don't really embody those same features.
25:11And so that's where you see the difference and maybe the distinction between what people think the future will be
25:17versus the reality of those situations and scenarios.
25:21Another crazy concept car is the Ford Airstream, a retro-futuristic crossover utility vehicle.
25:29In 2007, the first Airstream debuted at the Ford Motor Show.
25:33In 2007, the first Airstream debuted at the North American Auto Expo in Detroit.
25:39The modern version operates exclusively on electric power,
25:44using a hybrid hydrogen fuel cell, which could be the green energy of the future.
25:49Today, more and more car companies are honing in on green energy as a power source.
25:56And the most common green vehicles are electric cars running on batteries.
26:01Most of the batteries that we use today are based on lithium ion technology.
26:05They replace the nickel metal hydride batteries that were in the early versions of electric vehicles and hybrid vehicles.
26:12The lithium batteries are intrinsically lighter, and they have high energy density.
26:17So the critical thing here is to be able to increase the density of energy storage inside the vehicle to the highest extent possible.
26:25Batteries are the new gold rush as far as automakers are concerned.
26:28Better, more powerful batteries will drive widespread use of electric cars.
26:33But there are some caveats.
26:35One being that lithium can be described as a non-renewable mineral that makes renewable energy possible.
26:42And some experts tout it as the next oil.
26:47While lithium is relatively abundant in the Earth's crust,
26:51commercially viable deposits that could be economically extracted are limited.
26:56And the rate at which new lithium deposits are formed is much slower than the rate at which lithium is being extracted.
27:03However, broadly speaking, electric cars produce significantly fewer planet-warming emissions than most cars fueled by gasoline.
27:11From the 1980s onward, we started really realizing that our CO2 emissions were having a huge impact on the planet.
27:19We started having global warming.
27:21As CO2 levels have built up on Earth, we've seen more and more adverse effects.
27:26And we will continue to see these effects into the future.
27:29They're not solved in the short run.
27:31To try and change, we need to move away from fossil fuels.
27:36And this is why currently there's a huge push to go back to battery electric vehicles.
27:41These vehicles don't release CO2, they're much more environmentally friendly,
27:46and they really help us solve the global warming crisis.
27:51The problem monster that's creeping up in battery is the fact that we are refining every critical metal in the world now, which we never touched.
27:59Cerium, lanthanum, actinide, scandium, manganese, nickel, cobalt.
28:05Things that we never knew existed except on a periodic table are now being mined for our cell phones, for our batteries, for everything.
28:14We don't even know the effect of that.
28:16Ironically, to move to a greener future, the extraction of the minerals we need contributes to local soil degradation, water shortages, biodiversity loss, and damage to ecosystem functions.
28:29We naturally produce waste because we take the ore, which has a relatively small amount of the elements that we want,
28:37we extract those elements, and then what we have left is not of value.
28:42We need to do that in a way such that the leftover material is benign, so we don't introduce into it things that are damaging.
28:53While lithium mining is not perfect, ultimately, it is cleaner than coal extraction.
29:00And there are some really exciting solutions in the works that could improve the efficiency, and maybe even eliminate the need for lithium mining in the future.
29:08Another challenge is how these lithium-ion batteries are disposed of when the car is no longer in use.
29:14I think it's important to find ways to dispose of them in a more environmentally friendly way, and there's still a challenge around that currently.
29:22Those challenges have always been faced when new technologies have been developed.
29:27Back in the early 1900s, the search for renewable automotive energy solutions would unite two of the best-known innovators in history.
29:35Around the late 19th century, Henry Ford and Thomas Edison teamed up to combine the power of their brilliant minds.
29:44And while the public was aware of their collaborations, their first project was a little-known bombshell, the creation of the world's first electric car.
29:54The two were essentially trying to find an efficient and usable battery for Ford's automobiles.
30:02Despite a lot of big promises, the development of Edison's battery was costly and unsuccessful.
30:09They had very high internal resistance. They were too big, very expensive, and released hydrogen when charging, which is dangerous.
30:18Essentially, they were incapable of powering an electric car at the time.
30:22Ford backed out of the collaboration.
