51–60 of 149 posts
Shouldn't it be mandatory for ICE car manufacturers to make hybrids only ? It would push the market up, simplify through less options and help ecology and health in the process.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I don't think they're mutually exclusive. When level 5 self-driving is available, it won't be too difficult to add a wheel back and have modes where the self-driving capability maintains safety for other drivers on the road, but allows the driver to assume some risk for their own car and personal safety. Different modes could allow the driver to accept different levels of risk to themselves and of their car, while st…
This here is one of the reasons why I think manual cars will never go away, or at least they won't be banned outright - new cars will have enough systems to stop you from crashing in almost every situation, while allowing you to "drive" - so why ban it?
Having said all that, even if we're talking only about "manual modes" in l5 rather then "manual cars", there are still reasons why they might be banned or at least massively restricted in general, and that's due to infrastructure economics, not crashes. Well developed L5 cars will be capable of operating with a level of precision (in terms of actual road lines and such) and reliability that is beyond the general population, so once all cars reach that level it significantly changes how roads and support infrastructure themselves can be designed. Purely self-driving vehicles simply won't need the lanes to be as wide for example, which directly translates into newly available free space on exisitng roads. That could be used to make them purely thinner (less paving = massive cost savings), gain an extra mechanized vehicle lane for free (higher capacity for the same price), maintain existing numbers of lanes but gain new lanes for walkers/bikers, or some combination. There will be a lot of minor to radical optimizations available with significant economic and quality of life benefits, so long as you don't have to worry about having human drivers at all. That's probably going to tempt a lot of jurisdictions sooner or later.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
3 years ago was also before the diesel gate. Here in Europe, we moved from Diesel is king to the specialist press running article on why you can still consider buying a Diesel car in 2017 in some condition. That triggered countries like Germany to announce plan to ban gas car sales in a decade. Regardless what Volvo CEO thought 3 years ago, the market has shifted in a clear direction and it is his job to adapt. In a…
>>that some countries will forbid non-automated car to access some public road in the near future. I am sorry, but I don't believe that will happen in anything that could be described as near future. I don't see any actual bans to be introduced any sooner than 30-50 years from now, and even then only if: 1) the technology gets really good, not just "kind of good but only when the conditions are optimal" 2) the techno…
- Well over a million deaths a year worldwide, if we're talking America then 30k-40k+ here alone. Tens of millions disabled/injured, at ruinous expense. Even more accidents that "merely" cause significant damage, again at major expense.
- The huge insurance and societal costs necessary to sustain the above.
- People who cannot drive in a society where that's immensely limiting. This sandwiches both sides of demographics. Particularly in the First World, demographic trends are resulting in an ever increasing number of elderly who cannot drive any longer. And it's always been a hassle and disruption for parents to need to shuttle around children, or arrange for the same, or just do without.
- A fear, justified or not, that terrorists will make increasing use of the fact that cars are an excellent way to deliver a tremendous amount of energy into a set of targets even without any sort of purpose-made weapons onboard and are not something that can be done without.
- The immense waste in incredibly valuable land resources needed for overbuilding parking, wide lanes, and other support infrastructure needed for human driven vehicles.
- The immense waste in human time and stress due to traffic and other conditions that could be ameliorated or even eliminated by automatic control.
Etc etc etc. The principle problem with both your arguments 1 & 2 is that you make them in a vacuum outside of the massive negatives that we live with right now. As with many disruptive new technologies, self-driving cars don't have to live up to any particular ideal, they merely need to be better then what we've got. And frankly that's just not a very high bar. It's not just economics it's politics, if you look through the above list you should be able to easily identify some of the most powerful interest groups and societal motivators in existence, touching almost all of society in general. Once the avalanche gets going feedbacks are going to reinforce pretty rapidly.
Maybe this has something to do with the new Chinese owners? Maybe they see the future differently? And also, maybe, these owners have a somewhat privileged access to the largest battery production in the world?
Seems like Musk is starting to succeed in his plan in forcing the car makers to go electric
Exactly my thoughts. Plus, I wonder where are they going to get batteries from ;) Current hybrids pure electric range is laughable.
Shouldn't it be mandatory for ICE car manufacturers to make hybrids only ? It would push the market up, simplify through less options and help ecology and health in the process.
It should be mandatory to hit MPG and emission targets, not to force a certain technology.
Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle. Especially in the coming age of self driving cars. Every time you arrive or leave you have to remember to (dis-)connect the charger. Why not just have some kind of inductive energy transfer or I dunno... something. Edit1: Heh, this could work I gue…
Have you felt how much heat your average 10W Qi charger puts out. While that energy loss is acceptable for a smartphone or tablet with a 10Wh battery your average BEV stores kWh of charge. 2 slabs of metal can move way more electrons than an electromagnet.
Park in a parking space, and the spring loaded charging connector built into the road surface springs up and connects the car and charging begins.
Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle. Especially in the coming age of self driving cars. Every time you arrive or leave you have to remember to (dis-)connect the charger. Why not just have some kind of inductive energy transfer or I dunno... something. Edit1: Heh, this could work I gue…
I'd choose bmw's charger http://www.bmwblog.com/2017/04/27/bmw-wireless-charging-530e...
Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle. Especially in the coming age of self driving cars. Every time you arrive or leave you have to remember to (dis-)connect the charger. Why not just have some kind of inductive energy transfer or I dunno... something. Edit1: Heh, this could work I gue…
Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle. Especially in the coming age of self driving cars. Every time you arrive or leave you have to remember to (dis-)connect the charger. Why not just have some kind of inductive energy transfer or I dunno... something. Edit1: Heh, this could work I gue…
>Can we please standardize charging stations to not require a person to manually establish a connection? It seems that it would pose such an awkward and unnecessary hurdle. It's a total non-issue in practice. Inductive charging has barely made an impact for mobile phones, because plugging in a cable just isn't a big chore. It very quickly becomes an automatic habit that requires no conscious effort.
Wireless charging of phones might not be all that extra convenient because they're either in our hands or in our pockets, but at least in my house tablets spend a lot of time playing Netflix or showing a recipe or the news or a book on the counter in a tablet stand. Might as well be charging too.