Slashdot Mirror

Also, how much of this focus on autonomy and electrification is for boosting stock price?

Every deeper investigation I've read suggests Level 4 or 5 autonomy is a long ways off.

Also the standard knock on electrification is that if your electricity is majority generated by coal or other dirty or dangerous means, you're actually using coal-fired or nuclear cars.

I most assuredly support clean tech and vehicle autonomy, but I have a suspicion there's a lot of hype here for non-obvious purposes.

but what about a brake-by-wire car where the brake pedal isn't mechanically attached, where a sensor records how much the brake pedal is depressed

They don't exist.

They will.

http://articles.sae.org/14570/

The "fatal car accidents" is not because people don't use a seat belt. It is because the seat belt DOES NOT WORK.

If it actually worked, only the un-seatbelted people would die .... but that is not the case.

I just looked up this citation yesterday, the classic study which explains exactly how seat belts work. Bohlin found that only the un-seatbelted people died in accidents below 60mph.

http://papers.sae.org/670925/
Paper #: 670925
Published: 1967-02-01
DOI: 10.4271/670925
Citation: Bohlin, N., "A Statistical Analysis of 28,000 Accident Cases with Emphasis on Occupant Restraint Value," SAE Technical Paper 670925, 1967, doi:10.4271/670925.
Author(s): N. I. Bohlin
Pages: 14
Abstract: The value of the three-point safety belt has been evaluated by a statistical analysis of more than 28,000 accident cases, which concerned mainly two cars only and in which 37,511 unbelted and belted front-seat occupants were involved. The safety harness concerned is the Volvo three-point combined lap and upper torso harness with a so-called slip-joint. The average injury-reducing effect of the harness proved to vary between 0 and 90%, depending on the speed at which the accident occurred or the type of injury. Unbelted occupants sustained fatal injuries throughout the whole speed scale, whereas none of the belted occupants was fatally injured at accident speeds below 60 mph. Slight injuries only, mostly single rib cracks, bruises, etc., caused by the safety belt were reported in some cases. The three-point belt proved to be fully effective against ejection out of the car. Almost all cars involved were equipped with safety belts, of which, however, only 26% on an average were used. The frequency of use increased with the age of the occupants.

You asked for "any" and you've got it.

If you want more, expect to pay for it.

http://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/a... states that level 5 is "the full-time performance by an automated driving system of all aspects of the dynamic driving task under all roadway and environmental conditions that can be managed by a human driver"

There's no requirement that the car must lack human controls, only that the car be capable of fully autonomous driving under any condition a human could drive a car.

Level 5 means not having any controls that a human can use. So, unless their "future upgrade" includes ripping out the steering wheel and pedals, etc, then the car is only "level 4 ready".

The automated vehicle classification system (J3016) doesn't say anything about level 5 not having controls that a human can use. It only states that the system must execute the controls, rather than the human: http://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/a...

Level 5 means not having any controls that a human can use. So, unless their "future upgrade" includes ripping out the steering wheel and pedals, etc, then the car is only "level 4 ready".

No, level 5 simply means fully autonomous, the system controls everything with no human interaction.

SAE definitions: http://www.sae.org/misc/pdfs/a...

DOT's definitions (hint: they adopted SAE's rather than NHTSA's): https://www.transportation.gov... (page 11)

This is not the first. SAE J3061: Cybersecurity Guidebook for Cyber-Physical Vehicle Systems was published in January!

You are correct. Not only that, the learning objective with drag and drop might be colloquially called "coding" but in reality it might be to teach the logic of problem solving and the logic of coding using graphics

I use Simulink for a living. This is exactly what it it is, the buzz word is "Model Based Control". It doesn't mean I spend any less time trying to figure out the logic of how things work. Our whiteboards at work are covered with sketched block diagrams on how we need to implement a strategy.

Almost every company I know of has moved on past C for their engineers and just has them design and implement algorithms in Simulink. It's why the are a lot of positions open for Simulink across the country.

It writes better C faster than I ever could. Including C that meets ISO® 26262, IEC 61508, EN 50128, and related functional safety standards such as IEC 62304 and it's cutting development time in half

I got an Arduino Robot the other day and I spent more time messing around with C than I ever have with Simulink. I can make a control system to run a 16 cylinder engine in a half an hour. Drag and drop an engine speed sensor, drag and drop injector block. Toss in some PID control and it's done. Right now I would kill for a Python equivalent of Simulink but nothing comes close, I'm about ready to just make an Arduino mako template so I can teach python to write my C for me.

