57 years ago, the mathematician Nikolai Kardashev said that the most fundamental way to classify how advanced a civilization is or was is based on its energy consumption. The more energy they consume, which means control, then the more sophisticated the civilization must be. Kardashev proposed a scale for quantifying how advanced civilizations are.
Known as The Kardashev Civilization scale, the scale measures civilization technology advances with the methods and quantities of energy they are able to harvest. A Type I civilization on the Kardashev scale can harness and store all of the energy from its home planet. Such civilizations should have complete control of their planetary environment, weather, and resources as well as their local orbit, for the Earth is about 1.7e+17 watts. A Type II civilization would be using stars as engines effectively harnessing them using constructions such as Dyson spheres, a power consumption comparable to the output of a star which for the Sun is 3.8e+26 watts. Finally, a Type III civilization would have a power consumption comparable to a Galaxy. That’s something like 5e+36 watts. Such a civilization would be so advanced, it’s very difficult for us to make any kind of predictions about what they would be like and thus there’s probably not too much point in worrying about Type IV or beyond that either.
Currently, we’re considered a Type 0 civilization on the way to Type I. Faced with ecological issues, such as climate change and natural disasters, we must find ways to harness sustainable energy in order to not only evolve but also save our beloved planet.
Here Comes The Sun
Even if we were to put aside the ecological concerns, fossil fuels are simply not sustainable. At current levels of usage, we’ll most likely dry up our oil reserves in about a century let alone if we increased our energy demand by a factor of a million to meet our 21st-century demand. Plus, Air pollution affects human health in insidious ways. Even before the pandemic struck, outdoor air pollution was linked to the deaths of as many as nine million people each year. Note, that number doesn’t include animals and nature, which deals with far worse consequences, most of them unseen and unknown by humans.
Similar to artificial intelligence hype cycles, alternative energy sources have seen similar promises and excitements, followed by frustrations and disappointments. The running joke is that we’re always a decade away to be a decade away to be able to properly harness sustainable energy, be it solar or nuclear energy — two great candidates for alternatives sources of energy. But times are changing, nuclear power plants are becoming more efficient at splitting heavy atomic elements to generate energy, a viable pathway to a Type I civilization.
Harnessing mother nature’s own nuclear power plant, the Sun, has also long been a dream that came with similar waves of excitement, but we’ve made progress. Modern solar technology has ~25% efficient and there are some laboratory demonstrations approaching 50% efficiency. A 100% efficient solar cell is impossible and that’s because the maximum theoretical efficiency of such a device is governed by the ratio of the temperature of the receiver to the temperature of the emitter, according to which, we might peak at 95% efficiency — which is already a lot more than current states of the art standards. Wind and hydro energy also show plenty of potential in specific areas and are now reliably used around the world.
We Can Work It Out
In an ideal world, every man-made invention, from cars to buildings, should behave like plants. Through photosynthesis, plants and other organisms convert light energy into chemical energy that can later be released to fuel the organism’s metabolic activities. The man-made version of this would transform light energy into electricity and we wouldn’t have to worry about harming the planet or charging stations.
We’re still years away from that dream, but many innovators across the globe found a clever worked around, one so simple that it initially sounded too good to be true. The workaround? The lithium battery.
Before technological advances in lithium batteries, electric engines were toys. Good for very short distances but too expensive to build at scale. While there is still a lot of work to be done to further drop the costs of lithium batteries, innovation in lithium batteries made electric engines a lot more affordable, reliable for long distances, and very good alternatives for consumers and companies mindful of the planet. For innovators, these advances in battery meant they could focus on bringing new engines to the market without sacrificing quality, safety, and design.
Across The Universe
Speed, safety, and sustainability are now redefining the transportation industry. It’s exciting to see so many automotive, shipbuilders, and even aircraft manufacturers exploring alternative designs and energy sources to power their engines; a collective win for the planet. Some of the companies driving leading the race to more sustainable transportation engines include:
Boom Supersonic
Boom Supersonic is on a mission to make the world dramatically more accessible by redefining commercial flight and bringing supersonic flight back to the skies with Overture. The company is innovating in engine-airframe matching activities to build efficient and sustainable aircraft.
Joby Aviation
Joby Aviation is on a mission to design all-electric passenger aircraft designed to take off and land vertically, allowing a pilot and four passengers to leapfrog over the congestion below, emissions-free, on journeys of five to 150 miles by 2024.
