Cars To Be Assembled Atom By Atom

Roland Piquepaille writes "In a new article, the Detroit News says that the adoption of nanotechnology by car manufacturers will produce safer, lighter and cheaper vehicles. While GM is already using nanocomposite materials for several vans, Ford is developing new nanoengineered catalysts to replace platinum. The newspaper gives other examples, such as auto-adaptive suspension systems, scratch-resistant paints or nanocoated windshields which will not crack. In fact, all parts in a car can be improved by using nanotechnology, according to the article. And if automakers are only going to introduce limited amounts of nanotechnology-related products in the next few years, their usage should be widespread within ten years. More details are available in this overview."

Comments

asdf

[professorhojo]

Hello, welcome to Johnnycab..

"DRIVE, DRIVE!!"

Please state your destination

"ANYWHERE, JUST GOOOO!!!"

Please state a specific address

"SHEET, SHEEEEETTT!!!!"

I'm sorry, that is not a valid address

"RAAHHHHHHHHH"

(Rips the Johnny Cab out of its seat)

Re:asdf

[zoeith]

Another movie quote that is ontopic. "Plastics! Plastics! Plastics!" from 'The Graduate'. It's about time to start screaming "Nanotech! Nanotech! Nanotech!"

Re:asdf

[Anonymous Coward]

Developers! Developers! Developers!

Please try to keep posts on topic.
Try to reply to other people's comments instead of starting new threads.
Read other people's messages before posting your own to avoid simply duplicating what has already been said.
Use a clear subject that describes what your message is about.
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Re:asdf

[cgsamurai]

Where are my Flying cars? We were promised flying cars?

Two words: TURBO BOOST!

On topic tho, will this technology eventualy allow automatic filter cleaning?
Like keeping the fuel filter, and tranny screens free of debris?
That would help a lot.

Errm....

[Haydn Fenton]

Excuse my ignorace, but surely nanotechnology would produce safer, lighter and cheaper (depending on the meaning.. I'm assuming consumer-side cost) everything?

Re:Errm....

[pacc]

Yup, but trying hard enough to make a car using nano-technology will probably result in vast amounts of byproducts small enough to get into your cells and subtly kill you.

Of course we learned that when trying to create biocompatible compounds using chemical means, but remember that they are creating materials and not cars and couldn't care less about your well-being.

Re:Errm....

[idiot900]

Yup, but trying hard enough to make a car using nano-technology will probably result in vast amounts of byproducts small enough to get into your cells and subtly kill you.

We already have plenty of "byproducts small enough to get into your cells and subtly kill you". Smoke, alcohol, really any poisonous compound - these are all made of up things called "molecules" that can potentially get into your cells and cause damage. Sadly, your tinfoil hat may not protect you from all of these "molecules".

(Before you mod me Flamebait: as long as there has been life, there has always been pathogenic matter that exerts its effects on a subcellular level. What's unique about this situation?)

Re:Errm....

[orthogonal]

Excuse my ignorace (sic), but surely nanotechnology would produce safer, lighter and cheaper (depending on the meaning..[.] I'm assuming consumer-side cost) everything?

Yeah, sure, safer, lighter, cheaper.

But the real questions all are about style. To wit, can I get one of these cars in a "gray goo" color?

Re:Errm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Let's try some math. The average car weighs 1.5 tons. 55 grams of iron makes one mole of iron atoms. Google says there are 0.121254244 pounds in 55 grams, so... 0.121254244 times 3000 to get it in pounds is... 363.762732. That's about 364 moles of just iron, nevermind the carbon that's used to make the steel. Good luck trying to assemble that in a lifetime.

Re:Errm....

[Hard_Code]

Except things like smoke and alcohol are organic and more "natural". There are already mechanisms to deal with them. Nanotechnology presents an [even greater] opportunity for toxins for which the body has no, or very limited, coping mechanisms. Also, I can largely choose not to consume alcohol, and I know how to avoid smoke. But if EVERYTHING is toxic, how do I avoid that?

Re:Errm....

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Except things like smoke and alcohol are organic and more "natural".

Mercury and HF acid are natural. Don't get any on you.

Re:Errm....

[EggplantMan]

The deadliest substance in the world, organic or man-made,is called botulinum toxin A and is made by botulism bacteria.

Re:Errm....

[Anonymous Coward]

Mercury and HF acid are natural. Don't get any on you.

That's crazy talk! I used to play with mercury all the time when I was a kid, and I have suffered no ill effects have suffered no ill effects whatsoever have no suffered effects I since I was a kid have suffered no effects whatsoever.

Mercury. Ooooh, shiny!

Re:Errm....

[Dick Faze]

I just think its funny that people are speculating on making a CAR using nanotechnology - as if the development of this technology must be used to improve upon 100+ year old ideas rather than be applied to something newer, better, and altogether different. Somewhat akin to developing a touchscreen P4 computer with 32 bit graphics to simulate a better abacus and thus improving your ability to solve math problems. True nanotechnology (grey goo and all) would allow Dr. Scholl's Levitation Insoles to become a reality, but we need to work on atom-level improvements to under-car neon accessories......

OpenSource Nanotech?

[nurb432]

At what point then could we just download 'plans' off P2P and just 'grow' our own car, house, dinner....

Re:OpenSource Nanotech?

[josh3736]

You'll be able to do it, it just won't be legal! (Hence why you have to download the plans off P2P.)

You see, if you grow your own car, you'd be infringing on the car company's copyright. (The car companies have have a non-expiring copyright on all Cars®, you see.)

Furthermore, growing your own car will be a felony punishable by a $1,000,000 fine and 30 years in Federal Pound-Me-In-the-Ass prison under the DMCLFMBBC (Digital Millenium Copyrights Last For a Millenium to Benefit Big Companies) Act of 2007.

Oh, and you might as well not even bother to try and download a car since your computer will just blow up anyways.

Re:OpenSource Nanotech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Well I for one welcome our miniature cell-munching overlords.
Imagin...*Trying to restrain hand from typing overused meme...failing to restrain...must stop...gaaaaaaaahhhhhhhhh...KERSPLAT!*** Imagine a bewoulf cluster of nano-Natalie Portmans
And finally, all your molechules are belong to Corporate America, with a Capital C.

Re:OpenSource Nanotech?

[Anonymous Coward]

Add "Significant Other" to that list.

And stop looking at me like that!

Re:OpenSource Nanotech?

[YetAnotherHoopyFrood]

There seems to be one big problem in any sort of atom-by-atom assembly, and it is only complicated by the ideas of home replication suggested here and elsewhere. Where do you(they, anyone) plan to get all these atoms? It would take quite a bit of energy to obliterate existing materials into their component atoms, thus raising costs considerably. I think this might raise a bit more trouble than any overly-strict copyright laws. Of course, maybe I'm just taking lots of things too seriously to even raise this problem, I don't know.

Re:OpenSource Nanotech?

[Drawkcab]

You may be able to grow your own car that way, but it wouldn't have a valid registration key, so you couldn't legally register it. Road monitoring systems would report you to the cops as soon as you tried to drive it on a major public road. Eventually there would be an open source car which was legal to grow yourself, but it would be a crappy economy car or a very finicky, difficult to maintain sports car, that you always had to make repairs on. Commercial cars would still be "cooler" for the mainstream, but the open source alternative would keep an upper bound on how much of a premium commercial car companies could profit.

For growing your own house, there may be automated home manufacturing methods that incorporate nanotechnology in their construction, but probably it would require equipment and materials on a scale that would be inefficient for a person to try to do on their own. No matter how the home is constructed, it will require some equipment that it doesn't make sense for a private individual to own just for building one house, and the raw materials and property will cost a major component of the price. While architecture will always be important, its not like the intellectual property of a home is what makes it expensive; its the logistics and considerable infrastructure of actually making it all come together, which nanotechnology won't change.

As for growing your own dinner, once the technology was that good, nothing would try to stop you. Health concerns would be a lasting issue, since it would take lifetimes to really get it right and then be confident that long term reliance on fabricated food had no ill consequences. However, you'd have to pay utility companies for the raw materials and energy in assembling, in much the same way you pay for the regular food that you cook at home. There would be a very long period of time in which it wasn't cost-effective, and an even longer period of time in which the resulting food wouldn't be as high quality as natural food, and would thus be a tradeoff. Even once the typical person started to treat it as commonplace, there would always be a few people who insisted the natural form had health benefits, and some who insist they enjoy natural food more, creating a niche market for natural foods much like organic and gourmet foods now.

In short, I'd say the answer to your question is at least 200 years, but possibly much longer or never. If anyone really knew how to predict the future long term, then either the world would have fallen apart by now, as is constantly being predicted, or we'd all be living like the jetsons already.

Re:OpenSource Nanotech?

[jonbryce]

When people get done for selling fake Nike clothes, Rolex watches and so on, they are prosecuted for trademark violation, not copyright infringement.

You see other people who sell things that look almost identical to these, but have a different name on them, and the trading standards people are OK with that. As long as nobody thinks they are buying Nike or Rolex or whatever, then there isn't a problem.

Looking specifically at cars, the other problem would be getting regulatary approval for your manufacturing operation from the safety and environmental people, and of course there may be patents on some bits of the car.

I don't think copyright would be an issue though.

Re:OpenSource Nanotech?

[josh3736]

lol, I'm full aware that this isn't a copyright issure.

I was using sarcasm to make fun of how the (RI|MP)AA beleive they own everything. And then they lobby Congress to pass laws that ass rape you of your rights. But what does that matter, since the laws might prevent a few people from making a copy of the latest Top 40 shit band. Even if it's at the expense of preventing indpendant publishers from creating and distributing their works on the Intarweb. But that would be profitable to Big Content, which makes me wonder if that's what DRM's ultimate goal is... </tinfoil-hat>

On a side note (and wow I'm getting really offtopic, but), there is no such thing as Intellectual Property. See this very well-thought out post.

Re:OpenSource Nanotech?

[Master of Transhuman]

First of all, you don't use nanotech to manipulate atoms, you use it to manipulate molecules. You don't do it "atom by atom".

As for "seriously", you'd be well advised to reread the article. Oh, wait, this is /.

Maybe you'd better start by reading Drexler's original book, "Engines of Creation", before saying anything at all.

The rest of the posters could follow suit if they aren't afraid of being considered "fanboys".

Oh, wait, this is /.

Re:OpenSource Nanotech?

[cgsamurai]

Or mass produce cars, whatever, to exacting specs.

Soilent Green is made of...... recycled CARS! hehe..

Too Good to be True

[powera]

By the time we get to the point where we can build AN ENTIRE CAR atom by atom, I want to be flying around Earth in spaceships at 10000mph. Seriously, which is more difficult to do? Make available technology we already have somewhat, or assemble TRILLIONS of atoms.

I think this is "reporter getting carried away by 'nano' buzzword". Nano is NOT the holy grail. Maybe some parts will have nano coatings, but those aren't even assembled "atom-by-atom".

Re:Too Good to be True

[dotslashconfig]

I think you're missing the point slightly... The main advantage of building these cars "atom by atom" is the use of nano-devices to check structural integrity of the vehicle. The main hope for these nano-devices is that they'll provide more accurate measures of stress tolerance in an impact.