Not that people that need to know C disappeared, they're just the ones writing our 'device drivers' for Simulink. When I drag and drop a "Digital I/O" block into the model I trust that they made it so it works. (And sometimes it doesn't, but that's all code). It validates the datatypes. Does fixed pointing in a straight forward manner. I know most people think autogenerated code is big and scary but I trust it better than I trust some guy that took a few C courses in college.

Additionally it's much easier to let engineers do stuff how engineers do them and programmers how programmers do things and not make the engineers learn programming or the programmers learn engineering. (Not that we don't exist, but we write the device drivers)

It's why a lot of dev boards also have Simulink libraries. It's not that I don't know C or assembly it's that I'm tired of dicking with it and just want to make a controller. I can take the same Simulink model and compile it for multiple vendors and even different devices for that vendor.

I can swap dev boards without changing any of my model logic in a few seconds. Even compile it for FPGAs and PLCs.

Further reading:

1. http://papers.sae.org/2013-01-...
2. https://www.mathworks.com/tagt...
3. http://www.mathworks.com/compa...

[Meta: Speaking of taking a lot longer to write. This post took an extra 5 or so minutes because I had to format all of the HTML. Please switch to Markdown or Restructured text. There's a reason we use it in industry, it is faster.]

I enjoy shifting into turns, and I promise you, my car doesn't "fake" any type of "engine vroom" though speakers.

No, it fakes the cabin audio the old fashioned way, mechanically.

"Electronically synthesized noise is not a Porsche solution, so the engineers developed a new Sound Symposer that is standard on both versions of the car (911). An acoustic channel picks up intake vibrations between the throttle valve and air filter and a membrane incorporated in the channel reinforces the vibrations and transmits them as an engine sound into the cabin. The system is driver activated or deactivated via a “Sport” button that controls a valve ahead of the membrane."
http://articles.sae.org/10374/

"But unsprung weight" is a tired old preconception. Maybe if you bothered exploring the references provided and elsewhere you would be relieved of some of your misconceptions.
Protean Electric tackles the unsprung-mass 'myth' of in-wheel motors
Heresy Unsprung, Lotus Engineering: Unsprung Weight Doesn’t Really Matter Much[The Truth]

An electric car does not have to have reduction gearing at all. In fact there are electric cars that do not. Repeat, do not. Believe it. In fact you can also do away completely with mechanical brakes.

If Tesla and GM and Nissan and others were all too timid or conservative to do it right, that is their problem.

Now who is wrong?

Oh, come now, you act like today's gas engines are pointlessly overcomplicated in comparison to an electric motor.... ;)

The sad thing is, EV motors are still more expensive than equivalent-power gasoline engines today, simply due to volume. Even with the much greater complexitiy (and usually more sensitive tolerances and harsher operating environments), the huge volumes and long-refined production processes mean they're churned out amazingly cheaply in comparison to the challenge at hand.

I can only comment from personal experience. Seat belt wearing rates are very high in Australia (to the point where I don't know ANYONE who doesn't) and I always wear a seat belt.

I lost control of a mini cooper S at approx 80 kph. The car spun, then righted it self before driving off the road directly into a very large tree that didn't move a mm.

Actually, many of the seat belt and auto safety studies I read were from Australia.

I'm glad that you got out of it OK and that you got a good story out of it.

I read many accident reports of collisions like yours, a front-end collision against a solid barrier at 80 kph (60 mph), where the occupants were wearing seat belts, and they survived -- before the days of air bags.

The classic study was by Nils Bohlin for Volvo. He found that nobody died in an accident up to 60 mph if they were wearing the three-pont lap and shoulder belt. As long as the passenger compartment remained intact, they survived. A car can hit a tree head-on, the engine compartment will crush like an accordion, but the passenger compartment will remain intact up to about 60 mph. Above 60 mph, the engine and transmission shell will go into the passenger compartment, the passenger compartment will collapse, and the survival declines significantly. That's consistent with your experience.

Nils I. Bohlin, (1967). "A Statistical Analysis of 28,000 Accidents with Emphasis on Occupant Restraint Value,". 11th Stapp Car Crash Conference. Society of Automotive Engineers. doi:10.4271/670925. SAE Technical Paper 670925. http://papers.sae.org/670925/

Is CNET good enough for you?