30:25It had already cost him $40 million, equivalent of an investment over $1.5 billion today.
30:32And so pulling all of that money and sort of ending the research and experimentation altogether really set back the potential for electric vehicles.
30:42Another problem with early EV development was that electricity was only available in cities, limiting rural residents from using this new type of vehicle.
30:51The Texas oil boom in the early 20th century was an absolute game-changer.
30:58Gasoline became cheap and attainable for all.
31:02Empowered by the easy access to gasoline, Ford shifted his mission to building a transport system based on this conventional fuel.
31:10Cheap, abundant gasoline and continued improvements to the internal combustion engine were the key to Ford's success.
31:18Because of this, the Ford Motor Company wouldn't try to make another electric vehicle until almost a century later.
31:26After the death of the electric car in the early 1900s, the majority of automakers and engineers focused their efforts on the combustion engine.
31:35The competition from the early 1900s to the mid-1900s was very competitive.
31:42The competition from the alternate ways of mobility, which is done by the fossil fuel burning and internal combustion engine inventions and things of that nature,
31:51and the reasons that the energy that those gave were phenomenally higher than the energies the batteries gave.
32:00I think if the Texas oil boom didn't happen, there would have been more need to build electric vehicles.
32:06I think if the Texas oil boom didn't happen, there would have been more need to keep pushing with the advancements of electric vehicles and seeing how we can steer in that direction.
32:18Today, car technology is evolving at incredible speeds.
32:23However, these developments again are being propelled by the racing world, but this time not Formula One, but Formula E.
32:30The E standing for electric.
32:32Formula E has demonstrated what the future of electric vehicles could look like.
32:37Car makers including Porsche, Jaguar and Mercedes have looked to Formula E as a testbed in which to develop cutting-edge technology that can be fed straight back into the factory.
32:51When Formula E was first introduced, cars would have to be charged in the middle of the race.
32:56After four years of innovations and improvements in the energy density of the cells used in the battery pack, Formula E Gen 2 cars saw a drastic improvement in range.
33:09Third-generation cars' regenerative braking systems can feed back more than 40% of the energy used during the race.
33:17New chargers with a 160-kilowatt capacity will be capable of charging two cars at the same time.
33:25The mind-blowing electric vehicles we see today are radically different from the first EVs on the road, especially in the United Kingdom.
33:34Since the 1930s, the British people have had their milk and other dairy products delivered by electric.
33:40So the milk floats were designed to deliver fresh milk and they were used in the UK.
33:46The Express Dairy Company was the first to use milk floats and that was in 1932.
33:51The milk float is essentially a delivery van, but the goods that it's delivering are milk.
33:58And so these were quite popular in the UK.
34:01And similar to current electric fleets that you see grocery stores using or delivery services using, there are areas where technology can be adopted quite early because of the repetitive, kind of necessary motions of these vehicles.
34:18Their experiments with a small fleet of GV electric vehicles in London proved successful and led to the replacement of horse-drawn milk floats.
34:27They had batteries that could save the charge for quite a long time for the whole trip and it was on for quite a long time.
34:36But the way we are thinking about electric vehicles now for passengers probably is something new or a project that is restarted after like 100 years, right, after almost 100 years being started.
34:52Although some traditional milk floats are used in the UK today, the more modern ones are still electric, travelling more than 14 million miles per year.
35:01That's 556 times around the world.
35:07As power sources of cars continue to evolve, so do their designs.
35:13Augmented reality allows engineers to see how their most cutting-edge ideas could come together in a vehicle without having to enter a factory assembly line.
35:23This futuristic method of design allows engineers to build virtual prototypes, which can reduce costs and improve vehicle safety.
35:32They can also make adjustments quickly and easily, saving time, money and material.
35:40Today, one company is bringing the most futuristic car concept into reality.
35:47California-based company Aleph is developing the world's first real flying car.
35:53Designed for street driving like a regular vehicle, what makes it truly revolutionary is the car's ability to raise up vertically on a dime, soaring above traffic accidents and other obstacles on the road.
36:06Lifting straight up towards the clouds, this incredible car flies forward until the desired destination is reached.
