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The Future of Cars According to Toyota

Posted by michael on from the parallel-parking-made-easy dept.

Paulrothrock writes "HowStuffWorks has an interesting story about Toyota's concept, um, car, the PM. In addition to seating only one person and having its hubless wheels driven by electric motors, it incorporates wireless networking so that drivers could surrender control to another human-driven PM and relax as someone else drives them to work. And it reclines!"

15 of 467 comments (clear)

  1. Wardriving... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 0, Interesting

    ...becomes literal.

  2. It could improve resource usage by YankeeInExile · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The fundamental problem with the car-centric society of my homeland is: Nearly pessimum resource utilization at every step of the way.

    First, I assume for the moment that we are not going to undo fifty years of urban planning overnight, and that private cars (or car-like transporters) are going to be a sine qua non for the time being.

    Every day, a commuter needs to get himself and his briefcase from domicile to place-of-employ. Once a week, the entire family unit wants to travel together to Funfunparkland. Once a month you need to carry a SUV-full of groceries home from the Megalomart.

    Having one least-common-denominator vehicle for all of these purposes (e.g. the Suburban Assault Vehicle), is a poor use of resources - to use some tortured computer analogy, it is as if you burn a DVD-R with three words on it, every time you want to use a post-it.

    I think something like the Toyota PM would be more readily accepted by commuters if there were in place a more economically feasible way to acquire a larger vehicle for ad-hoc short-term missions. Something like, but not exactly like, the current rental market.

    When I lived in Mountain View, CA - there was "Rent A Heap, Cheap" that had - well - cheap heaps of car ... They would rent you a mid-80s station wagon for something like 25 bucks a day, unlimited mileage (or nearly unlimited) including tax and insurance. Commuting via motorcycle, I was easily able to save enough in operating-cost, fixed cost, and depreciation to rent the wagon for those once-in-a-while times when having something bigger than a motorcycle was needed.

    The saddest part with Toyota's gadget: It appears too much a toy, and they will have terrible image problems. The /. collective-consciousnless will call it 'gay'. (Not to mention the risks involved with someone 0wn3ring your car and driving you off a cliff!)

    --
    How does the Slashdot Effect happen given that no slashdotters ever RTFA?
    1. Re:It could improve resource usage by einer · · Score: 3, Interesting

      The /. collective-consciousnless will call it 'gay'. (Not to mention the risks involved with someone 0wn3ring your car and driving you off a cliff!)

      Automotive sexual orientation aside, I'd really like to know how they plan on preventing someone from making your car do something you don't want it to. I'm sure a manual override is a part of the plan, but if a passenger in my car were to serve my wheel on I-80, I imagine it would be a fairly terminal action, one which I couldn't recover from.

      Without additional ifrastructure (collision detection, road orientation and speed monitoring, etc), I don't see how this will work. It's a neat problem.

      The post it note analogy was pretty spot on explanation of a problem most people never think about (assuming I'm most people).

    2. Re:It could improve resource usage by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1, Interesting

      Having one least-common-denominator vehicle for all of these purposes (e.g. the Suburban Assault Vehicle), is a poor use of resources - to use some tortured computer analogy, it is as if you burn a DVD-R with three words on it, every time you want to use a post-it.

      Unfortunately, it isn't. It's rather more like buying a high-powered workstation even though all you usually do is write a few letters, because once a month you get out your monster 3D CAD program which requires that much power.

      Your comments about rental are right on the mark - the only problem with renting an SUV once a month is that there's a couple of hours overhead involved in the rental - getting to the rental place, filling out paperwork, getting home again...

      For the 2-car family, though, it would seem an ideal use of resources to have the "family car" which might be an SUV or a station wagon or whatever, with room for the kids, the luggage and the shopping, and then one parent can get to work in a one-man economy bubble.

    3. Re:It could improve resource usage by random+coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

      Yup we used to use big old station wagons for all of this. Then in the 1970's congress imposed fuel effency standards on the auto industry and that killed the station wagon. Can't make the CAFE numbers with lots of big cars. So people started getting SUV's because they fall into a catagory that can get worse mileage. This is what is known as the Law of Unintended Consequences. Congress passes a law mandating better fuel economy. Overall fuel economy remains the same. If the law had not been passed maybe we would all still be driving station wagons, but they would get better gas mileage than the SUV's and overall fuel usage would be lower.

      Congress and the greens haven't learned the lessan and are trying to get CAFE standards that apply to SUV's changed, i.e. mandating better gas mileage. This will probably push everyone int pickup trucks and not actually have any big affect. You know a better idea all around is to mandate methanol be sold instead of high test gasoline, and make all vehicles flexi fuel. Then it will be a seamless changeover to fuel cells. But I am sure there will be some other unintended consequences of that too.

    4. Re:It could improve resource usage by SEE · · Score: 2, Interesting

      They offer only one thing that station wagons don't, but it's an important thing: availability. It's an adaption on the part of automakers to the dual-classification CAFE scheme.

      Station wagons are classed as cars, and thus fall under car CAFE requirements. As of the mid-Eighties, they were going extinct, because auto companies couldn't afford to sell them; the fines for violating CAFE standards exceeded the profit one could make by selling station wagons. Oh, you could still get them, but they were more expensive relative to sedans than the old wagons, and smaller too.

