Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

autonews.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

131–140 of 149 posts

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#131

Post by moogly »

asendra wrote: post #122
roel_v wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"and I work in IT." Yeah that's probably the problem. I mean, fuck dropbox, because ftp mount filesystem and use svn/git, right? Wireless charging is a great improvement over fiddling with cables several times a day. Anyone who's gotten used to it doesn't want to go back.

Except when you want to use the device and charge it...

If you're in that particular predicament (which should be very seldom), you can just connect that plebeian cable... You have two charging options now.

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#132

Post by njarboe »

gambiting wrote: post #61
xoa wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Beyond gutnor's reply, cars are just fundamentally ripe for disruption. The benefits of personalized arbitrary-point-to-point mechanized transport are so compelling that society has been willing to put up with an enormous price for it, but that doesn't mean the current situation isn't still terrible and ready for a real tipping point effect the instant it becomes feasible. The only reason we've had manual driving at…

I don't dismiss the benefits of automated driving on society, literally everything you said is true and I agree with it 100% - I'm just saying that I feel like the tech isn't anywhere near ready for mass deployment, it feels like a gimmick or a really fancy adaptive cruise control at best, or that people who talk about it come from a Star Wars universe where being surrounded by super high-tech stuff is just normal an…

Imagine in the middle of every American interstate a light-weight, elevated track holding up a lane in each direction designed for automated cars. Tech today could easily drive vehicles in such a controlled space at high speed and density. Switch to manual upon exit. At 100mph and 40ft per car one gets a rate of 13200 cars per hour. This is on par with the capacity of the current 5 lane Bay Bridge at 9,000 per hour [1]. This could be the future, if society could embrace it. (Electric?) automatic cars would be adopted very quickly if you got to use such a system for commuting and cross country travel. As driving tech got better cars could travel right next to each other on long trips to get the aerodynamic benefits of trains. Google, Apple - you have billions sitting around. How about building a demo track and start building the system on the 280 and 101 for a nice loop.

[1] Wish I had a better reference (http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/matier-ross/article/Peak-hour-...)

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#133

Post by njarboe »

bluGill wrote: post #128
rsync wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Plugin hybrids do seem to offer the best of both worlds right now." Yes - absolutely. If you are a legacy car maker . You get all the benefits of the halo of "modern" technology and "green" initiative but you still get to hang on to your very lucrative ICE maintenance business (oil changes, fluids, complicated mechanicals, etc.). As a consumer ? You get none of the technological benefits (dramatically lowered center…

Car makers make essentially nothing from ICE maintenance. The labor goes to the independent shops, even if you have a dealer do the labor the car maker gets nothing for it. The fluids are from a third party (you can buy manufacture fluid in a few cases - but that is someone else's fluid with their sticker on the bottle). Rebuilds are mostly done by independent shops. Sometimes the manufacturer supplies parts, but thi…

In the US these "independent shops" are called car dealerships and they sell all of the new cars in the US. Manufacturers don't sell cars directly to customers and this is enforced by law in many states. Tesla is the only company doing it. The independent shops usually sell only one brand of car and their profits come mainly from service not sales. Think of them as sales floors subsidized by the money brought in when the product breaks or need service you can't do your self. Not a feedback loop that is good for customers, I think.

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#134

Post by hodgesrm »

Retric wrote: post #94
kpil wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure of what effects you are talking about, but at home a reasonably probable 32 A 400V 10mm cable that is 8m long is about 99.75% efficient. I'm not sure about contacts but let's say it's at least 99%efficient in total. Fast charging stations is probably worse though.

AC plug to vehicle means you are doing AC > DC conversion which is not 99.75% efficient. So, if this is 93% including AC > DC that's actually fairly good.

Off topic but...Power from solar cells is DC; to the extent these are locally supplying vehicle power you can just cut out the 2-way AC conversion, no?

I have this picture that eventually all parking structures will be fitted with solar power to charge parked vehicles. (Roads would be even better, of course.)

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#135

Post by gorkonsine »

xattt wrote: post #88
gorkonsine wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The GM EV1 electric car had inductive charging back in the 1990s, using a "paddle" charger.

This is likely because people were terrified of plugging exposed high current high voltage connectors in outdoor setting.

Yes, but the point is, they had it and it worked just fine. Inductive power transmission works fine if the distance is very small (as it was with these paddles).

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#136

Post by munchbunny »

aninhumer wrote: post #63
jdietrich wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>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.

While it's obviously impractical for cars, my experience using a wireless charger with my phone is that despite being a seemingly minor change, it makes quite a bit of difference for me in practice. Plugging in a micro USB cable is often quite fiddly, and sometimes the cable can fall behind the table and require crawling around on the floor. Not to mention the cables and ports can be quite fragile and end up breaking…

While I mostly agree, my experience with wireless charging in general (with the Qi) has been finicky - if you're off my more than about 2-3mm, your phone won't charge.

The Nexus 5 charger had a small addition that more or less addressed the problem entirely: it added magnets at the corners of the chargers that would align with something (probably other magnets?) inside the phone, so you would know where the sweet spot was because it would pull your phone and hand into it. But with generic Qi chargers, I would have to fiddle around and check the charge symbol.

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#137

Post by aninhumer »

munchbunny wrote: post #136
aninhumer wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

While it's obviously impractical for cars, my experience using a wireless charger with my phone is that despite being a seemingly minor change, it makes quite a bit of difference for me in practice. Plugging in a micro USB cable is often quite fiddly, and sometimes the cable can fall behind the table and require crawling around on the floor. Not to mention the cables and ports can be quite fragile and end up breaking…

While I mostly agree, my experience with wireless charging in general (with the Qi) has been finicky - if you're off my more than about 2-3mm, your phone won't charge. The Nexus 5 charger had a small addition that more or less addressed the problem entirely: it added magnets at the corners of the chargers that would align with something (probably other magnets?) inside the phone, so you would know where the sweet spo…

I'm using a generic charger, and while you do have to position it correctly, I find it fairly forgiving. Basically as long as I vaguely line it up with the pad surface it works fine, and there's an LED that turns green to let me know it's correct.

I didn't know the official Nexus 5 charger used magnets though. I passed on it because IIRC it was a weird cylinder stand that looked less stable than the generic flat pad I bought. (That and it was a good bit more expensive.)

EDIT: I just played around with mine now, and the margin for error is at least a couple of cm. I think my sense of neatness objects to the offset before the charger does.

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#138

Post by worldsayshi »

skywhopper wrote: post #86
worldsayshi wrote: post #6

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…

If self-driving cars ever actually work, then a robot arm that can plug the charger into the whatever car will not be a significant engineering challenge.

I'm thinking that a robot arm with moving parts would be kind of expensive considering how ubiquitous it should be.

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#139

Post by worldsayshi »

Pica_soO wrote: post #114
worldsayshi wrote: post #6

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…

What if the charging station could roll to your car and plug in while its parking? Basically a cable drum drone, with a little lair somewhere below the street.

If you need to modify the environment to install it it wont be ubiquitous. Also, moving parts means more maintenance.

Re: Volvo signals 'end of the solely combustion engine-powered car'

#140

Post by worldsayshi »

willvarfar wrote: post #18
worldsayshi wrote: post #6

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…

All modern electric cars can trivially have enough 'parking assistance' AI to line them up exactly with a charging port (which could be, for example, beside or even under the car). The car can then trigger the charger to connect, and when you get in the car and start it it can trigger the charger to disconnect. All that is needed is standardization effort, and an up-front security review e.g. cars 'sign on' with a pr…

Yeah, that's right. Making the car do the "hard work" is probably the way to go!
Post reply on HN