One of the other added benefits from using nano-technology in this field is that certain devices could be used as a warning system, or sensor. In that sense, implanting these tools in the framework of the vehicle can be considered going "atom by atom" to choose the most likely places an impact will occur, and using the nano-machines as information relay to the vehicle's on-board computer. This way, instead of relying on crush sensitive technologies to deploy air bags and the like, we can use more precise measuring devices to help improve safety in vehicles.

Of course, the one trade-off of this is that as these technologies allow for more driver error, there is the potential we could lean too hard on these devices to protect human life. It's a very dangerous idea to have a vehicle that is so protective of its passengers that the passengers become careless... but I think we're a long way off from that.

Re:Too Good to be True

[njcoder]

Of course, the one trade-off of this is that as these technologies allow for more driver error, there is the potential we could lean too hard on these devices to protect human life. It's a very dangerous idea to have a vehicle that is so protective of its passengers that the passengers become careless... but I think we're a long way off from that.

I think we're already there. The majority of accidents I've seen or heard about lately involve a soccer mom or someone else in their SUV that felt so safe in that they were careless.

Re:Too Good to be True

[Dun Malg]

Of course, the one trade-off of this is that as these technologies allow for more driver error, there is the potential we could lean too hard on these devices to protect human life. It's a very dangerous idea to have a vehicle that is so protective of its passengers that the passengers become careless

Personal injury is only one reason why people don't drive carelessly. Also very high up on the list are "not wanting to wreck their car", "not wanting to incur liability for damaging others' property", and "not wanting to hurt other people". Until everybody has unwreckable cars, improved driver safety isn't likely to make anyone drive more recklessly.

Re:Too Good to be True

[Dun Malg]

I think we're already there. The majority of accidents I've seen or heard about lately involve a soccer mom or someone else in their SUV that felt so safe in that they were careless.

Those soccer moms aren't more careless because they drive SUVs. They've always been careless drivers. The problem is that those large, heavy, tall vehicles, while arguably safer when in an accident, are less forgiving when trying to avoid an accident.

Re:Too Good to be True

[timothv]

If it was TRILLIONS, it's be easy. It's more like 10^25+ atoms

Re:Too Good to be True

[Dan Farina]

Let us not forget the more important implication of this: for every SUV that hits a smaller vehicle, the other passengers have a far great chance of dying. What has happened is that we've ended up in a road-mass arms race with our neighbors.

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/ro ll over/etc/before.html

Re:Too Good to be True

[Kwil]

You also forgot the other reason that SUV's are creating more soccer-mom accidents.

SUV's work to hinder Darwin's theory.

After all, evolution doesn't work right if the incompetent are prevented from dying due to their incompetence.

Re:Too Good to be True

[brunes69]

The problem is that those large, heavy, tall vehicles, while arguably safer when in an accident...,/i>

Don't even try to pull this one. Huge bulky cars are only safer for those that *drive* them ( and even that's debatable). God forbid you are the person in the sub-compact getting run over by those god awful things and their idiot drivers.

Re:Too Good to be True

[king-manic]

The vast majority of accidents occur when driver A makes a mistake and driver B doesn't react fast enough to avoid driver A's vehicle.

Re:Too Good to be True

[Woogiemonger]

By the time we get to the point where we can build AN ENTIRE CAR atom by atom, I want to be flying around Earth in spaceships at 10000mph.

Umm, that's a hell of a speeding ticket yer looking forward to.

Re:Too Good to be True

[freeduke]

Anyway, let's put some nano technology into the drivers first! Nano machines that can strenghten the spare parts of a car, also allow to strenghten the drivers' bodies.

There this marvelous technology would be more usefull than in the role of a price cutter for the industry.

Re:Too Good to be True

[Smokin Goat McGruff]

Radar guns typically only go up to three digits, and the third digit is only capable of displaying a "1." They'd need to find some other way of measuring your speed if they want to ticket to stick in court.

Re:Too Good to be True

[Dun Malg]

Don't even try to pull this one. Huge bulky cars are only safer for those that *drive* them

Pull WHAT? I never said they were safer for those being hit. I was speaking about the mindset of SUV drivers. Do you really think they're thinking of the safety of anyone except themselves and their precious children?

Re:Too Good to be True

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, soccer moms do become more careless in SUV because they think they (and of course the children) are invincble.

Re:Too Good to be True

[daedel]

Actually, SUVs are not safer for those who drive them.

Taken from http://poseur.4x4.org/reasons2.html#Safe

Taken as a whole, statistics show that cars are safer designs than SUVs. Most of the best selling SUVs still use ladder frames from pickup trucks, which are not designed to absorb collision impacts. According to the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety (IIHS), "In single vehicle crashes, heavy vehicles with stiff frames (most SUVs) might actually do more to harm the vehicle's occupants because there is little give, or energy absorption engineering, to dissipate the force of running into an immovable object." This is proven when you consider the injury ratings in these crash test charts provided by the IIHS. Notice how many cars rate in the yellow (little injury) and how many SUVs rate in the red (high injury).

According to IIHS statistics, the only time an SUV will come out ahead in an accident is if it collides with a smaller vehicle. Even then, the only advantages you get with an SUV are at the expense of those driving smaller cars, which are designed to absorb impacts. SUVs just plain don't make sense safety-wise!

Yes, not the most reliable web site, but I saw the same information on a TLC program.

Re:Too Good to be True

[Dun Malg]

Actually, SUVs are not safer for those who drive them.

Cripes, I never said they were! Here's a paraphrasing of what was said:

Original Poster: "Soccer moms drive bad because they think their SUVs are safer"
Me: "No, Soccer moms have ALWAYS driven badly, it's just that SUVs aren't as forgiving of bad driving as their Volvos and Audis were, hence more accidents"

Talk to this guy. He's the only one who thinks they actually are safer. Me, I'm just talking about how these crazy, paranoid, protect-my-children-no-matter-what-the-cost suburban mothers think. Personally, I couldn't care less whether they're actually safer in an accident or not. Their lessened ability to avoid an accident is enough for me to consider them more dangerous overall.

Re:Too Good to be True

[Dun Malg]

Nope, soccer moms do become more careless in SUV because they think they (and of course the children) are invincble.

[sarcasm]
Gee I guess THAT settles it! A summary declaration without supporting evidence (or even supporting reasoning) from an AC is obviously the last word on the subject!
[/sarcasm]

Got anything other than personal, anecdotal examples to support this claim?

Re:Too Good to be True

[Anonymous Coward]

By the time we get to the point where we can build AN ENTIRE CAR atom by atom, I want to be flying around Earth in spaceships at 10000mph. Seriously, which is more difficult to do? Make available technology we already have somewhat, or assemble TRILLIONS of atoms.

-1 Offtopic, but:

All you're going to be doing at 10,000 MPH is burning up in re-entry. You have to maintain something like 18,000 to 27,000 MPH just to hold orbit (the specific speed depends on several factors).

Re:Too Good to be True

[ACPosterChild]

Yeah! I mean, that would be like assembling TRILLIONS of transistors all in one place to do meaninful work! What whacko would believe that shit?!

Re:Too Good to be True

[(54)T-Dub]

And I will be laughing my ass off when you flip over the center divider into oncoming traffic because of your high center of gravity. Like the time I laughed in someones face when they said they were glad to have been in an SUV when they flipped over in an accident ... news flash : "You probably wouldn't have flipped in a sedan"

Could you help me?

[Rylfaeth]

I'm out of gas and I need directions to the nearest gas station so I can spend $2 a gallon on an antiquated and crude fuel to make my futuristic nanocar run.

Thanks!

-Rylfaeth

Re:Could you help me?

[zephc]

Well, give the US auto industry enough time, they'll find a way to reconstruct dinosaurs atom by atom, then kill them, put em in the ground, and turn them in to oil. Yay, another 50 years of oil and it only took a trillion tons of biomass to die to do it!

Re:Could you help me?

[tsa]

My oldfashioned car also does nanotechnology. It makes carbon dioxide and water (and some other chemicals too) atom by atom from the petrol in its fuel tank. And it can do that whilst moving too! Sounds unbelievable isn't it?

Re:Could you help me?

[Anonymous Coward]

Ah yes, but does you car manage to raise gas prices atom by atom as well? God I wish I could purchase fuel by the atom. I'd make every drop count then, you gas-guzzling bastards.

Re:Could you help me?

[Anonymous Coward]

No kidding. Nanotech is just a buzz word to make chemistry sound interesting again.
I liked this quote:
"Any part of the car that's made has the potential to be improved by nanotechnology, because ultimately materials and parts are made out of atoms and molecules."

Whoa! That's saying a lot --not.
Now if they had talked about nanoassemblers being put into use on GM production lines I would have been more generous but just acknowledging that materials exist at the nano scale is about as good as not saying anything at all.

Re:Could you help me?

[heptapod]

Most oil comes from ancient vegetable matter, like plankton, not animal matter. Cite.

sub-microscopic assembly lines

[Anonymous Coward]

...I, for one, welcome our -

ahh, scrub it. People will still find a way to drive like idiots, even in super nanotechnologically advanced cars.

This is surface chemistry, not nanotechnology

[Animats]

Most of this is just good surface chemistry, not "nanotechnology". Lately, we're seeing the term "nanotechnology" applied to fine powders, coatings, catalyst surfaces, and such. That's not about building large structures out of individual atoms; it's just surface treatments for ordinary bulk materials.

Good technology, just too much hype.

Re:This is surface chemistry, not nanotechnology

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed. Everything which used to be called chemistry or materials engineering now suffers the 'nano' prefix. Is putting together two hydrogens and an oxygen nanotechnology? Of course not. Before Feynman and Drexler there were atoms.

If there were nanosystems, functioning sub-micron sized components, then I can see using 'nano'. (Foresight Institute member)

Re:This is surface chemistry, not nanotechnology

[hayesjaj]

Nanotechnology is the study of how matter behaves when its lattice size is below around 100nm. When matter its subdivided to this point, cool things happen due to the small density of free electrons that can interact. The fine powders you are talking about are fairly common in the study and all have properties that are not seen in bulk materials. They are also relatively easy to create (as compared to active nano devices like transistors and diodes) which is why we are seeing products like surface coatings being developed using this tech.

You have got to be high...

[caffeineboy]

if you think that a cheapskate industry like the automotive industry will be all up in nanotech.

Manufacturers are too cheap to do things like hot dip galvanizing body and frame, but they will use a bunch of nanotech? Ironic. Something as simple and low-tech as galvinizing cars that would double or triple their lifetime are left out as too expensive...

Let's start with the simple stuff please.

Re:You have got to be high...

[ifwm]

Because most cars fail when their frames/bodies rust away. Oh wait, that was the 70's. This problem was solved (acceptably) long ago.

The auto industry WILL adopt this technology, as soon as it can be demonstrated that they will save money by doing so.

Re:You have got to be high...

[lpontiac]

Manufacturers are too cheap to do things like hot dip galvanizing body and frame, but they will use a bunch of nanotech? Ironic. Something as simple and low-tech as galvinizing cars that would double or triple their lifetime are left out as too expensive...

I'm going to trim and rephrase a bit..

Manufacturers are too cheap to do .. something .. that would reduce the number of new cars required by a factor of two or three..

