Exciting things are happening in a repurposed warehouse in downtown San Jose.
Remember those crazy park-cruising hamster balls in Jurassic World? A group of San Jose engineering students are working on getting Silicon Valley commuters their own pods to roll down Highway 101. The Spartan Superway isn't quite a hamster ball, but it's still pretty cool.
“Our goal right now is to have this system implemented in San Jose,” said Jon David De Ocampo, president of Spartan Superway. “We are creating a model to show off to buyers … Spartan Superway is pretty close to becoming its own company.”
De Ocampo describes Spartan Superway as a legacy project — one that was started by SJSU seniors four years ago and is now gaining some traction. De Ocampo – who is studying mechanical engineering — believes that personal rapid transit systems are the future. The design for the pods comes from Beamways, a Swedish startup that came up with the concept of individual cabins.
As De Ocampo explains it, the cabin will be suspended high above streets with bidirectional travel capable of speeds up to 50mph.
The cabin prototype displayed in the company’s workshop Wednesday can accommodate a maximum of six passengers, but is yet to be tested with people inside it. “The connection between bogey and car is not the strongest,” De Ocampo said, adding that when it’s ready, the pod will be able to carry people, bikes and luggage.
“What’s cool is that the whole thing is powered by solar panels,” project team leader Augustine Soucy said. “The idea is to put these into cities in Silicon Valley to interconnect them – so people can jump in and out of the pods whenever they need to. We hope this will take some of the congestion off roads.”
Local
When asked whether the group has thought of taking their idea to Tesla and Space X founder Elon Musk, who is pushing for Hyperloop, the futuristic high-speed transportation system that promises to take you from San Francisco to LA in just 30 minutes, Soucy said no.
“We appreciate his ideas, but the Hyperloop is on a totally different scale than ours,” he said.
Personal rapid transit networks are currently in use in Suncheon Bay, South Korea and London's Heathrow Airport, where little four-person cars shuttle people to their airport connections.
This week, the Pod Car City convention in Mountain View is helping raise awareness about alternate modes of transportation and pod car technology.
As for the Spartan Superway team, they don’t know when the pods will be out in the world yet, but they hope it won’t be too long.
The cure for traffic? Check out the prototype Pod Car, developed by @SJSU engineering students. pic.twitter.com/yFTpw8QtXU — scott budman (@scottbudman) November 4, 2015
.@SJSU students demo personal #pods as alternate transit systems of the future. #PodCarCity pic.twitter.com/S3G6O27lK5 — NBC Bay Area (@nbcbayarea) November 4, 2015