Similar to the Roadster, the Model S battery pack is filled with cylindrical lithium ion cells dubbed 18650s. Tesla does extensive testing of these cells at its headquarters, cycling them at different temperatures, trying different discharge rates, and even crushing them. The data Tesla collects gets used to refine the specifications sent to its suppliers, among them Panasonic and Samsung.

How about SAE International?

Despite Tesla Motors’ proven success with 18650-type Li-ion cells in its Model S, the industry’s best-known EV battery analyst isn’t betting that other automakers will adopt that form factor, which describes the cylindrical battery case’s 18 x 65 mm dimensions.

It's not a 'zillion cylinders', it's just over 7k, and 'wasted space' is instead used for the liquid coolant used to keep the batteries under temperature.

Around 7000 individual cells, coded NCR18650A by their supplier Panasonic, are used in each Model S pack. Rated at 3100 mAh, the cells are based on lithium nickel-cobalt aluminum (NCA) chemistry and feature a proprietary cathode geometry developed by Panasonic and Tesla. Last October the two companies announced a battery-cell supply agreement through December 2017 (Panasonic also owns shares of Tesla Motors) which will cover the launch of the Model X in late 2014 and subsequent Model E vehicles.

The SAE has been talking about this for years. This article is from 2012:

http://articles.sae.org/11142/

I think the BMW 7 series has used ethernet for the infotainment systems for a while now.

That's immoral

Only if you are a religious bigot.

I actually believe that all sets of cabling should be treated the same. I object to bigots telling me that I shouldn't stick a USB connector into an SAE AS 50151 B 500 amp connector.

no one ever cites those studies that show lower speed limits are safer... Because they don't exist.

Here's a study that shows lower speeds are safer. Among people who were wearing a seat belt, nobody driving 60 mph or less died. People driving over 60 mph died, because in an accident above 60 mph, the car rolls and the passenger compartment starts to fall apart. (Unfortunately the full paper is paywalled, but it had a nice chart of fatalities increasing with speed.) This happens to be a classic paper from 1967; there have been studies coming to the same conclusion ever since. You can look them up in the Engineering Index.

Driving fast is safe as long as you don't have an accident. When you do have an accident, the faster you're going, the more energy you have to dissipate, and the more likely the car is to crush in a rollover or tear apart and send you flying unprotected at 60 mph. It's pretty hard to hit the ground at 60 mph and survive. That's roughly equivalent to falling off a 15-story building.

http://papers.sae.org/670925/

A Statistical Analysis of 28,000 Accident Cases with Emphasis on Occupant Restraint Value

Paper #: 670925

Published: 1967-02-01

DOI: 10.4271/670925

Citation:

Bohlin, N., "A Statistical Analysis of 28,000 Accident Cases with Emphasis on Occupant Restraint Value," SAE Technical Paper 670925, 1967, doi:10.4271/670925.
Author(s): N. I. Bohlin

Affiliated: Passenger Car Engineering Dept., AB Volvo

Abstract: The value of the three-point safety belt has been evaluated by a statistical analysis of more than 28,000 accident cases, which concerned mainly two cars only and in which 37,511 unbelted and belted front-seat occupants were involved. The safety harness concerned is the Volvo three-point combined lap and upper torso harness with a so-called slip-joint. The average injury-reducing effect of the harness proved to vary between 0 and 90%, depending on the speed at which the accident occurred or the type of injury. Unbelted occupants sustained fatal injuries throughout the whole speed scale, whereas none of the belted occupants was fatally injured at accident speeds below 60 mph. Slight injuries only, mostly single rib cracks, bruises, etc., caused by the safety belt were reported in some cases. The three-point belt proved to be fully effective against ejection out of the car. Almost all cars involved were equipped with safety belts, of which, however, only 26% on an average were used. The frequency of use increased with the age of the occupants.

Can you provide a citation that doesn't come from a fear-mongering rag of an excuse for journalism?

From an SAE presentation:

Risk per vehicle per operating hour

Risk of occupant/former occupant experiencing HF exposure above health based limits associated with an R1234yf ignition event: 3 x 10 -12 power

Risk of occupant being exposed to an open flame due to R1236yf ignition: 9 x 10 -14 power

Industry Evaluation of refrigerant HFO-1234yf

I was under the impression that the manufacturing processes to make the power plant / batteries for *POPULAR BRAND OF HYBRID VEHICLE* released the equivalent quantity of CO2 into the atmosphere as would be saved by the reduced CO2 released by the hybrid drive over it's serviceable life.