Re:You have got to be high...

[swiftstream]

Ah, see, but doubling or trebling the lifetime of a car is not in the interest of the automaker--the sooner you come out to buy another car, the better. As long as all the car makers do that, it becomes accepted that cars only survive for so long, and so everybody expects to go buy another car after a few years.

The other factor is buzzwords: people are going to be much more impressed by "built with the latest nanotechnology!" than by "galvanized body!"

Re:You have got to be high...

[BCoates]

But most people don't drive their car until it falls apart anyway. People get a new car after a few years because they want to be driving a new(er) car, or because their lifestyle has changed and they need a different car, not because their old car fell apart. Witness the popularity of the car lease.

Besides, how often does a modern car rust apart anymore before it simply becomes more expensive to keep running than replace?

Re:You have got to be high...

[medelliadegray]

"Besides, how often does a modern car rust apart anymore before it simply becomes more expensive to keep running than replace?"

As much as i would like to disagree with you--you are indeed correct (at least for an overwhelming percentage). I live in one of the worst "rust" conditionas of the country (northern) minnesota. The state does not just sand OR salt the raods in the winter--it gets both sand AND salt. There is no one or the other--it is mixed together.

This wonderful concocution wreaks havoc for any part of the car which is vulnerable to rust.

But--I drive an 88 oldsmobile, and it's prettymuch rusted out--but at the same time--its internals are to the point where at least one 'major' part of the car will (probably) break this summer--at which point it will not be worth my money to repair--as everything something else will probably break within the next couple months as well.

I digress--Not many people HAVE cars older than 10-15 years, let alone OWN one for that entire time period (with the exception of those who have or restore the 'classic' or 'muscle' cars).

The internals just wear out before the body does in most circumstances.

Now--with the newer cars which are supposed to have internals which last quite a bit longer--it very well may come to the point where the internals outlast the body and frame. I then would be PISSED if my frame/body fell apart before the major internals wore out.

Re:You have got to be high...

[caffeineboy]

When I worked in the corrosion group at GM, corrosion design lifetime was 10 years. Modern engines and warranties certainly outlast that.

Most cars I have owned have been killed by rust (Two Fords, a Subaru and a Benz). Here in Ohio, we salt the bejesus out of our roads to keep them ice free. You see a lot of 80s GM cars driving around still though, since they were full body hot dip galvanized.

What I am saying is, there is a lot of fancy stuff on the concept cars, and even on luxury cars, but this will never see the light of day for most of us who drive mass market automobiles because it will cost the manufacturers too much money.

The only way that this kind of stuff will be used is if it becomes mandated by law (like catalytic converters or airbags) or becomes cheaper than conventional manufacturing (can't think of an example).

I'd belive this a lot more for fields that are higher tech, but not the automotive industry.

Re:You have got to be high...

[danila]

That's crap. Most people simply don't care whether their car lasts 10 years or 30, because they are going to replace it sooner anyway. If there was demand for long-lasting cars, some manufacturers would produce them and conquer the market. The fact that this didn't happen means that there basically is no demand for it.

Re:You have got to be high...

[AnotherBlackHat]

That's crap. Most people simply don't care whether their car lasts 10 years or 30, because they are going to replace it sooner anyway. If there was demand for long-lasting cars, some manufacturers would produce them and conquer the market. The fact that this didn't happen means that there basically is no demand for it.

Maybe, but people don't have any reasonable way to evaluate the life time of a car.
If the only observable difference between two cars is the sticker price, most people buy the cheaper one.
If people didn't care how long their car lasted, they wouldn't get an extended warrenty.

I also doubt the claims of the original poster that a galvanizied body would make cars last longer.
It might make the body last longer (and even that's questionable) but it wouldn't protect the engine, which wears out faster than the frame even now.

-- not a .sig

Re:You have got to be high...

[Paulrothrock]

If there was demand for long-lasting cars, some manufacturers would produce them and conquer the market.

Let me rephrase a little bit:

If there was demand for long-lasting cars, manufacturers would be sure to spend lots of money convincing people that long-lasting cars are worse than newer models because there is no profit in a car that lasts thirty years.

I bet I know where they got the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

From that commercial where they build that car from legos.

Re:I bet I know where they got the idea

[Dogtanian]

From that commercial where they build that car from legos.

What's a legos anyway?

Re:I bet I know where they got the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, you had a deprived childhood. This is Lego

Re:I bet I know where they got the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

Capital of Nigeria isn't it?

Re:I bet I know where they got the idea

[Dogtanian]

Dude, you had a deprived childhood. This is Lego

I know what Lego is; I still have lots of Lego at my parents' house. The question I asked was, what is/are 'Legos'?

Re:I bet I know where they got the idea

[Anonymous Coward]

-1, Pedantic

More perks?

[andy55]

What wonderful news! So in a few years, when modern industrial society has seized up and American life as we've known it comes to halt as a result of the rapidly diminishing fossil fuel supply, our cars will still be shiny!

I apologize for being off topic--mod me down--but the American car/suv/prettiness craze has gotten way out of hand...

More seriously, I urge people to plug into the facts and realties of the worlds fossil fuels, and how the American way of life and economy is presently overly-dependent on this resource.

Harry J. Longwell, executive vice-president of Exxon Mobil, made an unprecedented admission recently when he wrote: To put a number on it, we expect that by 2010 about half the daily volume needed to meet projected demand is not on production today... Even the necessarily conservative International Energy Agency (IEA), in its World Energy Outlook, 1998, concurred for the first time that global output could top out between 2009 and 2012, and decline rapidly thereafter.

We can only hope to elect policymakers that have the courage to make the right decisions and foster international cooperation (rather than, say, invade and occupy oil-producing regions).

/rant

Re:More perks?

[mpn14tech]

If/when we get to the point where we can build cars atom by atom, I think stringing together a few carbon and hydrogen atoms from renewable resources will not be much of a problem.

Re:More perks?

[TheGavster]

The problem here is that the fossil fuels give up energy by breaking bonds between atoms. If we have to form those bonds in this spiffy manufacturing process, we're really just wasting energy. Don't forget that in addition to cars, our power plants also consume a huge quantity of hydrocarbon fuel. Of course, a battery perfected on the nano-meter scale might make an electric car viable (provided that you adopt some clean-ish source of energy, like nuclear power (clean-ish because there's still waste, its just in a convenient brick rather than cloud of toxic gas), so that the power grid doesn't fall apart when we run out of fossil fuels)

Re:More perks?

[Decaff]

Diminishing resources won't be a problem. With nanotechnology we can make cars that are very, very small.

Re:More perks?

[andy55]

Here's a great short factual piece that's chuck-full of info, references, and key quotes (such as the Exxon vice-president quote).

Re:More perks?

[Anonymous Coward]

ROFL what a bloody fear mongering liberal slant!

I'm not even gonna bother responding to the assumptions here that we're gonna run out of oil in the next few years, or that the american way of life is utterly wrong. That belongs in another thread.

I WILL respond by pointing out that some of the tech involved will not only reduce oil usage but also make it possible to switch to either alternative fuels or fuel cells.

Btw, before you now bitch about fuel cells only being a transfer of energy....YES, WE KNOW.

But moving the generating of power away from the car will allow diversification of power sources to generate hydrogen. So all the anti-oil/anti-nuclear/anti-coal people can put up wind generating power stations and sell power for less, and eliminate those other power generating methods by economics instead of fear.

Re:More perks?

[Anonymous Coward]

Nanotechnology does not solve the law of conservation of energy.

The only reason oil is useful is because of its huge energy content, stored over millions of years. Our society is currently consuming way more energy than the sun supplies us with, by taking advantage of these fossil energy supplies.

Once they're gone, our only source of energy will be the sun, and its not going to be enough to maintain our current energy consumption rates, much less create new fossil fuel supplies.

(in case you're wondering, renewable energy supplies only make up 1% of the world's energy use, and the large amounts of energy needed to construct/mantain solar cells, batteries, etc will negate most of the energy produced by them)

Re:More perks?

[NDPTAL85]

You know you can chill on the alarmist sky is falling predicitons on our fossil fuel usage. There's enough left in the ground for decades of future usage and by the time its all gone we'll have perfected alternative fuel sources for our vehicles.

Re:More perks?

[Templaris]

"We expect that by 2010 about half the daily volume needed to meet projected demand is not on production today..."

He could have been referring to refineries and their production. One of the reasons gas prices go up is because the US doesn't have enough refinery capacity to meet demand. Almost all of them work at full capacity now and new refineries aren't being built. So if demand grows, there may be enough crude oil, but not enough gasoline.

As for running out of oil, I don't really know about all that. Some say oil isn't all really made from fossil fuels. Others say oil won't run out till 2075, or that it could run out in 10 years. I don't really know what to believe. I do know that there is a very large supply of oil in the US, and I am not talking about the Strategic reserve. Due to environmental regulations and politics, much oil is untapped in the US. That kind of makes sense too, bleed the rest of the world dry first before we go tearing up our own backyard.

Anyway, if the govt will allow some new, cleaner, more efficient refineries to be built using newer technology, I don't think we will really have a gasoline problem, especially if the country does go into economic downturn as a result of a gas shortage. Furthermore, another problem with oil or gas shortages is the govt imposing price controls. They tried that once before from 1973 to 1979 (I think thats the correct timeframe) and it was disastrous because it led to surpluses in some areas, and mass shortages in others.

Oh and a quick Google search shows the last American refinery was built in 1976.

Re:More perks?

[DrFalkyn]

What wonderful news! So in a few years, when modern industrial society has seized up and American life as we've known it comes to halt as a result of the rapidly diminishing fossil fuel supply, our cars will still be shiny!

We have plenty of fossil fuel - its called coal. Not to mention oil shale, tar sands and other sources of petroleum, which some oil companies where considering in the 1970s before it became uneconomic to extract them and the projects were abandoned.

Sorry, but I don't see liquid fuels being beat by electrics for some time due to the power to weight ratio factor or other considerations such as finding a cheap source of hydrogen for fuel cells.

Atom by atom?

[Eudial]

Somehow i feel sorry for the poor people assigned the job of actually putting them together.

Re:Atom by atom?

[Anonymous Coward]

It'll mark the return of Child Labour to civilized lands...who else has hands small enough?

Re:Atom by atom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Dr. Manhattan can do it, it's already his hobby...

Re:Atom by atom?

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeh, the people who were assigned the job of putting the cars together will be fired!

Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[Ars-Fartsica]

I'm amazed to hear that the major autos makers can figure out how to use nanotech to build car parts yet the 30% increase in efficiency demanded by new California emmissions guidelines is apparently beyond the scope of all known science and apparently will bankrupt them, according to a suit they filed to render said guidelines illegal.

Re:Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[aiken_d]

Yeah, because if you can keep a windsheild from cracking with a new coating, you must be able to reduce emissions by 30% with about the same amount of investment (and therefore final product cost increase).

Logic, people, logic.

-b

Re:Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah, because if you can keep a windsheild from cracking with a new coating, you must be able to reduce emissions by 30% with about the same amount of investment (and therefore final product cost increase).

Where is the flaw in logic? One must assume that the manufacturers spend at least as much on improving efficiency (if for no other reason than to deal with increased govt requirements over time) as they do scifi tech like this.