36:13During flight, the driver and cabin are stabilized using a unique rotating gimbal design.
36:19This flying car is not only super cool, but super clean.
36:24The current model is 100% electric and a hydrogen-powered option may be offered as well, with an extended drive and flight range.
36:32Following four years of R&D, research and development, the first full-size prototype was successfully flown in 2019, bringing a space-age dream of flying cars one step closer to reality.
36:45With vehicles like these in the works, it's hard not to imagine a future where all cars can fly.
36:52However, flying cars and high-tech vehicles that are on the road today could never exist without the decades-long development of highly advanced and very tiny computers.
37:03Looking at the evolution that computers have had over the decades, going from very large-scale equipment to more compact-style devices, that has also trickled down to the automotive industry, where they're looking to make more compact-style cars.
37:19These days, every element of our lives is powered by some sort of computer.
37:24Even Bluetooth headphones have microprocessors in them now.
37:28There is perhaps no industry where this trend is more tangible than the automotive industry.
37:34When these futuristic concept cars in the mid-60s were being developed, we were relying on cathode ray tube technology.
37:41But as we progressed, we developed the microchip.
37:44Before the microchip, electronics relied on a three-electrode vacuum tube, allowing breakthrough inventions like radio, television and computers to become a reality.
37:54But the vacuum tube was fragile, bulky, power-hungry and expensive.
38:01As early as the 1930s, scientists sought a better alternative, leading to the invention of the mighty microchip.
38:09So we can have a tiny amount of silicon or germanium semiconductor, and we can manufacture, build every piece of hardware on one substrate.
38:22And it becomes very, very small.
38:25Each microchip is made up of a crystalline semiconductor, stacked with huge numbers of microscopic transistors and other miniature electronic devices.
38:35The miniaturization of components unlocked the ability to add a lot more features that we could never imagine adding before.
38:44The first chips in cars were used to manage simple functions like fuel injection and transmissions shifting.
38:52Today's chips are used to handle everything from locking doors and calculating fuel efficiency, to emergency braking, traction control and automatic parking.
39:01They are absolutely critical for use in autonomous vehicles.
39:06When we started out, in order to accelerate the car, you had literally the pedal moving a valve that would move a little rod that would open another little valve and add more fuel to the system.
39:19Everything was fully mechanical.
39:21Now when we touch that accelerator pedal, it's actually just sensing the distance that we've depressed it and doing everything else electronically.
39:32For autonomous vehicles to become the norm, so much information must be gathered in real time, such as traffic conditions, events, weather conditions, road signs, traffic signals and others.
39:46This requires massive data processing, high trillions of operations per second.
39:51Today, tests on autonomous vehicles are being run all over the world.
39:55Companies like Hyundai and Kia have joined other manufacturers designing level three autonomous vehicles, the Genesis G90 and the V9.
40:05The Genesis G90 boasts a turbocharged 3.5 liter V6 engine capable of reaching 409 horsepower using an electric supercharger.
40:16With a high output engine under its hood, the G90 can rocket to 60 miles per hour in five seconds.
40:23And the Genesis G90 is the first vehicle with level three autonomous driving in Korea.
40:29Industry heavyweights are predicting that by 2030, half of all new cars on the road will be capable of level three autonomous driving.
40:39But we have to keep in mind that it's not all about the technology of a specific car when it comes to autonomy.
40:46Whether or not you can drive a level three car down your street depends a lot on regulations, and it's taken a long time to get to where we are today.
40:59Up until the 70s, the internal combustion engine had basically won over EVs.
41:05But a major historical event was on the horizon that would drastically alter the future of car engineering.
41:12The auto industry doesn't like to do things unless they have to.
41:16So similarly to how there was an oil boom, in 1973, there was an oil embargo.
41:22Now all of a sudden, the shoe was on the other foot.
41:25It was much more expensive to power gasoline cars, and so the electric vehicle rose again.
41:31During the 1970s oil crisis, Stanley Whittingham, an English chemist working for ExxonMobil at the time,
41:38started exploring the idea of a new battery.