That's neo-con disinformation, operating at several levels, that is being distributed by marketing organizations like CNW. Not only is it factually incorrect, it also implies CO2 is the most significant car exhaust pollution issue, which it certainly isn't, and ignores the fact that auto batteries are recycled (in the USA) at a rate exceeding 95%.

There's also the issue of "service life". We all heard the stories of how buying a new Prius battery would cost more than the car, and we'd have to do it every three years - yet I have 130,000+ miles on my ten year old battery pack and it has had zero maintenance and zero problems. Other people have gone 300,000 miles with no issues. Good quality electric motors, such as the traction motors in Japanese hybrids, have a 40 year service life before rebuilding - and if the bearings are replaced at the first sign of heat or noise brushless motors can last over a hundred years. I have an 80 year old electric fan in my house (it has hand-wound coils and hand-cut steel gears in the oscillating mechanism) and it works better than modern plastic chinese-made fans - pushes more air and uses less energy, because it's extremely well made. Service life estimates based on worst-case fantasies of hybrid haters are clearly not realistic.

The net being a loss to society, as the process for making the batteries released toxic elements not used in making regular combustion engine cars.

Again, this is factually incorrect. Even if you accept the ridiculous definitions of pollution and service life, it's still just plain not true, and has been repeatedly debunked in peer-reviewed literature and in journals. Of course the Wall Street Journal and Fox News will keep repeating absurd anti-environment propaganda forever, but those are not reality-based news sources.

I've read about a hundred papers on auto collisions and talked to a couple of dozen auto safety engineers to make sure I understood what I was reading. There might be somebody out there who drove into a brick wall at 65mph and lived. This is an idealized model, and specific circumstances can affect it. But that's the physics of most head-on collisions, and it's been confirmed in collision labs and in accident investigations on the road.

In fact, most people don't survive a head-on collision at >55mph, as this classic study http://papers.sae.org/670925/ by Nils Bohlin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Bohlin found out.

You cited a safety study from 1967 to back up your point about the survivability of head on collisions? 1967? That's before shoulder belts became mandatory in the US! There have also been major design changes in design to the steering columns, the frame, the addition of airbags. It may be an interesting paper, but as far as its relevance to what you're talking about, it might as well be wrapped around some fish and chips.

In fact, most people don't survive a head-on collision at >55mph, as this classic study http://papers.sae.org/670925/ by Nils Bohlin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Bohlin found out. Great read, BTW (if you're a physics/engineering nerd).

So what you are saying is that once you get above the magical 55 mph you are dead anyway. So why worry about 85 mph or even 100 mph speed limits? Perhaps you are arguing that we should return to a nationwide 55mph even though all the statistics show that there are fewer fatalities with a 65mph limit.

Once you have the initial disruption, a car at 85mph (vs. 55mph) (a) is much less stable, and much harder to get back under control

Interesting hypothesis. Now all you have to do is prove it

But the death rate goes up pretty fast above 55mph.

Citation needed.

I've read about a hundred papers on auto collisions and talked to a couple of dozen auto safety engineers to make sure I understood what I was reading. The fatality rates of automobile collisions increase by about a square function of the speed. When you have a collision, you have a lot of energy to dissipate, and KE = 1/2 mv^2.

I don't have my files around to cite, and I've forgotten most of my college physics, but here's the bottom line (Fermi exercise; the numbers may not be right, but if you have better numbers you can recalculate it for me):

1. According to a presentation on front-end collisions I read in Automotive News by a Mercedes-Benz engineer, it's impossible to make a car that will keep you alive in a front-end collision into a rigid barrier at more than about 50 or 55mph.

A car crashes into a barrier. The occupants are restrained by their seat belts. The front end of the car crushes until the car comes to a stop. The front end, from bumper to firewall, is about 50 inches. The maximum deceleration the occupant can survive is 50g. When you run the numbers, the initial speed is about 50mph. With those parameters, the front end of the car is completely crushed, up to the firewall, and the passenger compartment is intact. Above that speed, the engine goes into the passenger compartment, the passenger compartment crushes and collapses, and the collision usually isn't survivable.

The engineer said that you can't raise the survivable speed significantly, because the front end would have to be impractically long (that 50 inches would increase as the square of the speed).

There might be somebody out there who drove into a brick wall at 65mph and lived. This is an idealized model, and specific circumstances can affect it.

But that's the physics of most head-on collisions, and it's been confirmed in collision labs and in accident investigations on the road.