Re:Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[Dun Malg]

Where is the flaw in logic?

It's the "if they can put a man on the moon..." fallacy. It assumes that the problem they solved is as hard or harder than the one they didn't solve. Development of a nano-coated windshield does not logically suggest that they could've reduced emissions by 30% by applying their resources there instead.

Re:Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[Anonymous Coward]

Development of a nano-coated windshield does not logically suggest that they could've reduced emissions by 30% by applying their resources there instead.

Yes yes we all took logic class but we don't live Greek's in the universe of pure forms - the idea that they have likely spent as much and are likely to derive the required result is very high. And they made the same claims the aslt time California demanded higher standards more than a decade ago.

Re:Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[whathappenedtomonday]

Development of a nano-coated windshield does not logically suggest that they could've reduced emissions by 30% by applying their resources there instead.

it's priorities rather than logic: obviously, those coated windshields and unscratchable paint are more important / marketable / prestigious than protecting the environment we all live from. maybe those 30% are no problem at all, but nano tech ist more fun to play with.

Re:Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[Anonymous Coward]

No it won't. They will just refuse to sell the cars directly in California. They can sell them elsewhere. What fault/care should they have if they get imported to California if they didn't sell them there to begin with?

Re:Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[Herkum01]

Logic, Ok then, how about everytime they come up with a new regulation to improve fuel efficiency or reduce pollution from cars we get two reactions.

• American manufacturers, spend millions in lobbying and advertising about how impossible it is to met these unrealistic regulations and big government is just interferring with a free market economy.
• Japanese manufacturers, they the meet the regulations or improve on them.

Seems logical to me, American manufacturers are better at whining than building cars. Maybe they are using that Nanotech to build the worlds smallest violin that people are always offering to play for them.

Re:Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[Cuthalion]

Obviously what they should do is list all the problems in order, and refuse to work on the second one until the first one is thorougly solved. They should only hire scientists whose expertise applies to the first problem, and fire them when it's solved, and hire new scientists who are able to solve the second problem. &c.

Re:Yet meeting California emmissions will bk them

[Dun Malg]

the idea that they have likely spent as much [as would've been necessary to lower emissions by 30%] and are likely to derive the required result is very high.

So you claim, but present no evidence.

Warning: Marketroid stuff ahead!

[Anonymous Coward]

Of course cars are going to be built molecule by molecule, it's just we haven't figured out how to do it yet. Yeah whatever. Keep blowing smoke out of your ass. Even if nano robots could be manufactured by the millions cheaply, why build a vehicle atom by atom when its so much easier to make car parts on a macro scale?

Have a Bigger P3Ni5 Using Nonatechnology!

[FFFish]

Etcetera. Sigh.

Re:Have a Bigger P3Ni5 Using Nonatechnology!

[Idarubicin]

P3Ni5

It kind of disturbs me that I at first read this as having something to do with a weird nickel and phosphorus compound...

Re:Have a Bigger P3Ni5 Using Nonatechnology!

[Master of Transhuman]

You're definitely a /. nerd-boy!

Be proud!

Re:Have a Bigger P3Ni5 Using Nonatechnology!

[FFFish]

a weird nickel and phosphorus compound...

Definitely would be a hard one...

Nanotechnology windshields....not a good thing

[voss]

If my car is in a wreck or goes into a canal. If I cant open the doors I want to be able to break the windows and get out.

If Im dead...my beautiful windshield doesnt mean a damn thing.

Re:Nanotechnology windshields....not a good thing

[ifwm]

Why is there always someone with an argument like this? Seatbelts are potentially fatal too if they prevent you from getting out of a burning car, but the good far outweighs the bad.

Re:Nanotechnology windshields....not a good thing

[Anonymous Coward]

aaaaaaaaahahahahaahahaahahaha, oh man. thanks for that. now grow a fucking brain you twat.

Re:Nanotechnology windshields....not a good thing

[king-manic]

If my car is in a wreck or goes into a canal. If I cant open the doors I want to be able to break the windows and get out.

If Im dead...my beautiful windshield doesnt mean a damn thing.


If this is a regular occurance perhaps you shouldn't drive. if it is not. Then worry more about the probable chance of chipping your winshield vs the improbable chance that you roll your dumb ass self into a canal.

wake me up ...

[torpor]

when the nano-vats can be powered by a few kilo's worth of any fresh bio-mass consisting of mostly water.

Re:wake me up ...

[TubeSteak]

fresh bio-mass consisting of mostly water

Sounds like you're describing humans...

Re:wake me up ...

[BrainInAJar]

Soylent Gas?

Re:wake me up ...

[nounderscores]

Goodnight coppertop.

Re:wake me up ...

[Inuchance]

Doesn't fuel these days cost an arm and a leg already?

Scope of problem

[wombatmobile]

* Amenities like cup holders that can absorb or produce heat, keeping beverages at the perfect temperature.

I didn't realize that was such a big problem.

"Any part of the car that's made has the potential to be improved by nanotechnology," Messner said, "because ultimately materials and parts are made out of atoms and molecules."

Oh, right.

Unfortunately

[Timesprout]

The cars produced by nano technology are only 2 mm long at most so getting in to them will be a bit of squeeze.

Re:Unfortunately

[Anonymous Coward]

* cocks gun *

I said 'get in.'

Re:Unfortunately

[NanoGator]

"The cars produced by nano technology are only 2 mm long at most so getting in to them will be a bit of squeeze."

I feel another class action suit against McDonald's brewing.

Programmable use-by date?

[csirac]

Car manufacturers are hardly putting current technology to good use, let alone nano-technology.

Even if they could make anything for even equivilent cost, let alone cheaper, they'd probably still find some way of letting it break in 3-5 years.

Lacks imagination

[danharan]

"It's not going to change the overall vehicle to be unrecognizable from today," Hass [manager of physical and environmental sciences at Ford] said. "But the biggest impact may well be beyond anybody's imagination today."

The guy isn't clued in. The car is one technology that is ready for more than incremental improvements; it needs a fundamental rethinking.

There is a model out there, one that has been out for 10 years now: the Hypercar. It started as a concept by the Rocky Mountain Institute, and eventually a company by the same name (Hypercar Inc.) was formed. Slashdotters might find it interesting that Bill Joy is one of their investors.

It's amazing technology, and it would have far reaching implications.

Re:Lacks imagination

[Anonymous Coward]

That's one buzzword laden page... Hmmm...

Where can I get one? (The car, not a page like that)

Re:Lacks imagination

[Dun Malg]

There is a model out there, one that has been out for 10 years now: the Hypercar. It started as a concept by the Rocky Mountain Institute, and eventually a company by the same name (Hypercar Inc.)

So where's an actual Hypercar? They promised a prototype would be out a couple years ago. I refuse to believe anything from a company whose website says they leverage "synergies" unless I see a working prototype. I can't even find a photo of a mockup. The best I can find is a few CAD views.

Re:Lacks imagination

[Firethorn]

I agree, I call vaporware until they can at least produce a prototype.

Re:Lacks imagination

[danharan]

They're not going to build them; they're trying to get the big automotive companies to build them. So far they have had some success getting companies to adopt some of the technologies they designed, especially with Hybrids.

Re:Lacks imagination

[BrainInAJar]

Hydrogen fuel-cell powered? You mean the same hydrogen we get from running electricity through water? you mean the same electricity we get from burning fossil fuels? Wow... Sign me up

Seriously though... I don't know what the drive is to get H2 powered car, seeing as how it won't eliminate polution or free us from fossil fuels, it'll just displace it

Re:Lacks imagination

[Dun Malg]

They're not going to build them; they're trying to get the big automotive companies to build them. So far they have had some success getting companies to adopt some of the technologies they designed, especially with Hybrids.

I thought the idea of the Hypercar was to roll ALL the latest technology together in a "synergistic" application. To "adopt some of the technologies" seems like exactly what the Hypercar people were complaining about.

No shit sherlock..

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, and IF my dog bites my balls off and eats them, then having a dog isn't a good idea. IF a roller coater comes off its tracks whilst I'm on it, then going on the rollercoaster wasnt a good idea.


Generally speaking, the windshields ARE a good idea.

This outlier was disregarded decades ago

[Ars-Fartsica]

Your concerns were outweighed by the need to keep glass from nicely shattering and shredding passengers decades ago. Go look at accident photos prior to the age of safety glass. Not pretty.

The chance of my car being submerged in water is maybe ten million times less likely than the chance a collision will press my face against the windsheild or door glass at a high rate of speed, in which case I definitely do not want to be able to shatter that glass on impact - if I do, if forms a guillotene that take off a body part when I retract.

Re:This outlier was disregarded decades ago

[pjt33]

Surely you do want the glass to shatter, but you want the entire pane to shatter into nice small circular chunks. This seems to be what current safety glass does nowadays, with the result that it causes lots of tiny scratches on your skin, but none deep enough to leave a scar. (I speak from the experience of a smash 4 years ago).

Re:This outlier was disregarded decades ago

[BrainInAJar]

It sure as hell does leave a scar. I have a 4 inch long, 1/4 inch wide laceration running from my nose to my ear because safety glass gashed the hell out of my face in an accident. That said, i'm glad it was safety glass rather than normal glass, because that laceration would've been a beheading otherwise

Re:This outlier was disregarded decades ago

[rhuntley12]

My father when he was younger was in a little wreck and ended up getting a ton of tiny glass shards in his eye from the glass just shattering. From what he says it wasn't a pleasant experience.

Safer?

[Space_Soldier]

I thought that nano-tech products from cabon are super strong. This will turn every car into a bulldozer. How will this be safer?

Re:Safer?

[Anonymous Coward]

they dont HAVE to be super strong. they just CAN be, it depends on the arrangement of the atoms.
and besides, i dont think they meant only safer in crashes, although obviously if you crash into a tree with a stronger car then it is safer, for you. parts wont breakdown as often, fall apart, rot, rust, whatever..

Re:Safer?

[RealityThreek]

Super strong and super lightweight. This isn't like returning to the olden days of everyone driving a boat on the highway. If a car can both stand up to more pressure -and- lessen the force of impact in the event of a crash, I would say it may be a bit safer. Alot of injuries from a wreck are from crushing when the car is breached.

Re:Safer?

[mehtars]

Well, carbon fiber is a much lighter material than steel. The momentum of the carbon fiber car, at a certain speed, would be far less than the momentum of a car made with steel.

but as with any car, they would have to design it such that the crumple zones absorm the impact--- if u do get into a car crash, it will still crumple like a sheet of paper.

ro

Re:Safer?

[Anonymous Coward]

There will be a diminishing of Rachel Corries.

Re:Safer?

[Garak]

Carbon is very light compared to steel. If you could structer graphite carbon(pencil lead) into diamond it would be extreamly strong and light(stronger than steel, lighter than alumimin). Its the ideal building material for just about everything.

It will be safter because the car will have alot less mass and would bounce off rather than bulldoze through other vechiles. It would also be super strong so the passenger compartment could not be crushed. It wouldn't rust, bend, it can be transparent...

Its the idea material... diamonds

Re:Safer?

