New industrial revolution, known as the fourth industrial revolution, implies a set of important factors deeply concerning current social system.
Previous industrial revolutions transformed all productive sectors, which came along with migration from towns to cities and to industrial areas. In those places, machines took over manual worker. Currently there is a new component that is growing unstoppable: technology.
Hace unos días pudimos leer la noticia: un vehículo Tesla llevó a su conductor enfermo directamente al hospital. No tuvo nada más que poner el piloto automático y 30 km más tarde el conductor, o más bien el pasajero, se encontraba en el mostrador de urgencias.
Tesla ha tenido una visión adelantada con la implantación de los coches eléctricos y también con la incorporación del sistema autónomo de conducción que otras tecnológicas, como Google, ya estaban desarrollando.
En el primer caso, Tesla se encuentra acompañada por la casi totalidad de las grandes marcas de fabricantes de automoción. La apuesta de compañía por los coches eléctricos es la más decidida y avanzada, a pesar de tener pocos años de vida, debido principalmente a que la amortización de la inversiones del resto de fabricantes en las otras tecnologías que vienen de antaño todavía no han finalizado. Cuando haya alcanzado ese punto, el escenario actual tendrá un componente meramente eléctrico, para pasar más adelante a las células de hidrógeno.
La cosa no se quedará ahí sino que el vehículo, pasando de una concepto de propiedad a servicio, estará conectado con todos los dispositivos inteligentes mediante el IoT para una mejor eficiencia.
Más aún, la tecnología híbrida y eléctrica con la aplicación de sistemas de automatización no parece encontrará su límite en el ámbito de la automoción.
La nueva revolución industrial, conocida como cuarta revolución industrial, conlleva una serie de factores de gran calado que afectarán de manera más profunda al sistema social que conocemos.
Las revoluciones industriales anteriores transformaron los distintos sectores productivos, realizándose procesos migratorios desde el campo a las ciudades y a las industrias, sustituyendo en muchas ocasiones el trabajo manual por el trabajo a través de máquinas. Pero ahora hay un componente que avanza imparable: la tecnología.
Baldry
El llamado BDI (Baltic Dry Index o Baldry), es un índice de los fletes marítimos de la carga a granel seca. Refleja precios medios del transporte y contratos, por lo que se considera uno de los termómetros de la evolución de la economía mundial por su capacidad para predecir situaciones de mercado.
A pesar de no tener una correlación directa con la economía es buen termómetro de su estado y puede anticipar ciertos movimientos de aceleración o desaceleración del comercio mundial y, por lo tanto, su comportamiento. De hecho, en el segundo semestre de 2008, donde el índice pasó de los 11.000 a los 700 puntos, pudimos ver la capacidad del BDI para anticipar la crisis.
Acquiring an advanced and fair society it is in our hands. To do so, sustainable development challenges must be faced under and economic and social model to allow human development in all aspects.
The previous economic cycle, based on the assumption of unlimited growth and the infinite capacity of environment and natural resources, is over. One fact that proves it is that the world has gone through one of the most important crisis and economic breakdowns. This has also caused a social fracture generating indifference over issues that should have been a priority from the beginning. Turmoil can and must be changed.
Although it could be said that destruction mode is on, the blossom of a new better world is possible through a transformation process. Knowledge and expertise of the last years must be taken into account. All agents involved should collaborate. Citizenship, enterprises, Administration, Mass Media and NGOS, among others, must push towards a new socioeconomic behaviour and pattern.
VEHICLES OF THE FUTURE: SERVICE ORIENTED, INTELLIGENT AND SUSTAINABLE CARS. FROM THE FUTURE THAT NEVER WAS TO OUR CURRENT SITUATION
When “Back to the Future” was released in 1985 one of the most famous quotes by Doc Emmet Brown at the end of the first film and at the beginning of the second one of the trilogy was: “Roads? Where we’re going, we don’t need roads”. The car used in the film, a 1981 DeLorean DMC-12, was turned into a time machine that could actually fly, as Michael J. Fox characterized as Marty McFly pointed out. On the other hand, the vehicle, the time machine who came back from the future (October, 21, 2015), was electrical and powered by a nuclear reactor via plutonium to generate the 1.21 gigawatts of electricity needed. A lightning bolt was used to power the flux capacitor in the first movie. Nowadays, this still sounds like science fiction, though.