      The result was the opening for the minivan, pioneered by Chrysler. Since it was classed as a truck for CAFE, they could be sold profitably. And they sold tremendously.

      Since it was classed as a light truck, the sales of the SUVs convinced the people in marketing at the Big Three that there was a fortune to be made in selling trucks, including the SUVs built on truck bodies like the Suburban. So amenities in the trucks were improved.

      The improved big-truck-based SUVs then showed themselves as better wagon substitute in some roles. Since families were smaller than in the heyday of wagons, the lesser seating wasn't a problem. But SUVs duplicated the cargo capacity of the old wagons-with-jump-seat-turned-down. (Minivans were much less convienent for that, usually requiring removal of the third seat row).

      And now that trucks were comfortable and really taking off, smaller SUVs came in, filling the old role of the big sedans but with better margins because of the CAFE requirement difference.

      So, basically, the modern SUV is the old big sedan and the old big sedan-based wagon, reworked to exploit the car/truck distinction in CAFE.

  3. Neat toy by CrimsonAvenger · · Score: 3, Interesting
    Neat idea, but I'd hate to even consider driving one of these on the highways. A normal car loses when it has an arguement with an 18-wheeler. I imagine this thing would lose just as badly if it encountered a normal car.

    That said, the autopilot mode I like. Though it would be better if it could drive autonomously, rather than surrendering control to someone else (who's as likely to fall asleep at the wheel as I am). Course, the networking would have to be designed so that it was proof against some random attack. Giving up control of my car to someone else is one thing, having him TAKE control against my will is "right out".

    And it changes colours to indicate what is going on inside! I wonder what colour it turns if you're making out?

    --

    "I do not agree with what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it"
  4. The Lohner-Porsche Electric Car by 1010011010 · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The Lohner-Porsche Electric Car, unveiled in 1900 at the Paris Expo, was an electric car with a motors-in-the-hubs design. 1900!

    --
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  5. Re:....Right.... by stephenisu · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I would gladly own a single person commuter with 4 wheels. I would join a carshare for the other requirements. A 800lbs one seater would be great. I only wish I could ride a motorcycle on ice...

    --
    Sigs? We don't need no stinking sigs!
  6. Re:....Right.... by IIEFreeMan · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I thought about this idea (one passenger car with a slave mode) a lot some time ago.

    I think the whole point is that everybody could have such a vehicle (it will have to be cheap enough). So for kids you will put the vehicle in slave mode only and it will follow the car of one of the parents until they have their driving license.

  7. Re:....Right.... by hazem · · Score: 2, Interesting

    I don't think of it as very good "peronsal transportation". But a bunch of little autonomous vehicles might be great for public transportation. Instead of waiting for a bus or train that has a fixed route/schedule, you hop in one of these and it takes you where you want to go.

    Transmitters and computers in the streets could help guide them around. As it costs more to drive in big cities (the entry tax in London for example), this might offer the advantages of point-to-point transport, without the normal disadvantages of public systems. Lets face it, the biggest drawback to public transport is having to take its route and be stuck with other unhappy people while you're at it.

    Of course, it would put taxis out of business.

  8. Re:A nightmare by novakane007 · · Score: 2, Interesting

    On top of being hacked I wonder how accurate this is? How does it follow? by 'retracing' the wheels of the car ahead of it? I sure hope it's accurate! 2 things could happen, the car could hit an rock and set it slightly off course. The co-ordinates that the car ahead relay would no longer be totally accurate and the car may start turning at the wrong time! This reminds me of my Omnibot robot. I could program him to follow a certain track and do certain actions, but I had to place him exactly where he was the first time or the second time through the programmed course he would turn too soon and get stuck on a wall.
    The other tricky part would be lag. What would the car do if it wasn't receiving the data from the car ahead in time for it to process the movements?
    Both of these I'm sure are handled, but I'd curious to see how.

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    WURD!!
  9. It's just not safe by Fiz+Ocelot · · Score: 2, Interesting
    With all of the huge vehicles so common today, that thing is simply unsafe in the worst possible way.

    I guess I tend to lean more toward having a larger vehicle these days because I know someone who a year ago would be dead if they were not driving the large pickup truck they were in...when someone hit them head on at 65mph. Luckily they only nearly died, and can barely walk today.

    As long as all of the large vehicles are still popular, a tiny thing like that simply would not sell.

  10. Re:Motorcycles by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 3, Interesting

    - Leave you exposed to the elements
    - Limited carrying capacity
    - In town, anything I can do on a motorcycle, I can do on a bicycle, cheaper, and usually just as fast.

  11. Fastest vehicles across London. by Colin+Smith · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Motorcycles.

    All the clothing is completely waterproof these days, thank you Gore.

    Backpacks, tank bags, tail packs, panniers, top boxes. You might be surprised just how much crap you can lug around on a motorbike.

    They occasionally run a "Commuter Race", a man vs car vs tube vs bicycle vs motorcyle race between 2 points in London. The motorcycle wins every time and it's not just marginally quicker, it's 50% -> 100+% faster than all of the rest.

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    Deleted