Next-gen elevator goes sideways as well as up and down

By Trevor Mogg Published December 3, 2014

The humble elevator looks set to get its first major makeover since its invention some 160 years ago with a design that means we can pretty much leave our legs at the door.

German engineering giant ThyssenKrupp has come up with a system that does away with ropes and cables and instead utilizes magnetic levitation technology. Now, while this is indeed the same ‘maglev’ technology associated with some of the world’s fastest trains, ThyssenKrupp’s elevators will obviously travel at a more leisurely speed, ensuring your stomach doesn’t exit through your mouth.

Recommended Videos

Sideways travel

So what exactly makes the design so special? First, it can travel sideways as well as up and down, making it ideal for building designs such as Google’s under-construction “groundscraper” in London, which, as it’s nickname sort of suggests, is longer than it is tall.

Secondly, multiple capsules can run throughout the building at the same time, offering a subway-like service that should mean vastly reduced waiting times and therefore fewer manic presses of the ‘call’ button.

It’s also designed to do away with that uncomfortable sensation associated with high-speed elevator rides where it feels like your head’s about to cave in on itself, a boon for anyone whose office or apartment is located toward the top of a building.

Under construction

The good news is that this groundbreaking design isn’t just sitting on some dusty drawing board surrounded by excited engineers pointing at it in awe. ThyssenKrupp has been making solid progress with its idea and is set to have a prototype installed inside a 240-meter-high building being constructed right now in the city of Rottweil in south-west Germany.

Once initial tests are complete, it plans to open the building and its maglev elevators to the public, probably in 2016.

The company says that with more and more people living and working in ever-expanding cities, it’s important to reevaluate building design and to examine ways of making the most of available space.

Patrick Bass, who leads R&D at ThyssenKrupp’s elevator unit, told the Financial Times its technology could revolutionize high-rise structures resulting in “futuristic buildings that previously could only be dreamed of.”

[Quartz vis Discovery]

Topics

Emerging Tech

Contributing Editor

Not so many moons ago, Trevor moved from one tea-loving island nation that drives on the left (Britain) to another (Japan)…

Computing

Google Gemini’s best AI tricks finally land on Microsoft Copilot

Copilot app for Mac

Microsoft’s Copilot had a rather splashy AI upgrade fest at the company’s recent event. Microsoft made a total of nine product announcements, which include the agentic trick called Actions, Memory, Vision, Pages, Shopping, and Copilot Search.

A healthy few have already appeared on rival AI products such as Google’s Gemini and OpenAI’s ChatGPT, alongside much smaller players like Perplexity and browser-maker Opera. However, two products that have found some vocal fan-following with Gemini and ChatGPT have finally landed on the Copilot platform.

Cars

Rivian set to unlock unmapped roads for Gen2 vehicles

rivian unmapped roads gen2 r1t gallery image 0

Rivian fans rejoice! Just a few weeks ago, Rivian rolled out automated, hands-off driving for its second-gen R1 vehicles with a game-changing software update. Yet, the new feature, which is only operational on mapped highways, had left many fans craving for more.
Now the company, which prides itself on listening to - and delivering on - what its customers want, didn’t wait long to signal a ‘map-free’ upgrade will be available later this year.
“One feedback we’ve heard loud and clear is that customers love [Highway Assist] but they want to use it in more places,” James Philbin, Rivian VP of autonomy, said on the podcast RivianTrackr Hangouts. “So that’s something kind of exciting we’re working on, we’re calling it internally ‘Map Free’, that we’re targeting for later this year.”
The lag between the release of Highway Assist (HWA) and Map Free automated driving gives time for the fleet of Rivian vehicles to gather ‘unique events’. These events are used to train Rivian’s offline model in the cloud before data is distilled back to individual vehicles.
As Rivian founder and CEO RJ Scaringe explained in early March, HWA marked the very beginning of an expanding automated-driving feature set, “going from highways to surface roads, to turn-by-turn.”
For now, HWA still requires drivers to keep their eyes on the road. The system will send alerts if you drift too long without paying attention. But stay tuned—eyes-off driving is set for 2026.
It’s also part of what Rivian calls its “Giving you your time back” philosophy, the first of three pillars supporting Rivian’s vision over the next three to five years. Philbin says that philosophy is focused on “meeting drivers where they are”, as opposed to chasing full automation in the way other automakers, such as Tesla’s robotaxi, might be doing.
“We recognize a lot of people buy Rivians to go on these adventures, to have these amazing trips. They want to drive, and we want to let them drive,” Philbin says. “But there’s a lot of other driving that’s very monotonous, very boring, like on the highway. There, giving you your time back is how we can give the best experience.”
This will also eventually lead to the third pillar of Rivian’s vision, which is delivering Level 4, or high-automation vehicles: Those will offer features such as auto park or auto valet, where you can get out of your Rivian at the office, or at the airport, and it goes off and parks itself.
While not promising anything, Philbin says he believes the current Gen 2 hardware and platforms should be able to support these upcoming features.
The second pillar for Rivian is its focus on active safety features, as the EV-maker rewrote its entire autonomous vehicle (AV) system for its Gen2 models. This focus allowed Rivian’s R1T to be the only large truck in North America to get a Top Safety Pick+ from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety.
“I believe there’s a lot of innovation in the active safety space, in terms of making those features more capable and preventing more accidents,” Philbin says. “Really the goal, the north star goal, would be to have Rivian be one of the safest vehicles on the road, not only for the occupants but also for other road users.”

Cars

Jaguar Land Rover, Nissan hit the brake on shipments to U.S. over tariffs

Range Rover Sport P400e

Jaguar Land Rover (JLR) has announced it will pause shipments of its UK-made cars to the United States this month, while it figures out how to respond to President Donald Trump's 25% tariff on imported cars.

"As we work to address the new trading terms with our business partners, we are taking some short-term actions, including a shipment pause in April, as we develop our mid- to longer-term plans," JLR said in a statement sent to various media.