October 21, 2015 is the day. Unfortunately, the countdown from back to the future is here and, unless a miracle happens 30 years from that first Doc Emmet Brown’s journey, roads are still in use and cars cannot fly. Nonetheless, some steps forward have been taken and improvements have been produced. Plug-in hybrid vehicles and electric cars, as well as hydrogen cars have become a reality.
World vehicle fleet is estimated to have currently 1.1 billion running units and by 2050 it will reach 1.5 billion. World vehicle production in 2014 was 89.734.228 and nearly 80% of it came mostly from 10 countries, was the ninth amid them.
I suggest that, based upon my own calculations taken from countries’ economic situation and consumers’ taxes, by the end of this year the number of cars produced could reach 90 million units. Meaning a 0.5% higher rate. If production levels are kept in Spain and not taking Volkswagen crisis into consideration, in the short run, the country could rise up to the eighth position overtaking Brazil’s. Out of the 2.7 million units that Spain could produce, 83% would be export based. This due to high demand from Turkey, Poland, Switzerland, South Korea and Japan.
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2014 data taken from: http://www.oica.net/category/production-statistics/2014-statistics/
2015 data: personal calculations.
Sustainable vehicles: plug-in hybrid cars, electric cars and hydrogen cars will become part of energy technology
Greenhouse gas emission (CO2) reduction is today among world sustainable development goals (SDG), supported by the United Nations SDG 2030 Agenda. If we also take into consideration global population growth, it seems logic to preview that clean technologies applied to mobility will become a very important resource.
Current trends are promoting hybrid cars and technology vehicles powered by gas (Liquid Gas Petroleum (LGP), Natural Gas Liquid (NGL) and Natural Gas Compressor (NGC)), though. Notwithstanding, by 2020 market will be overtaken by plug in hybrid vehicles, electric cars and and units run on hydrogen battery.
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As the International Energy Agency suggests, by the end of 2014 there were 665.000 plug-in hybrid and electric vehicles around the world. Currently, this number has outreached one million vehicles.
The United States (275,100 vehicles), Japan (180,248 vehicles) and China (83,198 cars) have become the countries with the highest number of electric vehicles. In Europe, the most important are the Netherlands (43,762) and Norway (40,887). Spain is far behind with 6.780 units.
The global fleet powered by Natural Gas is estimated to be around 18 million units, 44,590 of them located in Spain.
Currently there are 2.800 orders for hydrogen cars in the world. It is estimated that by 2020 this figure will be the exact amount of units running in Spain, although there are not any.
Intelligent vehicles: wired and driverless
Vehicles of the future will become part of a digital infrastructure ITS (Intelligent Transport Systems), in which through ICT (Information Communications Technology) use, all will be wired. Such a significant evolution shall have a positive impact on traffic, making it more efficient, cheaper and will increase security levels.
From this process an important asset will arise: driverless cars, through a testing period at the moment. Google has already launched a prototype, proving that this sort of technology can become a reality in no time.
On the other hand, this evolution will extend new behaviors such as car sharing, following the path set by collaborative economy, cutting down traffic in the streets, reducing the number of accidents by human factor and, above all, saving money.
Driverless vehicles will allow us to manage time in a different way, transforming endless hours on the steering wheel into more profitable hours. In a world where time and its use becomes more expensive, technology will focus on providing services to benefit from this extra time.
And remember that by October 21, 2015, as Doc Emmet Brown pointed out 30 years ago in Back to the Future, we should have been using flying cars because where we were going roads were not needed. Who knows? Maybe he was right and perhaps the year 2015 was just too early.
OECD has reduced recently world economy growth perspectives. GDP has been fixed in a 3% during 2015 and it’s previewing a strengthening for 2016 situating GDP in a 3.6%
Although progression of the USA’s (being this country the first principal value in world economy) GDP is 2.4% for 2015 and 2.6% for 2016, the main factor that explains this downsizing comes from the combination of China’s economy slowing (second principal value in world economy), financial upheavals and the fall of the price of raw materials.
According to OECD, it’s expected for China to grow up to 6.7% during 2015 and to reach 6.5% in 2016. These forecasts are based upon the Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) indicator for the Asian country, which point out that it is below 50 points, meaning economic contraction. (When this indicator is above 50, it refers to economic expansion and being below 50 refers to contraction).
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Anti-cyclic moments, time for planning
The most desirable issue consists on converting the risk that represents an anti-cyclic moment into an opportunity to analyze and to establish a medium and long term planning. Basically because, if operating globally from such a point of view, this will give a preliminary survey of needs and will contribute to accelerate slow recovery entering into a new sustainable balance.