Lucid Motors
Lucid Motors is on a mission to inspire the adoption of sustainable transportation by creating the most captivating electric vehicles, centered around the human experience.
Nicola Motors
Nikola is pioneering innovative energy and transportation solutions with next-generation truck technology, hydrogen fuelling infrastructure, and maintenance, paving the way for a world with zero-emission transportation.
Rivian
Rivian is on a mission to help us explore our beautiful planet responsibly with an all-electric truck and SUV. The company is making electric adventures possible by designing engines that can sustain any weather.
Tesla
Tesla Motors is on a mission to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy through increasingly affordable electric vehicles in addition to renewable energy generation and storage.
Virgin Hyperloop
Virgin Hyperloop is on a mission to bring fast and effortless journeys that expand possibilities while building engines that will have a lower environmental impact than other modes of mass transportation.
Xshore
X Shore is manufacturing high-end electric craft, on a mission to revolutionize the maritime industry with sustainable ships and driving the future of electric boating.
Across industries, almost all companies are launching sustainability programs in the hopes to be fully electric by the end of this decade. There is no shortage of challenges for builders as well, vehicle range is one of these challenges, which must be solved through innovations in battery material and cell development, in addition to electrical vehicle system design.
Whether it was building hyperloop technology to race the fastest pod at SpaceX, working on the Model 3 at Tesla or building next-gen cancer treatment machines, one thing was always common — the tools engineers had to collaborate with were just not good enough to keep up with the pace of hardware innovation the world needs. So we quit our mechanical engineering careers right then and made it our sole focus to build the tools we wished we had.
Adam Keating, CEO at CoLab
Come Together
Building sustainable engines also pose new design challenges and opportunities. In order to truly nail the speed, safety, and sustainability equation, engineers need to rethink conventional wisdom about how engines are made, especially how to optimize for performance and safety.
Back in 2017, Adam Keating and Jeremy Andrews, now co-founders at CoLab, faced these design challenges while designing North America’s fastest Hyperloop pod. The Hyperloop is an ultra-high-speed ground transportation system for passengers and cargo proposed as a concept by Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla and SpaceX, in a white paper back in 2013. The system consists of sealed and partially evacuated tubes, connecting mobility hubs in large metropolitan areas, and pressurized vehicles, usually called pods, which can move at very high speeds, thanks to contactless levitation and propulsion systems as well as to the low aerodynamic drag. Moreover, with fully-electric operations, the Hyperloop aims at being climate-neutral. A fun and frustrating experience highlighted by the lack of collaborative tools to support engineers building new things and ultimately to the founding of CoLab’s design review platform, on a mission to enable engineering teams to design better products, faster.
When it comes to designing electric vehicles, a holistic consideration of vehicle and tire dynamics, powertrain, electric motors and batteries, and control and estimation modules that are integrated through millions of lines of computer code are required to make it work. We can’t solely rely on government regulations and clever marketing to increase adoptions, we need to design radically better engines and systems, as seen with the companies listed above. And this requires more builders and better tools suited to the task — we’ll discuss the future of CAD in another post.
While we’re still a Type 0 civilization on the Kardashev scale, we are already paving the foundation to a more sustainable future through innovation. The future of manufacturing is sustainable, the transportation industry is just one sector within the vast world of manufacturing. Some obvious ways to achieve sustainable manufacturing include the reduction of energy and water use, cutting emissions from manufacturing processes, and reducing physical waste and recycling. Sustainability needs to be part of the design for manufacturing (DFM) process upfront, not a later consideration on the back end of the process. Engineers can design high-performing products that are good for the environment and easy to recycle when they reach the end of their usefulness. This, in turn, will make it easy for consumers to recycle the product and builds brand awareness and customer loyalty for being a thoughtful steward of the environment.
Meeting the needs of the present, without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs is a duty we can no longer afford to ignore. Now is the time to rethink the way we build products and consume energy. As Martin Luther King said, nothing in all the world is more dangerous than sincere ignorance and conscientious stupidity. We know what needs to be done, we must act now and take meaningful actions toward a more sustainable future.
Sustainability is core to our DNA at CoLab and we’re committed to supporting engineering teams working on sustainable projects benefiting society, if you’re one of them, please email me at ned@colabsoftware.com and I will gladly show you how we can support your team to efficiently bring your sustainable innovation to market.
Let’s save our planet by building a better future, together.
To Infinity and beyond!