In fact, most people don't survive a head-on collision at >55mph, as this classic study http://papers.sae.org/670925/ by Nils Bohlin http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nils_Bohlin found out. Great read, BTW (if you're a physics/engineering nerd).

2. OK, so not all collisions are head-on into a barrier. Let's assume that Texas road is designed well enough to avoid that. Let's assume it's lined on the sides with breakaway signs, popcorn-filled barriers and right-of-ways filled with sand.

You've got people driving along at 85mph. For a certain number of those cars, something will go wrong. Maybe a tire will blow. Maybe one car will bump another. Maybe a wheel won't be aligned right. (I've seen wheels fall off.) There will be a lot of human failures, like drivers falling asleep, or failing to pay attention,

Once you have the initial disruption, a car at 85mph (vs. 55mph) (a) is much less stable, and much harder to get back under control and (b) has a lot more energy to dissipate before it comes to a stop.

Maybe you'll be lucky and slide to a stop along the pavement, but the physics is against it. If you don't crash against a barrier, that energy tends to convert to rolling energy.

The tendency is to roll, along a couple of axes. First you roll across the horizontal plane, until the car is perpendicular to the direction of travel. Then the car flips over, and usually rolls until it stops. Rollover accidents are the most fatal. Racing cars are built with reinforced tops and rollover bars that can take a rollover, but when I was studying this stuff, the roofs of passenger cars usually collapsed after one or two rollovers, and even if they didn't collapse, the occupants got a lot of damage.

So you're going to roll over a lot more violently, and a lot farther, at 85mph than you would at 60mph.

Whether a driver should risk his life and brain by driving >85mph is a question that physics can't answer. But the death rate goes up pretty fast above 55mph.

As my physics professor used to say, I don't care if you kill yourself, as long as you get the physics right.

STANAG 4586 only addresses UAVs, and caters to the fixed-wing variety. The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) have adopted a standard architecture for command and control of robots known as AS-4, formerly Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems JAUS. This standard protocol addresses the needs of a wide variety of robotic and autonomous systems including UGVs, UAVs, and UUVs.

Learn more at: http://www.sae.org/servlets/works/committeeHome.do?comtID=TEAAS4

There goes my mods for the discussion. Anyway: See http://www.uigi.com/MSDS_gaseous_CO2.html (no explanation but a confirmation of the statement). See also http://www.sae.org/misc/aaf99/visteon.pdf for a report on what happens when a CO2-fueled cooling system leaks its contents into your car.

What I know is that when you inhale CO2 the acidity of your blood will increase. At a certain point your blood will be to acidic to sustain life. This is what happens when, for instance, you have a heart problem and your body starts to "compensate". I put that in quotes because the way it compensates keeps you alive for a bit longer but kills you in the long run and leads to a lot of damage to organs, especially the heart. But I digress.

The rising of the acidity in your blood (lower Ph) is also cited as an important cause for its lethality in a report from the Dutch ministry for public health and the environment, http://www.rivm.nl/milieuportaal/images/20091002_Evaluation_toxicity_CO2.pdf, that writes:

"It is generally believed that CO2 toxicity is caused by displacing oxygen, leading to asphyxiation, similar to the mode of action as inert gases. This is only partly true. The inhalation of high concentrations of CO2 can lower the pH of the blood and thus trigger effects on the respiratory, cardiovascular and central nervous systems (HSE, 2007)".

The Leaf's optional DC fast charge to 80% takes 30 minutes from a 50 kW CHAdeMO charging station. There are 800 in Japan, 150 in Europe and a handful in the USA, though supposedly most Nissan dealers will be installing them.

Some (all?) Model S variants will support Tesla's own 90 kW Supercharger, which will give a 50% charge boost in 30 minutes (150 mile range in a 300 mile pack). Also the Model S pack is swappable, so for a long trip you could borrow a 300 mile pack from a Tesla store (for now Tesla is vague on the details).

Meanwhile some USA and European car makers have endorsed a proposed third DC fast charger, the SAE J1772 "combo-coupler" with two extra fat pins beyond the current plug that almost all plug-in cars for DC charging up to 90 kW. The joy of standards...

30 minutes is still longer than a gas vehicle, but it makes the occasional long-distance trip (on which you didn't take your family's other car, or rent, or fly) more practical. I'm sure it's not enough for you, from your comments you seem allergic to EVs for a host of reasons. But you don't speak or buy for everyone.