Marine transport as an international trade indicator
Within this blog among my Global Drivers, transport is an indicator to evaluate world economy situation.
Marine transport, besides being a global economy indicator, helps to define future development trends, even in advanced countries and as well as in emergent countries. It also indicates about how economic, enterprise and competitive planning should be within mid and long term.
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Marine transportation, which represents more than 80% of traded goods in the world, is growing over world GDP (UNCTAD). World maritime trade grew with only a 3.8% rhythm in 2013, moving 9.6 billion tones. Within, containers raised a 5.1% (651 million TEUs), a very similar percentage to bulk goods trade growth. The relevant issue here is to have on account that this rate represents the lowest rate of the last 5 years.
On the other hand, in 2014 marine trade grew up 4.1%, moving over 10.5 billion tones, and its estimated growth for 2015 will be 3.9%, representing over 10.9 billion tones.
Analyzing the short term, and due to the estimated marine growth contraction, everything indicates a slow recovery; notwithstanding, the positive point is that the gap between offer and demand is reducing.
Baltic Dry is one of the main indexes for measuring world economy situation, besides evaluating transport evolution of solid raw materials by sea. It reached its maximum historical rate in 2008. With economic crisis, the index sunk, reaching a lowest historic rate in 2015, which allows to empower the previous comment about slow recovery.
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Less BRICS and MINT and more economic and trading activity geographical areas
The most extended stream of analysis talks about emerging countries, as key factors within the growth economic equation. Without taking analytical value to this pattern, it is pertinent to point out that there are new reasons to adopt a new vision, centered in areas instead of countries, due to four reasons:
1.- Maintaining the focus on countries offers incomplete parameters because observing economic zones and areas will allow to establish interdependency connections, to measure intra-zone and inter-zone fluxes and, at the end, to obtain the most relevant analytical information in global strategic planning terms.
2.- Some of these countries being part of these two groups represent instability and uncertainty, due to institutional questions as well as political, demographic and to industrial development issues.
3.- A country’s frailties can be compensated (related to international trade streams) by other countries’ strengths not aligned within neither BRICS nor MINT.
*BRICS: Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa.
*MINT: Mexico, Indonesia, Nigeria and Turkey.
Changes in trade world geography: The box that is still changing the world
A widening point of view exercise must be carried out and focus put on development areas and not in countries. At this point, it is relevant to underline that there new emerging centers within the marine transportation net which configure with accuracy the delimitation of this trade development zones.
On one hand, the Panama Canal expansion project will rise up to 80% the volume of goods (TEUs) moving within this infrastructure.
On the other hand, the growth on the trade of intermediate products, with a higher added value along with specialized production concentration to serve this demand, takes logistics chains to seek economies of scale. In doing so, the growing size of container carriers’ trend is reinforced producing a direct impact over port facilities, alliances, buys, mergers and is also affecting the concentration of port operators.
RISE OF HIGH ADDED VALUE PRODUCTS TRADE+ CONCENTRATION OF SPECIALIZED PRODUCTION= ECONOMIES OF SCALE= GROWTH OF SHIPS’ SIZE=IMPACT OVER PORT FACILITIES, SHIPPING COMPANIES PORT OPERATORS CONCENTRATION
As Global Marine Trends 2030 brings out, by Lloyd´s Register Marine (www.lr.org), it can be stated that the mid and long term is defined by a series of potential development areas:
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It could become a general rule of action to use container routes, although these mean only a 13%, because in net value are over 50% of the total amount of carried goods, and thus, their impact sets a trend (“The Box That Changed the World”, de Arthur Donovan & Joseph Bonney).
The zones described are production and consuming zones which, put in relation with the expected growth population, give an idea about the challenges awaiting to satisfy future needs.
It must be clear that currently is the moment to face these challenges. Although slow recovery is not a desirable fact, it gives the chance to prepare and to establish a planning to grow in a sustainable and resilient way.
Cooperation among zones will contribute to the development of world growth. The idea is to advance towards a pattern which should include convergence and synergies among the different areas, avoiding debates and dialectics between developed economies and the emerging ones. The model must try to pass over every country’s weaknesses, focusing over the strengths that come from growth population and its effects over the rise of production and consuming centers. It must also assimilate the concept of strategic geographical zone within world trade routes.
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Today, Monday, the fifth of October, President of the United States, Barack Obama, reached a trade deal with Japan and other countries from the Pacific zone, the Trans-Pacific Partnership.
