Transportation

Transportation shapes how people access jobs, healthcare, education, and each other. This archive tracks real progress in transit, infrastructure, electric vehicles, cycling, and more — from local wins to national policy shifts worth knowing about.

Aerial view of Shanghai traffic, for article on global EV sales

10% of global car sales were electric in 2022 for first time ever

By / / Good News For Humankind

Electric vehicles crossed a quiet but enormous threshold in 2022, making up one in every ten new cars sold worldwide for the first time. Roughly 7.8 million fully electric vehicles found buyers that year, even as overall car sales slipped. China led the charge, with EVs accounting for nearly a fifth of new cars sold there, while Europe wasn’t far behind at 11%. Behind the numbers is a deeper shift: battery prices have fallen dramatically over the past decade, and major automakers are doubling their EV output even as their broader sales decline. Ten percent is the moment a technology stops being niche and starts reshaping an industry — a hopeful signal for the global push toward cleaner transport.

Electric buses, for article on Kenya electric buses

Kenya is producing its first electric buses

By / / Good News For Humankind

Electric buses are now being assembled in Kenya for the first time, marking a genuine shift in how East Africa thinks about clean public transit. A Nairobi startup called BasiGo partnered with a veteran Mombasa assembler to build 1,000 electric buses over three years — creating over 600 jobs in manufacturing, maintenance, and charging. What makes this especially promising is BasiGo’s pay-per-kilometer financing model, which makes electric buses as affordable upfront as diesel for everyday operators. Kenya’s already-clean electricity grid means these buses will run on genuinely green power. It’s a hopeful template other African cities could follow.

Lightyear One, for article on solar electric car

World’s first solar car goes into production

By / / Good News For Humankind

Solar-powered cars have moved from moonshot idea to manufacturing reality — and that shift matters more than any single vehicle rolling off the line. Lightyear’s debut model uses curved solar arrays across its roof and hood, harvesting enough sunlight to cover up to 40 miles daily — matching most people’s actual driving habits. At $255,000, it targets early adopters, though with solar panel costs having dropped over 99% since the 1970s, wider accessibility may follow. A car that generates its own fuel from sunlight quietly answers one of the strongest critiques of electric vehicles.

Rolls-Royce & easyJet hydrogen engine, for article on hydrogen jet engine

World’s first test run of a hydrogen jet engine proves a success

By / / Good News For Humankind

Hydrogen-powered flight moved from theory to reality when Rolls-Royce and easyJet successfully ran a modern jet engine on green hydrogen produced entirely from wind and tidal energy. Unlike battery-electric approaches, hydrogen burns clean — releasing water vapor instead of carbon dioxide — and this test proved a real engine can handle it. Aviation has been one of the hardest sectors to decarbonize, so a confirmed proof of concept opens a genuine path forward. Every major breakthrough in flight history started exactly here: on the ground, with an engine, and a question that finally got answered.

Hydrogen train, for article on hydrogen-powered trains

World’s first 100% hydrogen-powered trains begin operations in Germany

By / / Good News For Humankind

Hydrogen-powered passenger trains now cover an entire regional rail network in Lower Saxony, Germany — 14 Alstom Coradia iLint trains that have fully retired the diesel locomotives once used on the Cuxhaven-to-Buxtehude lines. Each train pulls oxygen from the air, combines it with hydrogen stored on the roof, and emits only water vapor, traveling roughly 1,000 kilometers between refuels. The regional operator has pledged to never buy another diesel train, citing both climate goals and the cleaner air passengers breathe at small-town platforms. It’s a modest fleet in a single corner of Germany, but it’s the first proof anywhere that diesel regional rail can be fully replaced — a template other countries with long, lightly used routes can now follow.