Formula SAE (undergrads build small race cars and compete) is a fantastic training experience for any kind of vehicle engineering. The cycle of design-analyze-build-test-repair-repeat is an excellent compliment to a standard engineering education. Several of the judges and organizers of the competition work at SpaceX and they attend the competitions to recruit new engineers.

Home page for Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) student events, http://students.sae.org/ Note that SAE also serves aerospace engineers, not just automotive.

Ongoing discussions about building and racing these cars are on this site:
    http://fsae.com/groupee?s=763607348&cdra=Y
Read this forum topic first, before posting:
    http://fsae.com/eve/forums/a/tpc/f/125607348/m/72110779141

In NY State, there are excellent FSAE teams at RPI, Cornell and also at RIT (Rochester).

Very similar systems are being developed to aid A/C units in cars with stop/start engines: http://www.sae.org/mags/aei/9864

http://students.sae.org/competitions/supermileage/results/2010.pdf

Milwaukee is where my brother attends.

And that was a car built with very little aerodynamic consideration. It was brute efficiency and power transmission to get that 700+ MPG at 55MPH. Had tey bothered with aerodynamics, they'd have probably pushed 90MPG.

Unprovable claims. Such laughable stuff. Go to one and go see for yourself. Half of these over-100MPG beasts are just that, ugly blocky bricks.

They still kick the ass of anything coming out of any major car manufacturer as far as fuel economy goes.

I still don't get it - why cars need so much software? Older cars worked quite well with just mechanical controls, so why there are so many computers in new cars?

From SAE's "Automotive Engineering International:"

Consumer radios and military communication devices were the mainstay of electronics usage prior to the late 1950s. When diodes, transistors, analog integrated circuits, and digital integrated circuits gained a vehicle applications foothold in the 1960s and 1970s, the initial development phase of automotive electronic products included the proliferation of electronic fuel ignition, a technology that was sparked by government regulations aimed at reducing exhaust emissions and improving fuel economy.

Engine controls, also an emissions and fuel economy-motivated pursuit, gained momentum in the late 1970s through the 1980s. For example, the 1975 Cadillac Seville used a 7 x 10 x 3 in (180 x 255 x 85 mm) analog engine control unit with 275 components. Its discrete components included 145 resistors, 38 capacitors, 41 transistors, and 36 diodes along with four linear integrated circuits (standard), custom components including five linear integrated circuits and one thick-film signal module, and five thick-film resistor modules.

As integrated circuit technology evolved, it became possible to design many of the functions into the integrated circuits, thus eliminating a lot of discreet components. Today's digital engine control unit has 90 or fewer components packaged in a box about 4 x 5 x 1 in (100 x 125 x 25 mm) {and] the downward trend in package size and number of components continues.

The second development wave added microprocessors and other enablers to the electronics bin, facilitating the addition of such vehicle features as anti-lock braking, electronic engine controls, and climate control during the 1980s. Electronic engine controls were representative of how the industry evolved vehicle subsystems.

With the addition of intelligent power, intelligent sensors, and large electrical erasable PROMs (essentially memory technology), integrated systems flourished in the 1990s. Integrated powertrain/traction control, integrated braking, steering and suspension, multiplexing, communication and navigation, as well as onboard diagnostics represent the broad array of smart systems.

The present development phase of automotive electronics includes such enablers as digital signal processing and 32-bit microprocessors. Computing power is now 40 times greater than what is was in 1975, and since that time the industry has experienced 300-fold growth in the number of transistors on a chip.

Electronics History Lesson [September 2002]

Does anyone know the software design / assurance standards for automobiles? Aviation (FAA) mandates DO-178B (level A through D) for software deemed to have an effect on flight safety... is there something similar for Cars? Closest i can find is this PDF Automotive Software Engineering [pdf]. THis calls out what looks to be the right things, but is it mandated anywhere that system-safety through to software assurance is followed?

anyone?

Done and done.

http://www.physorg.com/news133455659.html
https://shop.sae.org/technical/papers/960439

Learn to google. Googling speed limits interstates accident rates got me the first one, and variations thereof, Adding -purdue got me the second. It would also have eventually produced contrary results if any existed. Of course, I'm not going to sit at google adding fifteen hundred -words just to reinforce or refute those articles. I don't even drive.

Given the specific mention of military hummers, which are most certainly NOT hybrids or electic, it must have some benefit for non-hybrids.