[eskayp]

While a variety of manufacturers are deep into MarketSpeak, nano* promises major change; for good and bad. Safety-wise vehicles can have better integrity and more biofriendly interiors, enhancing both crash resistance and occupant protection. Hard outside & soft inside taken to the next level. Other threads have alluded to driver incompetence and obstinance, but nano* can help us reach the state of cars that travel safely to the occupant's destination on autopilot. Currently nano* is little more than a buzzword. As nano* evolves it will branch in directions and devices we have yet to comprehend. Nano* in the sense of wildcard (*) character.

Re:Safer?

[Cuthalion]

Diamond may be really strong and light, but it's brittle instead of flexible, so it's hardly 'ideal for everything'.

WTF are you talking about?

[Anonymous Coward]

Real cities don't have problems like these.

??? Last time I checked, exhaust came out of cars in Boston too.

Re:WTF are you talking about?

[Dun Malg]

Real cities don't have problems like these.

??? Last time I checked, exhaust came out of cars in Boston too.

Last time I checked, you could hop in the T in Boston instead of driving.

Cheap nanotech

[Merovign]

My problem with Locally Made Cars is cheapness. Not low price, I like that. Cheapness.

Anyone here check out a Cadillac lately? Doesn't it just reek of Chevy? Cheap plastics, ringy body panels with the wrong kind of or inadequate insulation, buttons, knobs and levers that are not only in the wrong or confusing places but feel like they're going to fall off.

I think someone needs to learn how to make a car before they make a super-nanotech-alien-killing-machine car.

I mean, foot handbrakes? What is this, 1970? I can't use that emergency brake in an emergency because my feet are busy DRIVING!!! It's a parking-only brake. At least they finally found a manual transmission.

You'd think Chrysler would learn something from Daimler. Nope. Check out the trunk on the Crossfire. You practically have to unload groceries from bags before you can get them in the car! How is nanotech going to help that? "Hey, it's 30% stronger!" "Yeah, but I still can't put a suitcase in it!"

Maybe they'll finally come up with paint that doesn't fade and peel quickly, and if good interior materials are cheap maybe they'll start using them. Won't tell them where to put things, however.

Doesn't solve reason #1 why I've basically given up on American cars - the manual transmission. Generally Not Offered. Nanotech won't help that, probably make slushboxes smaller, though. Wait, Volvo already did that. And didn't send us the manual S80. GRRRRRRR.

Walk before you run, people. Walk before you run.

Re:Cheap nanotech

[Anonymous Coward]

your busy driving? well how stupid of us.

you fucking retard. a keyboard has over 100 keys, yet your not too busy "typing" to use them are you? no.
a car has 3 pedals, a steering wheel, gear stick, multiple functions on the indicator stick thangs, and you have 2 feet and 2 hands, yet you can drive.. well fuck me, that cant be possible.

just because YOUR incapable of doing anything that requires any brainpower at all, doesnt mean the rest of us are. fucking moron.

Re:Cheap nanotech

[Anonymous Coward]

it's "you're", not "your".

Foot e-brakes are almost completely useless. Ever try using them on a manual car? I had a manual with a foot e-brake once, and it was quite a pain in the ass. There is no reason they should ever be installed on any car that comes in a manual.

Re:Cheap nanotech

[compwizrd]

And every foot e-brake i've seen either had a pull lever under the dash to release it, or you had to push it down all the way to get it to release.

Neither strikes me as particular safe.

Re:Cheap nanotech

[zakezuke]

you fucking retard. a keyboard has over 100 keys, yet your not too busy "typing" to use them are you? no.
a car has 3 pedals, a steering wheel, gear stick, multiple functions on the indicator stick thangs, and you have 2 feet and 2 hands, yet you can drive.. well fuck me, that cant be possible.

I think the point is the hand brake can be engaged/disengaged with one limb. Foot breaks can not, they require your left foot and one hand to operate the release. If you drive a car with stick in a hilly area like Seattle or San Francisco, you will notice the drawback of the foot brake. With a hand brake you can stop your car on a hill, pull out your clutch, hit the gas, and release the brake slowly. There are those who can master the foot on the brake and toes on the gas, but to reduce roll back I personaly use the hand brake.

As far as emergencies go, the foot brake is actually awful because it locks your wheels and you skid, where with a hand brake you can actually make a correction with brake presure with your thumb.

Besides, this isn't an issue of brainpower at all but manual dexterity. Good eye hand coordination requires years of practice and the moment you use an unfamilar control in an emergency situation the results can be unexpected. For example try using your left foot to operate your gas and see what happens. You can have much in the way of brain power but that doesn't change the fact you never trained that foot to operate that control. Foot brakes are only used for parking where hand brakes are often used by at least people with manual transmisions. If you have no brakes, and you are smart enough to use the mechanical one, I believe a person with the hand brake who has trained them selves to use it would be able to stop safely, where you can stop a car with a foot brake it would not be what one considered to be a safe stop.

Re:Cheap nanotech

[zakezuke]

And every foot e-brake i've seen either had a pull lever under the dash to release it, or you had to push it down all the way to get it to release.

It's why they are not called e-brakes, they are called parking brakes. Even the dash style hand brake as seen in the 1960s ford products like the f-truck series (f-100/250/350) and the mustang had a pull brake that would lock into place until you twisted it. Even these are not great for emergency stopping, but they are better then nothing. But the manual calls this a parking brake.

I believe the term e-break only refers to the hand operated lever style that can be used in a pinch to make the car stop without loosing control. Dash parking brakes are less practical because you have to use your whole body as a lever to stop the car. But bench seats were the style at the time, and where else were you going to put it. Foot parking brakes are just awful, and i've seen these in autos with bucket seats and manual transmisions.

Not to speak of how impractical it is to have four foot controls, even with three the user sometimes makes an error and accidently presses two controls with one foot like clutch and brake, or brake and gas. With four you can have p-brake and clutch, clutch and brake, gas and brake.

Re:Cheap nanotech

[Merovign]

Why yes, you are stupid. Thank you for noticing. Probably don't drive either, or you'd know the difference between a keyboard and a car. Apart from the momentum.

And so we leave Mr. Anonymous careening down a twisty mountain road with a failed pressure fitting on his brake line installed by a cheeseball mechanic and one of those foot-pedal parking brakes. Never to be seen again.

The pig-ignorant are with us... everywhere.

And yes, I know he's a Troll. But I had pity and fed him anyway...

Nano

[strike2867]

The problem with nano technology has always been production. Since it was first introduced by IBM, no company has yet been able to cheaply mass produce nano particles. I wonder how they solved this problem.

shouldn't they apply this to aviation first...?

[demonhold]

I mean, I've almost lost my life twice in near-crash plane accidents due to material-fatigue (I ignore whether this is the correct term). I mean in one of them part of the fuselage tore... in the other some piece of the hydraulic system caused some sort of havoc...

If nanotechnology allows us to check material integrity in both in the assembly line and in the periodic revisions as someone here has stated what are we waiting for?

Re:shouldn't they apply this to aviation first...?

[jabberjaw]

I am going to assume that you are a private pilot. Now, let us compare the number of individuals with a private pilot's liscence to the number of individuals with a driver's liscence.

Re:shouldn't they apply this to aviation first...?

[Anonymous Coward]

...and then compare that with the number of slashdot users with spell-checking abilities.

Re:shouldn't they apply this to aviation first...?

[Anonymous Coward]

I am going to assume that you are a private pilot.

If he's not, he should play the lottery and never go outside during a lightning storm.

Re:shouldn't they apply this to aviation first...?

[antispam_ben]

If nanotechnology allows us to check material integrity in both in the assembly line and in the periodic revisions as someone here has stated what are we waiting for?

"If Fusion Reactor Electric Power Generation will make electricity so plentiful that we won't need to meter electricity, what are we waiting for?" [Sentiment expressed sometime in the 1960's, when fusion power was supposed to provide free electricity by 1970]

Quite frankly, we're waiting for it to work. There have been billions spend on controlled fusion, but a commercial facility is still far from being built.
I think molecular nanotechnology (building things atom by atom) is a "hard problem" similar to controller nuclear fusion, and it will take decades to make substantial progress.

Re:shouldn't they apply this to aviation first...?

[Anonymous Coward]

Plane crashes *are* pretty rare things. However, the coming generations of passenger planes that use nanotech materials will have benefits in addition to safety:

-Better pressurizing capabilities = less discomfort from gaining and losing altitude, and the ability to go higher up. The latter may aid ground-space transit.

-Non-rusting parts = a more ideal level of cabin humidity. Existing planes are kept VERY dry, because otherwise they would deteriorate.

-Lighter materials = possibilities for new designs that hold more or are more fuel-efficent; ATM planes are constricted mainly by their weight and by hangar and landing strip width, and changing the threshold for one compensates for the other, since lighter planes won't have to be as wide to attain flight. (or vice versa, but expanding an airport is pretty expensive)

What's the difference?

[roystgnr]

If you have to take into account nanometer-scale effects to design something, I don't think it's too far fetched to call the result "nanotechnology".

The problem is that to in most science fiction and speculative non-fiction, "nanotechnology" has been used primarily as a synonym for "nanorobotics", which would be infinitely cooler but is much further away.

Re:What's the difference?

[Firethorn]

Well, how about the fact that making steel is 'nanotech', making it stainless even more so.

We've been fooling with this stuff for quite literally ages, it's just that we've now found the light switch... It's alot easier to work in the light.

Re:What's the difference?

[kfg]

If you have to take into account nanometer-scale effects to design something, I don't think it's too far fetched to call the result "nanotechnology".

I'm not a bartender. I'm a nanotechnologist!

KFG

galvanized iron

[TubeSteak]

For the uninformed, hot dip galvanizing involves putting iron or steel (not aluminum right?) into a zinc and iron (with a touch of aluminum) molten mix. This does wonderful things for your metal, but mainly the process inhibits rust, which would void any rust warranties your dealer wants to sell you.

what's it good for...

[whathappenedtomonday]

...as long as those nanotech cars still run on fossil fuels?

for those who haven't heard it yet:
tabloid style

overview

Re:what's it good for...

[RealityThreek]

Hahahahhahaha! Sorry, but those links are just too much.

What if we get drafted? What if oil runs out? What if the stock market crashes? WHAT IF WE'RE INVADED BY GREEN PLUTONIANS?!?!

Please. Buy my book to find out the answers to these and other perfectly reasonable questions. And remember, The World Is Coming to an End.

Re:what's it good for...

[whathappenedtomonday]

we lived perfectly fucking fine without it

ok, but how long ago was that and how prosperous was the world - esp. the US - back then? look around you, how many things with no connection to oil at all can you see?

silly cow. turn your brain in and ask for a refund if you don't use it.

Re:what's it good for...

[whathappenedtomonday]

What if we get drafted? What if oil runs out?

so you say it's gonna last forever. reality, freak.

Re:what's it good for...

