Gondola Bases are an essential element of the whole ecosystem – serving a couple of purposes.
1) Depot for the Gondola Frames
Each Gondola Base stores enough Gondola Frames to serve the area of 25 sq kilometres with enough units to support the maximum traffic scenario.
The ambition would be to get below 5 min of waiting time with each request – which means that the nearest Gondola Base needs to be pretty close to the end customer. Gondola Bases coverage areas should overlap a bit to enable a bit of overhead for the worst-case scenarios.
Gondola Mesh dynamically manages the requests for Frames between all the Bases and is able to re-balance the number of Frames available in a given area at a specific time. When the battery is close to being depleted, each Frame needs to get stored in one of the bases to go through a maintenance check and get recharged.
2) Place for charging the Batteries
Once the Frame enters the Base the Battery is removed and sent for charging. The frame itself goes through a routine, automated self-maintenance procedure and if everything is all right the fresh Battery is connected – the Frame is available for new travel requests. As a rule of thumb, the number of available batteries in each Base should exceed the number of Frames in 2:1 ratio.
This setup provides super-stable car-to-grid electricity storage capabilities at scale. Each base is capable of storing vast amounts of over-produced green energy that will be used when it is most needed. Such an approach also allows for standardising the charging voltage and time – optimising the battery lifetime.
3) Workshop that allows quick replacement of any malfunctioning module – engine, battery, frame.
The Gondola Ecosystem is highly modular and standardized – if any module of the Frame starts to malfunction during the travel the whole Frame gets replaced by another one. The operation is controlled by Gondola Mesh – the Pod simply gets moved from one Frame to another and the journey is continued.
The malfunctioning Frame reports back to the nearest Base to go through detailed diagnostics (unless a critical failure happens – in which case it is being collected by a maintenance crew).
If any of the submodules – Battery or any of the Engines – is the reason for the malfunction it can get quickly replaced by another and the Frame is ready for further operations. The submodule is then serviced by the specialized crew.
If the malfunction happens in the Frame itself – the submodules are removed and can be used to support other Frame – and the Frame itself is being repaired by the specialized crew.
In general – the intention is to keep as many elements of the system operational – addressing the scenarios common at this point when failure of just one of the subsystems of a car makes the whole vehicle unusable.