Au contraire

hybrid HMMWV research right here:

http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/2008-01-0775

USB 3 will do at least 200mb/s sustained. And home users will love it when external harddrives gets faster. Professionals may need firewire for other stuff but the measly 100mb/s will not be an argument for firewire.

when USB 3.0 can do 200MB/s (not sustained), FireWire S3200 will have sustained speeds of 400MB/s. and it's not faster external hard drives that will push consumers to upgrade from USB 2.0 to 3.0--current UDMA133 hard drives are already far outstripping the 33MB/s transfer speed USB 2.0 is capable of providing. it's the ever increasing disk sizes, especially in portable media players, along with the proliferation of HD video, hi-res cameras, lossless audio, and other applications exposing consumers to ever-larger file transfers, that will increase demand for faster bus interfaces.

And every computer at NASA uses USB for the mouse, it doesn't mean shit. 1394b is an interconnect system. It can't track launch debris.

i know you're just trolling, but if every computer at NASA uses USB--whether it's for mouse/keyboard/printer/scanner/whatever--then that clearly means USB isn't going anywhere. i mean, FireWire is a high speed serial bus. of course it's being used as an interconnect--in this case to connect debris-monitoring equipment. what did you expect them to use it as? a CPU? NASA and the military use IEEE 1394b for high-speed interconnects because it's the best solution. IEEE 1394b has been standardized by SAE AS5643 as a data bus network for use in future military & aerospace projects (such as the Orion crew exploration vehicle) that require a high throughput data bus. USB doesn't even come close to the same performance.

Face it, firewire is dead. It's only been used for DV by consumers. Now DV is gone and firewire will soon follow as far as consumers are concerned.

yea, you can repeat that as many times as you want, but that won't make it true. FireWire's current applications extend far beyond the DV format. as long as most consumer laptops and computers still support FireWire, it's not considered dead, especially as there are no viable alternatives to FireWire for sustained high speed data transfers.

clueless armchair analysts have been predicting the death of FireWire since USB 2.0 came out. but anyone who's actually worked with both interfaces or is media production (or understands the difference between PIO and DMA) knows that USB's real-world performance doesn't even compare to that of FireWire.

Maybe this guy?

http://www.sae.org/technical/papers/960439

It costs money, though the brief is still useful.

Basically the leading cause of accidents would seem to be bad road design. Additionally most accidents happen on roads with lower-than-highway limits. Also, the German autobahns, with no speed limits, have consistently been safer than US low limit roads.

"Speed limits were found to have minimal effect on the traffic accidents. "

And who will oversee the overseers? And how can the agencies be independent when they are being "overseen"?

you cannot totally rely on any single agency for anything. That's why you have indepenedent groups do indepenedent tests. Except, if they are all "overseen" by the same overseer, they are not independent. In fact, there is in effect only one agency.

That's why we have agencies like NIST, ASTM, SAE, UL, and others. They are independent, monitored by government agencies, and composed of a wide variety of groups so that they can't be easily subverted by any one group. It is these groups that certify laboratories and test procedures and ensure that testing is done in a rigorous and scientific fashion. Yes, you can't have 100% certainty that an agency is completely immune to influence but you can take reasonable steps to safeguard against it.

Oh and by the way, where did I say anything about a single agency or oversight group? The best would be several independent evaluations and oversights. Again, it's up to the consumer to judge the proper level of validation to which they feel comfortable about a product. To some people all it takes is a smiling face in a TV commercial, to others it will be many years of intense scrutiny. Personally, I tend toward the latter.

Not as absurd as you might think, as you can use aluminum alloy to produce hydrogen...

And if that doesn't float your boat you can always use aluminum to enhance your rocket fuel...

Iron isn't quite as sexy, apparently it can help to enhance diesel fuel...

Mechanical failsafe? Backup? Okay Mr. No Engineer, perhaps you could explain how you provide a backup for a monocoque wing skin?

Aircraft are often partly glued together and the technique can be used in cars as well

If you had an epoxy or something that would automatically squirt itself into fatigue cracks in aluminum, then air/UV harden, it would be a major blow for freedom. Now, write that large enough to seal bullet holes, and you've just made some gunheads very excited.

Here are a few publications on the process. They're not all freely available.

The original patent by Paul Baskis. (1992) Thermal depolymerizing reforming process and apparatus.

A new patent (issues about two months ago, though it was filed more like three years back) by the folks currently working at Changing World Technologies. (2007) Process for conversion of organic, waste, or low-value materials into useful products.