[Anonymous Coward]

George Monbiot
Tuesday June 8, 2004
The Guardian

.....But the age of cheap oil is over. If you doubt this, take a look at the BBC's online report yesterday of a conference run by the Association for the Study of Peak Oil.(5)
The reporter spoke to the chief economist of the International Energy Agency, Fatih Birol. "In public, Mr Birol denied that supply would not be able to meet rising demand ... But after his speech he seemed to change his tune: 'For the time being there is no spare capacity. But we expect demand to increase by the fourth quarter by three million barrels a day. If Saudi does not increase supply by 3 million barrels a day by the end of the year we will face, how can I say this, it will be very difficult. We will have difficult times.'"
The reporter asked him whether such a growth in supply was possible, or simply wishful thinking. "'You are from the press?,'" Birol replied. "'This is not for the press.'" So the BBC asked the other delegates what they thought of the prospects of a 30% increase in Saudi production. "The answers were unambiguous: 'absolutely out of the question,' 'completely impossible,' and '3 million barrels - never, not even 300,000.' One delegate laughed so hard he had to support himself on a table."(6) And this was before they heard that two BBC journalists had been gunned down in Riyadh......

source

Re:what's it good for...

[STrinity]

This is the same George Monbiot who thinks the world would be better if airplanes had never been invented?

Re:what's it good for...

[Anonymous Coward]

the same George Monbiot

so it seems. does that change the facts?
opinions are like assholes: everybody has one.
he seems to address the killing and bombing part rather that just the planes...

Re:what's it good for...

[Anonymous Coward]

So, say someone wrote about the dangers kitchen knives. Would you then claim that they believe the world would be better off without kitchen knives? Seriously, please do not add your commentary in such a way that makes it appear that the intent of the author is misinterpreted. Next time, post a link. Then tell us your opinion and make sure we know it is YOUR opinion. Imagine the respect you get from those that do click the link, read, and find that your added commentary was just a lie.

Re:what's it good for...

[RealityThreek]

Any and all of the problems he mentioned could be true.. but I still the link was a ploy.

Interesting

[emorphien]

I'm not sure what to think of this. I think the american car makers should work on making the existing products they build more reliable, rather than making them more complicated to build.

Either way, there's a lot of good uses for this stuff. I've seen some things about nanotech to create diamond hard coatings on plastic lenses. This could be used on glasses, cheap cameras, computer displays and all sorts of things.

Re:Interesting

[Kiryat Malachi]

The American car makers have minimal interest in making their products longer lasting.

Their goals are to make their cars drive better, drive safer, run better, and cost less; over the same lifecycle. They have no compelling interest in you buying less cars; they have a compelling interest in giving you a reason to buy their car over other manufacturers. Since very few people keep their car for the entire lifetime (/.ers with a 25 year old Nova, STFU - you aren't normal), there really isn't much demand for a car that will last longer.

Instead, all that R&D money is aimed at a couple things - less problems over the same lifespan, and more capabilities over the same lifespan.

Re:Interesting

[emorphien]

drive better, drive safer, run better, and cost less

Then why is it the japanese car makers can do all this and make their cars last a hell of a lot longer? I'm not saying I like Japanese cars better, I don't want to start getting that whole mess going, but if you really look at it they can do all that and last a hell of a lot longer. My mother has a 96 Accord with 130K miles, ALL city, and it runs better than a 99 ford with 60k miles and a 2000 Chevy with 50k that I both drive a lot.

Amusingly enough more of the Honda is probably made in the US than either of the two "American" cars I just mentioned so in the end perhaps buying a Honda is better because it gives more blue collar guys jobs. Who knows, but I'm tired of the poor reliability, if the car can't even last 5 years without a laundry list of problems, electrical failures and issues with body integrity, it's a failure. And the american car makers are pumping out shit like that day after day.

So call this a flame, call it unrelated, but realistically the american car makers are losing face. Why has Toyota become the second largest car maker? Why are they catching up with GM? Why do Hondas last so long? Quality. And they can accomplish those 4 things you mentioned too. Sorry, but I don't buy your excuse. The american car makers used to build some of the best cars, but 20 years ago they became complacent and they haven't totally come around yet.

Re:Interesting

[rhuntley12]

I agree. There is no way that my 85 BMW should be able to take a tiny collision(~15mph) and only have the bumper scratched when my moms 99(I think?) very expensive Buick's bumper collapses. Not to mention foreign cars used to be expensive to get any repairs done, now when my car rarely needs any work at all it's tons cheaper then my mothers car which is fairly new and less reliable.

Re:Interesting

[emorphien]

Haha, so true. There is a bit of a point to the modern bumpers, they absorb force much better and I'm sure some design required for that is pricier, but the molded design also jacks the price up.

All is not lost yet for American carmakers, apparently over the past couple years they've actually improved a bit and beat out the european carmakers in average for reliability. Both are still behind the japanese/asian carmakers (strictly speaking in averages, buy a mitsubishi and hire a personal mechanic, not all are equal). Oh well.

Re:Interesting

[Kiryat Malachi]

The Americans have gotten a lot better. I work in the industry (and not for one of the Big 3, for a supplier who works with American, Euro, and Japanese makers, so it's not a customer thing) - was actually reading an article on problems per 100 vehicles today. American cars are pretty much the average here.

But the top 10 are, in order:

#1 Lexus
#2 Cadillac
#3 Jaguar
#4 Honda
#5 Buick
#5 Mercury
#7 Hyundai
#8 Infiniti
#9 Toyota
#10 Mercedes-Benz

The bottom 10 are:

#28 Land Rover
#29 Saturn
#29 Suzuki
#31 Kia
#32 Nissan
#33 Mazda
#34 Scion
#35 Porsche
#36 Volkswagen
#37 Hummer

Notice something interesting there? The perception that American cars are crap is pretty much wrong; Toyota's got both a top spot and a bottom spot (Scion being their 'youth' imprint), Germans do top and bottom as well.

The truth is you've bought into a lie that's NOT TRUE anymore. 4 of the top 10 companies in quality are American (Jaguar is Ford-owned and shares significant parts with Ford lines). 4 are Japanese.

I drive a Japanese car (well, sorta - it's a Mazda, which I selected because the build quality on it was excellent). But don't knock the American cars because you've had issues; American cars were crap through the 80s and late 90s, but the last few years, they've really worked on quality issues. I know this much - the parts we sell to GM are often specced to a higher run lifetime than the ones we sell to overseas makers.

Know your facts.

Re:Interesting

[Kiryat Malachi]

Oh, one more thing.

Hondas now don't last any longer than Hondas from 20 years ago. American cars from now do.

Re:Interesting

[Anonymous Coward]

Now, let me ask you, are these initial quality, 3 year or 10 year reports? Because it makes a difference. You can't go slinging around insults and calling people stupid when you yourself provide unsubstantiated evidence.

Re:Interesting

[emorphien]

Where did you get those specs from, because I've probably read all the same things you have and you've gotta consider all the different reports. And as the other guy said, what kind of report is this, what is the time span?

I never said the american cars haven't gotten a lot better than they were 20 years ago, but I also won't ignore the fact that I find some of your data a little curious. Provide a source, because I'm not buying that data, it goes completely against half of what is published in a number car review sources.

While American reliability is up, one of the biggest issues I still see with them is problems in the electrical systems. Are you providing those parts? You've left more questions than you have answers or truths.

Re:Interesting

[Kiryat Malachi]

SAE report. Trade association for automotive designers, roughly equivalent to an ACM or SEI. The survey of owners was conducted by JD Powers. So, what I would call very trustworthy sources, with a long history of respectable work.

The time span is the first 90 days of ownership on MY04 vehicles; since they're MY04, obviously the time span is limited. Although I'd be interested in seeing what the numbers are like 4-5 years down the road, I doubt they'll have significantly changed.

Actually, we do provide electronics, but most electrical problems that I've heard about are harness issues, which we wouldn't be at fault for. Those are usually designed either by the carmaker or subbed out to a specialist. Other than harness issues, I have to ask - what problems are you seeing? Because up until this latest car (a Mazda) I've only driven American cars (GM cars, even) and had one major quality issues with any of them, beyond expected maintainence. It was a build issue on my 00 S-10, where some idiot had forgotten to properly assemble the linkage connecting the gas pedal to the throttle, resulting in the linkage snapping mid-drive and me rolling my car 1/4 mile to a gas station.

I try to provide truths; before you get snotty, ask the questions so I can try to give you them. If I fail to answer them then, you can get snide.

Re:Interesting

[emorphien]

See there's the difference. I'm not talking about 90 days. I won't disagree that initial quality on many American cars is quite good, often better than some Asian cars, where they slip is with time. The 2 or 3 year records for example.

Electricals are a pain, particularly with Ford (one I'm verrry familiar with). They've done a great job of running wires through the firewall without any sort of protection and they rub through causing shorts, among other things.

Don't tell me to not be snotty if you can't specify what you're talking about. We may very well both be right, but we're talking about different time frames. My interest is in a car lasting, if a car can last a good while with minimal problems then that's good engineering. Something I can honestly say I see more of with some of the Japanese makers.

Re:Interesting

[Kiryat Malachi]

In my experience with my/friends' vehicles, I see problems within 90 days, and problems in the roughly 7-10 year window. If you have a car make it 10 years, routine maintenance will probably keep it running for a very long time. American cars do great in the initial 90 these days, and I have my suspicions that they will do better in the 7-10 than they used to; specifically, I'm thinking of "fun" things like the old Dodge transmission problem, where there was something like a 85% failure rate in the transmission when it hit around 75-90,000 miles.

I've never worked with Ford on their harness, but I have worked with them on their powertrain, and they seem to do a decent job on engineering that.

I'm talking to you about being snotty before you give me a chance to respond; I told you where my numbers were from and what they referred to when you asked me to do so. They were numbers I had at hand (from this month's "Automotive Engineering" which showed up in my mailbox last Friday) and that's why I used them. I took 5 minutes just now, found the 3 year benchmark that JD Powers runs.

1. Lexus
2. Infiniti
3. Buick
4. Porsche
5. Acura
6. Toyota
7. Cadillac
8. Lincoln
9. Honda
10. Mercury

and of course:

28. Jeep
29. Volvo
30. Mitsubishi
31. Hyundai
32. Isuzu
33. VW
34. Suzuki
35. Daewoo
36. Land Rover
37. Kia

Funny. American cars seem to be reasonably well represented at the top, and almost totally absent from the bottom in the 2-3 year record, don't they?

what this really means

[argoff]

Is that manufacturing and assembly of products will move from the factory to on site in the home. Companies will respond to this by saying that you owe them patent and copy royalities on the things you repilcate. They will become extremely rich and powerfull, and be all to happy to attempt to impose an all encompasing police state to ensure collection of royalities. (don't believe me, just look at the RIAA when the internet came along, look at how the pharmacutical companies tried to sue millions of dirt poor africans dying of AIDS in the world court for patent infringement - if they're willing to do that they are willing to do anything)

Moral, if you want the benefits of future technology to promote freedon and not take it away, work to get rid of patents today. They hinder far more innovation than they promote, and they are far more like microregulation than some kind of free market property right.

It will suffer the same fate befalling Software

[FreeUser]

At what point then could we just download 'plans' off P2P and just 'grow' our own car, house, dinner....

At the point where the ruling oligarchs choose to relinquish their architectures of control (patent and copyright law) and allow knowledge and thought to be shared freely.

I.e. not in the lifetime of anyone currently living, if ever.

Expect nano-designs to be covered by both patents and copyrights, much like software in America is today. And expect progress to be decimated as a result, and the best products to be created in technical violation of the law in many places, such as mplayer is today (though fortunately not in violation of the laws where its author lives).