41:42One that can recharge on its own in a short amount of time and perhaps lead to fossil-free energy one day.
41:49In his first attempt, he tried using titanium disulfide and lithium metal as the electrodes.
41:55But the combination posed several challenges, including serious safety concerns.
42:01After the battery short-circuited and caught on fire, the experiment was called off.
42:06But the gauntlet had been thrown down,
42:09and scientists across the world started experiments to get the right metals to work together to create the perfect battery.
42:17John B. Goodenough, an engineering professor at the University of Texas at Austin, had another idea.
42:24In the 1980s, he experimented using lithium cobalt oxide as the cathode instead of titanium disulfide, which paid off.
42:33The battery doubled its energy potential.
42:37Between the 1980s, 1990s, and early 2000s, we really saw the evolution of lithium batteries.
42:44Lithium is really an interesting element. It's very light.
42:48It's the third element on the periodic table, so it's really low density.
42:53That's really advantageous for batteries because it makes them light.
42:57Five years later, Akira Yoshino of Mayo University in Nagoya, Japan, made another swap.
43:04Instead of using reactive lithium metal as the anode, he tried using a carbonaceous material, petroleum coke, which led to a revolutionary finding.
43:14Not only was the new battery significantly safer without lithium metal, the battery performance was more stable.
43:21We discovered different systems of electrolytes, like lithium polymer batteries, that are much safer and much less likely to fail.
43:30We also incorporated various design considerations into those products, into the battery packs, to make them less likely to leak and catch fire.
43:40These three major breakthroughs came together to produce the first prototype of the lithium ion battery as we know it, which has changed the world.
43:48So there's been a lot of development of technology over the last four decades, really to get us to the point where we are today, in that we have relatively high power, lightweight batteries that are still safe.
44:01The act of simply driving an electric vehicle doesn't produce any emissions, and that is definitely a whim.
44:08But to really get a sense of the full environmental impact of an EV, you need to look at the whole picture.
44:14One future burden that electric cars may place on our current infrastructure is just on the power grid.
44:20If everybody has an electric car and everybody is charging their cars, let's say at nighttime, that's going to be a real burden on the electric grid that I don't think we're currently capable of dealing with.
44:30Where the electricity charging your EV comes from makes a big difference when it comes to EV environmental impact.
44:37So some of the limitations with the electric vehicles right now revolve around how to power the car.
44:44Right now there's charging stations, but they're not as accessible and widespread as your gas stations.
44:50So those are the challenges a lot of people are facing right now with electric vehicles.
44:54Many local electricity grids are still powered by coal.
44:58They need to get much, much cleaner before electric vehicles are truly emissions-free.
45:03With the current issues faced with mining lithium-ion materials, I think it's worth looking into different types of power.
45:11One possible solution? Solar energy.
45:15Whether it's a solar panel setup at home or solar panels installed on top of a car, the majority of future EVs could be solar-powered.
45:26Solar power might be a more friendly type of power to use.
45:29Because it could be as simple as just leaving your car outside to absorb the solar energy, and that could help you power your car for the rest of the day.
45:38Sunlight is converted directly into energy in a system known as photovoltaic charging, and its popularity is rapidly increasing.
45:47The world's first commercial solar electric vehicles are hitting the U.S. and European markets in the next few years.
45:53My idea of the design of a conventional solar-powered car would be maybe having solar panels at the roof of the car,
46:03that are maybe embedded into the design so it doesn't look too bulky and still gives people that sleek look.
46:10Solar panels are so inexpensive, and integrating them into the skin of a car is so easy, it's hard to envision this one-off solution.
46:18Some companies are producing electric vehicles with integrated solar panels, which can harness the sun's power to provide around 15 to 45 additional miles on a clear day.
46:30Or their vehicles could be fueled by what's underneath them.
46:35As we look to the future of electric vehicles, we need to find solutions that are going to allow for faster charging.
46:40We can put induction charging systems in our roadways. We now have many cell phones that can be inductively charged.
46:47Basically, our pad generates an electromagnetic field that then is able to charge our phone.
46:52We can actually do that with cars. We can embed these systems in highways, so that you drive down a 10-kilometer section of road,
47:00the battery gets charged, and you can charge your phone.
