City redesigns needed

Cities need redesigning because of the changes happening in transport, particularly around electric vehicles, driverless technology and the way we will use transport.

So says author and educator in entrepreneurship, disruption and clean energy Tony Seba.

The keynote speaker at the APEC electric vehicle and hydrogen technology workshop in Wellington told about 200 guests that changes in transport as a service (TaaS), particularly around autonomous electric vehicles (AEVs) and a decline in car ownership, will see cities change too.

Seba says areas now used for parking will become available for other uses, that extensive EV charging networks won’t be needed as ride share and other transport services will have their own high capacity charging systems.

Many businesses will change or disappear, and households and businesses will become more energy independent – especially with growing solar power use and storage.

“Every house, business, shopping centre – everywhere – will be solar.”

The Silicon Valley entrepreneur and author of Amazon best selling book ‘Clean Disruption of Energy and Transportation’ predicts the change will be like the switch from horse to car, film cameras to digital, and the advent of the smart phone, only quicker.

He says spending on more highways and extended transport infrastructure is wasted.

Seba says EVs will become cheaper, better and the combustion engine will almost disappear.

And he believes the change will happen sooner rather than later, picking that such disruption will happen within the next few years, by 2020 or 2030 at latest.
“This is not an energy disruption,” Seba says. “This is a technology disruption.”