And the latter, semi-optomistic note, assumes there are safe havens where free thinking people can still create ... probably far away from the United States or Europe. If "harmonization" succeeds, there will be no such place, and the only products and creativity that will exist will be the glacially slow change industry offers us ... assuming they don't see any threat to their current revinue streams in offering the new product. There will be no innovation from outside, and with government mandated monopoly markets, no competition either.

Safety glass is designed to break safely

[voss]

The nanotechnology glass as designed is designed NOT to break...that is not safe in case of collision or car going into a canal. This is not hypothetical, dozens of people in MY COUNTY ALONE died because they were trapped in their car when the car was submerged or burning. They did a special on it where people couldnt break the glass because they didnt have a simple icepick in their car.

If you make it out of nano, its also going to be an issue for paramedics to try and get into the car.

A seatbelt has a button to release it. There should be some safety measure built into nanowindshields that will allow them to be broken or removed in case of an emergency.

Re:Safety glass is designed to break safely

[Anonymous Coward]

er...how about breaking the side window to get out instead?

The side windows don't need quite the same unbreakability as the windshield.

Re:Safety glass is designed to break safely

[Namarrgon]

Escape hatch in the roof?

Re:Safety glass is designed to break safely

[StuckInSyrup]

well, this system allready exists. in panzer-limos, you are able to blow the front windshield away in case of such an emergency.

Ordering Pizza

[Retief65]

And soon we will use nanotechnology to order pizza. Oh wait, that was the Internet...

Unions

[Anonymous Coward]

Ok, I'll bite. How will the unions block this new technology, like they have so many others?

Re:Unions

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll form atomic unions, and the atoms will go on strike for better working conditions.

Sounds Great!

[tyler_larson]

Boy, I sure was scared about nano-robots taking over the world, but being overrun by self-replecating cars wouldn't be so bad... 'cause hey, free car!

Re:Sounds Great!

[Mysticalfruit]

You see to forget that these replicating cars are going to need "material" to create more cars...

Your walking down the street when behind you suddenly see a semi with this giant maw coming up behind you, you duck into an ally but your fiend isn't quick enough. You hear the sickenly crush and squash as your friend is sucked in and ground into paste to be fed into the nanoengines. Moments later, to add insult to injury, your friend has been coverted into a Vespa scooter...

Call me a luddite

[panxerox]

but if you dont need !ANY! employees to make a car (and I assume by that time all other manufactured products) won't you like have a !DEMAND! problem? All you'd need to produce cars is a marketing dept and a black box that excreates chevys.

DUH

[nempo]

You download open-sourced plans ;P

Re:DUH

[silence535]

Bender:
Yeah right! I'm gonna build my own car. With Blackjack and hookers! Actually, forget about the car!

Re:DUH

[IncarnadineConor]

Which will run better then the closed source cars but look fucking hideous?

Re:DUH

[nempo]

Offcourse you can always download a new theme engine and apply a sexy-as-hell theme.

I can't wait

[dorlthed]

until Versalife starts development :D

Re:Yeah, think people.

[Anonymous Coward]

right.

But up until the 70's the automotive industry claimed they never could make more fuel efficient cars, or that it would be too expensive, or whatever - I'm not sure of the specific, but no doubt there is a case where some treehugger thought there was too much polution. And who cared? But then the oil crisis forced the issue and the Japanese got better at it, and the American industry changed. No? Now look at the Prius. ...free passwrod bla bla.

When oil hits $40+ a gallon the automotive industry will make more fuel efficient cars.

When oil hits $200+ a gallon the auto industry will change the fuel type.

etc etc...this is why the parent questions the industry integrety, and why nobody trusts what the tobacco industry says, and why half the people in the country dont trust GW, and...

but hey, who wants to think?

(copy write notice: all spelling errors are the property of me.)

Re: quote source?

[Anonymous Coward]

good quote, can you post the source.

you know....

[zogger]

... I live out in the country and I am SERIOUSLY considering getting a horse. I've worked with them before on a ranch and at a stables, but never owned one, but still... grow your own fuel, grow your own replacement vehicle, the same vehicle can be used for basic trannsportation, as a tractor in the garden and woodlot, etc. I got several vehicles to choose from to drive around and work with now, but still... it is not far fetched to think that the old fashioned way might become pretty valuable and "new" fashioned pretty quickly. Like say the worlds various nutjob "leaders" for one reason or another decide the middle east might be a good place to start tossing some nukes around in, how fast before normal civilisation slows to a crawl then? Like RIGHT NOW I think some aforementioned fatcat nutjob folks with the juice to pull it off are considering whacking iran with nukes, premeptively. It COULD happen. I think-just a hunch but I think-that things could get outta hand pretty qucikly then, and this go to the pumps get what ya want lifestyle could go buh bye. Who would have access to fuel? The government and uberrich and that's about it, with maybe a few gallons a week with a ration card or something. Lot of the dudes here at slashdot don't remember it, a lot of us here DO remember it, the OPEC embargo and how FAST your fuel reality can change, no matter the reason. If you can't get it or only can get 2 gallons, than that's it, you can bitch all you want to, but if the fatcats don't have it or won't cut it loose, you are screwed.

Pie in the sky hydrogen and backyard Mr. Fusion tech ain't here, and ain't gonna be here for awhile, and growing a lot of grains to make biodiesel/ethanol you might as well just feed it to yourself and the horse and be done with it, eliminate the middleman. I already got some solar and a wind genny so I'm covered for a minimum of electric for whatever that is worth. We heat primarily with wood, so that's covered. We use this idea called "shade" for cooling in the summer, that's all we got, and one small fan we could do without actually. It's only mid june and the garden is exploding already, we gots more food then we can hardly give away in the 'hood now. FUEL though no matter which alternative energy scheme you look at is a hassle, at least at what people would consider to be "normal" quantities. I've made some ethanol before and burned it in two motorcycles and one chain saw, so I know I got the skills to do that, but it takes a ton of some kind of carbohydrates to pull that off. You got to have *mass quantities* of sugars basically. The large scale outfits doing it are being cute and a little loose with the practicality aspects of it, they use huge quantities of diesel and oil and natural gas derived fertilisers and other stuff just to grow some sugars to turn them back into some sort of fuel, it's a circular illogicity in a lot of aspects. I guarantee mass farming like we know it just ceases without diesel and big quantites of electric and natural gas. It just STOPS, at least the way it's set up now. Just basic food without cheap diesel and cheap natural gas could rise to..geez, pick a number, 20x what it costs now maybe.

I just think at some point in time that this cushy lifestyle everyone is used to in the industralised whirrled is gonna get seriously b0rken. That's why I keep thinking of horses (or mules or whatever), hay burners. Worked for thousands of years. I also think the big oil guys and banks and whatnot KNOW this and are arranging reality to see who is the bigdog and who will actually own and control middle east oil, and i guarantee it don't got nuthin to do with "bringing democracy to the poor..." fill in the blanks ethnic groups. It's about WHO OWNZ THE OIL.

I remember my folks and my grandparents talking to me about the great depression. They were flat broke but existed more or less OK until the bogus bankers and taxes stole their land from them, which I think is part of why the depression occurred, a planned mass ripoff, but that's a side issue, we got

That would be nifty

[sczimme]

The dinosaurs wouldn't have to be functional, they would just have to decay properly, so all of the early versions could be put to good use even if the cloning part went slightly askew*. Yay - genetic experimentation without all of the nasty public relations fallout!

* Unless they're tasty - this is prime cookout season, you know.

Re:That would be nifty

[Anonymous Coward]

Yea, great. So in 1 billion years we'll have oil again...

Banking on the new "IN" term

[poofyhairguy82]

This is just a ploy to wrap up investors that are captivated by the word "nanotechnology." In all probability the technology will probably just assure that future "American" cars will break down in exactly six years on the dot instead of the current relative time frame. Seeing as how for the last twenty or so years "American" (made in Mexico) carmakers have only been interested in making cars that will fail in ten or so years. "Planned Obsolesce" has become the mantra to drive the bottom line. "Nanotechnology talk" assures the investment capital need to do it.

Uh...

[HarveyBirdman]

Isn't the Crossfire more of a roadster? People who buy a roadster don't give a flying fig if it can hold groceries. It's like complaining that the SSR can't carry 4x8 foot sheets of plywood, or that the Boxter is limited in its brick carrying capacity. Roadsters are supposed to be a second fun car in addition to a primary.

As for manual transmissions, well, each to his own, I guess. I got sick of stick shifts years ago when I left my teens and stopped being a wannabe race car driver. I'm looking at new cars right now, and the availablity of manual versus automatic seems about the same for domestic versus import. Some of the import luxury sedans don't offer manuals at all. Not sure why you'd pin that exclusively on domestics.

I've not looked much at Euro cars, so maybe you mean them. I like some of the stuff from Europe, but the way they have been treating my country and fellow citizens lately, well, they can collectively suck my big fat balls. Express dislike for the current President, fine (I don't like him either), but enough with the hypocritical jingoism already.

Handbrakes; never used it in 22 years of driving beyond using it as a parking break, which is what most people call it nowadays. What are you doing wrong that you need to use it? Haven't modern ABS obsoleted their use on the road for the most part? The only guy I ever saw use it was someone in high school who'd use it to facilitate 180 degree slides, or "bootlegger 180s" as he called tham as we all slowly backed away. It always figured it was called an emergency brake because activating it would *cause* an emergency. ;-)

Re:Uh...

[Quino]

Starting on a hill with a stickshift (as in, driving around in San Francisco) is when I use the handbrake -- life would be hard without it actually.

I personally was amazed when I heard that there were stickshift cars without it, seemed pretty dumb (as in "Don't they drive the cars before they sell'em?"). You need to be able to modulate the handbrake to do a smooth start on an incline without slipping backwards -- impossible to do with a foot-break-hand-release mechanism.

I guess the stickshift thing is a personal preference: I still think it's great fun to paddle my own gears (and maybe because I'm lucky to not have to park in traffic getting to/from work). But a handbrake is absolutely necessary when driving a stickshift IMO.

Re:Uh...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

. Express dislike for the current President, fine (I don't like him either), but enough with the hypocritical jingoism already.

Umm, all the jingoism I've seen has come from this side of the pond.

Re:Uh...

[id]

Lived in SF 5 years driving a full sized Chevy PU with a stick. There are no handbrakes in pickups, just the foot brake, never had a problem. If you have issues driving a car without using the handbrake on hills, you probably need to go to drivers ed again.

Re:Uh...

[realdpk]

Could just get a Subaru manual transmission. They'll stay where they are until you release the clutch, so you can manage perfectly fine with just the two feet.

Re:Uh...

[Kiryat Malachi]

Obviously, you don't read /.

Or does your definition of jingoism not include knee-jerk anti-Americanism, despite the fact that 90% of the time the anti-Americanism is totally unjustified?

Re:Uh...

[HarveyBirdman]

Umm, all the jingoism I've seen has come from this side of the pond.

No offense, but then you really are not paying attention, or you have allowed ideology to destroy your critical thinking abilities. There has been tons of "Americans this" and "Americans that" flying around over there. I have family in Cypress, and they send me updates (they are rather embarassed by it), but it's readily available over here from the normal news sources.

