It seems the transport of the future may finally take off

In a previous column, I wrote about how, as a child, I was fascinated by visions of my future life, an exciting world of homes in space, undersea railways, cyborg implants and, of course, flying cars.

Fast-forward some 40 (ahem) years and the first three remain twinkles in some scientist's eye, but there has been progress on the latter, albeit in the form of souped-up personal transport drones that will be able to fly, but not drive.

Another mainstay of that promised world was the robocar. This was generally depicted as a sleek, bullet of a vehicle, capable of traveling as fast as a high-speed train. In renderings, it was inevitably equipped with Eamesesque lounge chairs and — this being the late '70s — floor to ceiling shag pile carpeting.

Progress on this has been made too. Shag pile is now, thankfully, a thing of the distant past and in a number of cities around the world, the potential of driverless taxis has been tested and is being explored. Not all of the trials have been successful, and the first driverless accidents have already happened, though in a perverse sense, even accidents mark how far the technology has progressed.

Despite rapid advances, and much like fusion reactors, the timeline for driverless cars actually becoming a common sight on roads always seems to be a couple of years away.

However, that might not be the case for much longer. At the World Intelligent Connected Vehicles Conference, which wrapped up in Beijing on Sept 19, matters became more real as the ministries of public security and transport sat down to discuss the state of autonomous driving in China. Naturally, this included the roles of 5G, AI and big data as well as the Internet of Vehicles, the system through which autonomous vehicles will communicate with each other. Legislation and accident liability were also on the table, issues that will need to be finalized before carmakers, several of which are raring to go, can begin to think of commercial sales.

Still, strides have been made. Vice-Minister of Public Security Liu Zhao told the conference that 6,900 kilometers of test roads have been built, and that 8,200 license plates have already been issued for autonomous vehicles in 28 cities.

While much remains to be sorted out, China has officially entered the arena. There has been a driverless vehicle test zone in Beijing since 2020, and the capital was the first city in China to authorize testing on public roads.

A pilot robotaxi service run by Pony.ai and ride-hailing platform Caocao also launched this July. Apollo, which was involved in testing in the Beijing zone, has recently been licensed to operate robotaxis in Wuhan, Hubei province, and Chongqing. Meanwhile, in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, robotaxis have been in service in an area around the high-speed train station since 2020, as well as a driverless bus service being run in tandem with Beijing-based Qcraft. For a city better known for its historic charms, Suzhou is in the fast lane, and is also testing autonomous road cleaning and logistics vehicles.

On Aug 1, Shenzhen, Guangdong province, enacted the country's first autonomous driving legislation and seven days later, the Ministry of Transport issued draft national guidelines for the use of autonomous vehicles, so it seems that at last, the ball is finally rolling.

Perhaps, even more exciting is the news that, later this year, Dubai in the United Arab Emirates is finally set to launch an aerial taxi service that was first proposed in 2017 using the passenger drone created by Guangzhou's EHang. With the world's first air taxi airport, Air-One, having opened in Coventry in the United Kingdom earlier this year, and cities across the world drafting legislation and preparing infrastructure for aerial passenger services, the race may now be on to see whether it is the robocar or the flying car, that gets there first. And that news alone is enough to make my "Dude, where's my jetpack?" heart skip a beat.