Bill James'  Instablog

The cause of Global Warming and Peak Oil is our current infrastructure that mandates about 1,000 watt-hours per passenger mile (cars = 1033, buses = 1246, trains =900).  More of what is failing will fail.

Infrastructure  that mandates oil as the lifeblood of our economy is forcing economic failure via debt.  The cost of economic work performed is greater than the value.  We covered this for a time by borrowing from nature, domestic oil reserves.  Since the mid-1970's foreign borrow of oil and debt have resulted in what T. Boone Pickens describes as the "greatest transfer of wealth in human history." 

JPods and other PRT networks we can accomplish the same economic work of moving goods and people in cities using 7-15% of the energy, a 10x paradigm shift.  JPods are efficient enough that solar collectors 6-foot wide mounted over the tops of the rails gathers 5,000 to 12,000 vehicle-miles of power per mile of rail per typical day.  Instead of building large solar arrays in remote deserts, we can collect enough energy were we use it to power transportation.  The distributed nature of the transportation network is ideal for collecting natural energy sources to drive it. (Disclouse note, the author is the founder of JPods LLC).

It looks likely that the funding for the first 4 networks will be available within 6 weeks and within 16 weeks you will see a simplified transportation energy supply chain. 


Public trading in the PRT industry is likely to be available within 6 months.  Currently PRT companies are privately financed.  The only public investments are indirect with Vectus  funded by POSCO, ATS funded by British Airport Authority.