47:02We can actually do that with cars. We can embed these systems in highways, so that you drive down a 10-kilometer section of road,
47:09the battery gets charged up by induction while you're driving over that section of roadway, and then for the next 100 kilometers, discharges.
47:17So you could have a system that allows you to drive from New York to Florida without having to stop every two and a half hours to charge your Tesla for three hours.
47:26With new battery technologies, we are also seeing massive improvements in range and a decrease in EV battery costs,
47:34which brings a lot of promise for the future of the industry.
47:38Prior to 2015, we really didn't have great battery technology to allow mass electrification of vehicles.
47:46That technology has developed really quickly in the last decade, and we now can do it relatively easily and relatively low cost.
47:53The Ford F-150 has been America's best-selling vehicle for nearly 50 years, and to many, it represents power, hard work, and grit.
48:03A callback to one of Henry Ford's first and most ambitious projects, the Ford F-150 has now gone electric.
48:10The Lightning F-150 changed what's under the hood dramatically, but promises to deliver that same power with electric technology.
48:17We see a large number of manufacturers producing electric vehicles now, from the Ford F-150 Lightning electric vehicle, to Teslas, to Mercedes, to Porsche, to lower cost vehicles like the Nissan LEAF and the Chevy Bolt.
48:32So this is really becoming a popular way of powering vehicles.
48:36The future of electric vehicles is very exciting, because looking at how far it's come, there's still so much room for improvement, there's still so much room for advancement.
48:43The promise of driverless technology has long been enticing.
48:47It has the potential to transform our experience of commuting and long journeys, take people out of high-risk work environments, and streamline our industries.
48:56A lot of our vehicle technology is designed to keep people safe when they drive.
49:00So cars have to be over-designed, they're heavier than they need to be, they have a lot more technology in them than we would need, because we can't rely on the people who drive them to always drive safely.
49:16It's key to helping us build the cities of the future, and paving the way for more sustainable ways of living where our relationship with cars are redefined.
49:25Not to mention, it could make our travel safer.
49:31The development of autonomous driving technology is still in its early stages.
49:36It's already pretty darn good.
49:38I mean, you read in the paper sometimes about an accident where an autonomous vehicle has run into something.
49:45That happens one time, it makes the news.
49:47Whereas with human-driven vehicles, that's happening every day, all the time, and we don't even think about it.
49:52So in a world where all vehicles are autonomous, we can rely on that technology for crash avoidance.
49:59Then we'll no longer have to build vehicles to withstand high-speed crashes.
50:06And that will mean we can dramatically reduce the weight of vehicles and allow us to drive safely.
50:11I think to achieve the idealized end goal of self-driving cars, we have to make some concessions.
50:16I don't think it's reasonable to fully rework our infrastructure, but I do think we're going to need to have something like a smart road or sensors placed throughout more common, busy traffic streets, so that cars are getting feedback from the infrastructure itself.
50:30But the next big hurdle would be mastering the ability for the computers in cars to talk to each other.
50:37Nowadays, cars are very connected thanks to the Internet of Things.
50:41This includes stereo advancements, navigation systems, and many more things.
50:46The Internet of Things, IoT, is crucial for many aspects of our modern-day cars, including driver-assistance systems, infotainment, navigation and predictive maintenance, and the general concept of connectivity.
51:01Before the Internet of Things, IoT was a way for cars to communicate with each other.
51:05Before the Internet, the concept of connected cars was unfathomable.
51:09But today, practically every new car is a connected car, contributing to a larger network of connected devices and machines that will change the way we live our lives.
51:18In 20 or 30 years, we're basically going to have extremely high-speed cars.
51:22In 20 or 30 years, we're basically going to have extreme weather all the time, and eventually we'll run out of fossil fuels.
51:29We need to change what we're doing.
51:31So electric vehicles are not just a temporary thing.
51:35They're an inevitability.
51:37This is going to happen.
51:39So the next wave of cars in the next 30 years, they're all going to be electric.
51:43We really don't have a choice.
52:13Microsoft Mechanics
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