The Ruhr University of Bochum is working on a rather different concept, called the CargoCap project. The German system [...] makes use of unmanned electric vehicles on rails that travel through pipelines with a diameter of only 1.6 metres. Each vehicle, called a ‘Cap’, is designed for the transportation of two European standard pallets. The German system is designed for use on a regional scale (up to 150 kilometres) in a much more finely woven network. Each vehicle is programmed to follow a certain path to its destination. [...] German engineers are already conducting experiments with a large-scale model.