A research report for the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research from the University of Illinois on what appears to be a similar process, if not the same one. (1999) Thermochemical conversion of Swine Manure to Produce Fuel and Reduce Waste. (There's a layman's write up at National Geographic News.)

An SAE report on recycling polyurethane foam and other plastic crap from shredded car interiors. (2005) Recycling Shredder Residue Containing Plastics and Foam Using a Thermal Conversion Process.

Another SAE report on the same topic. (2006) A Life Cycle Look at Making Diesel Oil from End-of-Life Vehicles.

I don't know if anything was published in a peer-reviewed journal; the CWT website doesn't appear to link to anything, and I don't know if that's par for the course for an engineering firm, or if they're not publishing to keep things secret, or if they're selling snake oil.

Here are a few publications on the process. They're not all freely available.

The original patent by Paul Baskis. (1992) Thermal depolymerizing reforming process and apparatus.

A new patent (issues about two months ago, though it was filed more like three years back) by the folks currently working at Changing World Technologies. (2007) Process for conversion of organic, waste, or low-value materials into useful products.

A research report for the Illinois Council on Food and Agricultural Research from the University of Illinois on what appears to be a similar process, if not the same one. (1999) Thermochemical conversion of Swine Manure to Produce Fuel and Reduce Waste. (There's a layman's write up at National Geographic News.)

An SAE report on recycling polyurethane foam and other plastic crap from shredded car interiors. (2005) Recycling Shredder Residue Containing Plastics and Foam Using a Thermal Conversion Process.

Another SAE report on the same topic. (2006) A Life Cycle Look at Making Diesel Oil from End-of-Life Vehicles.

I don't know if anything was published in a peer-reviewed journal; the CWT website doesn't appear to link to anything, and I don't know if that's par for the course for an engineering firm, or if they're not publishing to keep things secret, or if they're selling snake oil.

http://students.sae.org/competitions/supermileage/ (PDF warning, in case you try to download the results)

Screw you, Detroit. High school students can get better gas mileage than big business. That's sad.

I'm a non-practicing ASE and was wondering how lightning might impact the wing and/or fuselage? http://www.sae.org/aeromag/features/aircraftlightn ing/ In other plastics, arcs caused by lightning opens holes and makes the material brittle. That would be bad for a wing in a thunderstorm for obvious reasons.

Makes me pause and say .... hummmmmmmm.
Looks like some foil or layers of conducting material is embedded in the wing/airframe. http://www.dexmet.com/Lightning-Strike-Protection/

I thought that a lot of this had been done already by Lotus, I certainly remember TV new spots on it a few years ago.

A quick Google has brought up this from 2004.

Of course I haven't actually read the article, hey this is Slashdot!

The competition rules require 15MPH minimum average for six laps of a 1.6 mile track, and 25 MPH maximum for any one lap. There are considerable penalties for being too slow or too fast. This is about the same pace as a road bike.

Look deeper, a high school team came in second place.
http://www.sae.org/students/sm2006results.pdf

I read TFA, and it made no mention of speed, distance or any other aspect of the contest. The driver lies down, but how? On the stomache, or the back (with a periscope?). Were they inside to avoid being blown about (aboot?) by the wind?

Try reading harder next time -- TFA contains a link to the official website for those ambitious clickers who want to find out more than just a summary. From the home page, you can click to read the official 2006 rules and also look to the right for a link to the team websites. The UBC site contains many pictures including a nice one of how the driver lies down and also tech specs on the vehicle.

Any other questions?

I read TFA, and it made no mention of speed, distance or any other aspect of the contest. The driver lies down, but how? On the stomache, or the back (with a periscope?). Were they inside to avoid being blown about (aboot?) by the wind?

Try reading harder next time -- TFA contains a link to the official website for those ambitious clickers who want to find out more than just a summary. From the home page, you can click to read the official 2006 rules and also look to the right for a link to the team websites. The UBC site contains many pictures including a nice one of how the driver lies down and also tech specs on the vehicle.

Any other questions?

The performance run will consist of each vehicle running six laps around a 2.6 km (1.6 mile) oval test track. The vehicle must achieve a minimum six lap average speed of 24 km/hr (15 mph). This means that each vehicle will be required to travel a total distance of 15.5 km (9.6 miles) in a maximum of 38.4 minutes. The vehicle must not exceed a single lap average speed of 25mph (40.23km). This means a vehicle must take longer than 3 minutes 50 seconds to complete each lap. Vehicles must be capable of ascending a 1 percent grade and descending a 7 percent grade.