I'm not talking about a handful of American jokes or French jokes. Some of the best French jokes I have ever heard came from a Frenchman. I'm not even talking about such piffle as "Freedom Fries". I'm talking about the ugly, hateful stuff those people are spewing, from the man in the street up to their alleged leaders. Some of it is really vile, and plays right into the hands of those that would destroy the West.

Anyway, it's either domestic or Japanese for my next car, and I'm leaning '05 Mustang GT. Love the retro look. :-)

Re:Uh...

[Fulcrum of Evil]

Or does your definition of jingoism not include knee-jerk anti-Americanism, despite the fact that 90% of the time the anti-Americanism is totally unjustified?

I view a lot of the anti american sentiments as the dividend of a disastrous foreign policy. That aside, disliking america is not in any way jingoist. Jingoism is extreme patriotism, to the point that any criticism is viewed as attack on the country. How does this not fit US sentiment?

Re:Uh...

[Daneurysm]

Yet another reason why I will be a Subaru fanatic (manual, at that) 'till the day I die.

The good ol' Hill-Holder clutch. My '84 Sedan had it, my 85 Wagons had it, my '86 XTs had it, my 91' Justy had it...and I can only hope that the new ones retain this (often overlooked, if even noticed at all) feature.

Subaru...the SAAB of Japanese cars. (well, SAAB used to be quirky and unique, but, that's for another rant entirely)

Now what about them horizontally opposed engines? I only drove Subaru's for years. My first Inline-4 engine (a VW, thankfully...my toyota, and mr2 1.6l no less, would have been even more confusing) it took me forever to realize that revving past 3.5k was a good thing...let alone fruitful :)

~Dan

Re:Uh...

[Kiryat Malachi]

The disastrous foreign policy sure as hell isn't most of our faults. Even the ones who voted for Bush didn't anticipate him unilaterally going to war against countries we had no business attacking (Afghanistan was justifiable, Iraq wasn't, that simple). Those of us who voted against Bush are kinda sick of listening to the rest of the world blame us for something that's totally out of our control.

US sentiment? The fuck do you, or anyone really, know about US sentiment? I live here, and I wouldn't presume to assign a single viewpoint to the 100 or so people who live on my block, much less the 275 million who live in my country.

Disliking America isn't jingoist, except when its so knee jerk reactionary that *any* action taken by the US is met by criticism without thought; its anti-patriotism. The US went through a period like that; we call it McCarthyism these days, and most of us view it with regret and disgust.

Most of us are willing to listen to honest criticism, but we're a little sick of the "US sucks" bullshit that passes for intelligent political discourse these days. You want to debate foreign policy with me? Fine. Talk about the disadvantages of setting a precedent for unilateral attacks. Talk about the wisdom of allowing education to remain in the hands of religious fanatics who will educate their children to die as martyrs. Talk about the economic impacts of destabilizing the world political situation.

But use the word "chimpy" in regard to the President of my country, and I will absolutely jump down your throat. I didn't vote for him, I don't even like him, but he is still my President, and he deserves a little bit more respect than that. Criticize the man's decisions, his policies; god knows I do. But fuck you if you can't do better than comparing him to a hominid.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

Sure, love the look of the new Mustang, but hate the suspension. Come on, a solid rear axle? That's terrible.

Re:Uh...

[Anonymous Coward]

He deserves respect? Why? Usually people have to earn it. Chimpy hasn't done anything along those lines.

Re:Uh...

[Kiryat Malachi]

See? People like you are jingoistic - unthinking adherence to a political creed, and in this case a specifically anti-nationalist creed.

Because he is the President of the United States, and the office deserves respect.

You want examples of why he should get some respect? He's managed to go sober, which is a lot harder than it sounds for an alcoholic. He graduated from Yale and Harvard; yeah, family ties probably helped there, but you have to do some of the work no matter what. He proposed and budgeted $15 billion in AIDS-related foreign aid. He's not perfect, and I dislike his polciies intensely for the most part. But he has earned better than "Chimpy".

And finally, simply because I refuse to have political debate with someone who can't restrain themselves from ad hominem attacks on politicians. I don't feel the need to call Chirac "Frog", I don't call Schroeder "Nazi", and although I have lots of private bad names for Arafat, I don't feel any need to use them when I'm discussing the Israel-Palestine situation.

So please, continue to disrespect the office if you like, but don't be surprised when people call you jingoistic or idiotic as a result.

Re:Uh...

[Merovign]

People with roadsters don't eat? Or they all own four cars? What kind of sense does that make? Maybe you happen to like roadsters, so you don't buy the Crossfire. That's all.

As to "each his own", at least I don't imply people who drive automatics are bad people. Sheesh. Talk about attitude.

As to availability, go to your Dodge/Chrysler dealership and ask what they have with a manual transmission. That isn't a base model. Cadillac just produced its first-ever manual, Chevy and Pontiac- small cars and base models only. Buick - don't even go there.

Well, as to your views on Europe, at least you could buy an Aston. They're brilliant. :)

As to emergency brakes, you've just shocked me. It's kind of like someone who has been using computers for years discovering what the backspace key does. I'm not sure what the blue blazes ABS has to do with e-brakes, but I can tell you don't either, so that's okay. The purpose is to back up the main brake system in case of failure. Mind you, brake failure is rare, but if that one in a million chance happens to you, I hope as you leap through the windshield (well, most of you) toward that tree, you think of this conversation.

As to the utility of footbrakes in that situation, I can think of several scenarios where locked brakes that you can't release without fumbling under the dash have a very high penalty vector. Most involving logging trucks.

And yes, I did once have a brake failure (in a Volvo no less) and stopped the car with the emergency brake.

You seem to have this complex thought process that turns anything you don't appreciate or understand into a "criminal" or "reckless" thing. Why is that, do you think?

Utter BS

[qwasty]

Cars To Be Assembled Atom By Atom
...In fact, all parts in a car can be improved by using nanotechnology, according to the article...

This is utter BS and should be recognized as the hype that it is. Certainly, nanotech of the materials kind is, and will continue to be important and useful technology. But, how are those little atoms going to machine a precision piston bore in a sleeved cast iron block? Better still, how the heck are those atoms supposed to press that sleeve into the block? Anyone? Anyone?

The fact is, no one alive today is going to see a finished car emerge, self-assembled, from a chemical vat. Anyone who says otherwise is either misinformed, or just being a blowhard.

Now, will "nanotech" be able to make harder steels and more durable paints? Sure. Are we becoming buzzword weenies when we call it "nanotech"? Maybe. If you want to stretch the definition of "nanotech" to anything that's small (as opposed to molecular machines that can hunt down viruses in your body, lets say), then nanotech has been around at least since the iron age.

Metallurgists have been trying to figure out ways to make hard and strong steels since humans discovered iron. Everything from the construction of bridges to the selection of carbide grades involves knowledge of the microscopic details of materials. Granted, most of that stuff isn't quite on the nano-scale, but for most of the nanotech hype I've encountered, the differences haven't been all that great. It's more of a spectrum from small to smaller, rather than "this is nanotech, and this is not".

So far, there's a few interesting applications of nanotech that are completely unique to nanotech, but assembling cars is still the realm of the macro world.

Re:Utter BS

[Namarrgon]

But, how are those little atoms going to machine a precision piston bore in a sleeved cast iron block? Better still, how the heck are those atoms supposed to press that sleeve into the block? Anyone? Anyone?

Molecular assembly. Don't think of it as machining a cylinder, or jamming a sleeve into a hunk of iron. Think of it as being assembled like Lego, each raw molecule bonded to another by millions of nano-scale assemblers. The final product is built as one piece, from the appropriate molecules, with no wastage.

Re:Utter BS

[qwasty]

Have you ever tried to move metal? It takes so much force that it literally glows red hot. How are metal atoms going to self assemble?

No, the fact is, self assembling finished products are pure fantasy, and there's a good chance they always will be. It might work for carbon molecules, or similar, but there's just no way to make a macro-sized precision steel bore with any kind of molecular techniques, not even theoretically (That I know of). Nanotech-niques are always going to have to be combined with traditional techniques. Nanotech is not the best technology for everything.

I'd bet most of these nanotech pundits have never even stepped inside a manufacturing facility, so how can you believe them when they tell you they can do it all?

Re:Utter BS

[Namarrgon]

Have you ever tried to move metal? It takes so much force that it literally glows red hot. How are metal atoms going to self assemble?

Move metal? I picked up an entire metal fork quite easily just the other day, and it didn't even get warm. I imagine a single molecule requires even less force. And self-assembly is not required; nano-manipulators do the movement and bonding of atoms/molecules via currently-existing techniques (see that site I linked for more info).

If you meant moving metal atoms takes far more force than other kinds of atoms, perhaps you could point me at some info at why this might be.

Thing is, a lot of very smart people think it's quite possible. No offence, but I tend to believe their credentials more than yours.

Re:Utter BS

[qwasty]

Take a big rock, stick it in a vise, and crush it. That's not too difficult. Take a tiny little steel ball bearing, stick it in a vise, and try your best to crush it...don't break your vise. Why do you suppose the molecules in the rock (SiO2, let's say) yield easier than the steel?

If a nano assembler tried to move metal atoms, which would break first - the nano assembler, or the metallic bonds? Think of the ball bearing and vise example. Of course, this is all assuming that the nano manipulator's arms can get a tighter grip on the metal atoms than the metal atoms have with other metal atoms. If you succeed in that, how are you going to get the manipulator to "let go" of the atom?

One more thing: Lots of very smart people think nanomanipulators are rediculous. It's quite a challenge just to get the atoms to stop sticking to the manipulator.

I bet, a hundred years from now, all the technical challenges involved with some types of nano manipulators will be solved. But even then, how is that going to be better than more ordinary techniques? Self-assembly works quite a lot better than nano assembers, it's used in industry every day, and is much more worthy of our attention.

Re:Utter BS

[Namarrgon]

OK, you're saying that it's simply due to stronger chemical bonds. That is of course relevant, but it's a mistake to apply macroscopic analogies to nanoscopic manipulations. There are a completely different set of issues involved - different forces, different approaches to solving them, e.g. twisting individual molecules or catalysing bond changes, instead of just throwing energy at it until it breaks. The site I linked listed some techniques.

And who says you have to detach your metal atoms from tiny ball bearings anyway? It may well be easier to provide a supply of atoms as a metallic salt, or even unrefined ore, discarding the unwanted material.

Self-assembly is a completely different approach, very suited to certain materials but quite unsuited to building an engine. It's entirely appropriate for today's technology, and may still have its uses in the future too. But since a putative nano-assembler factory could make the same materials albeit perhaps at lower efficiency, because it can potentially make the rest of the machine too & bypass the whole construction & assembly phases to deliver a finished product assembled atom by atom, it might well be a better option for many things.

Anyhow, time will tell. If there is disagreement on how hard it is, well, I remain optimistic :-)

You'll be able to buy one of these...

[phillymjs]

...just in time to drive it to the store to pick up your copy of Duke Nukem Forever.

Better put your deposit down at a dealership today!

~Philly

The job will just be outsourced to China

[Anonymous Coward]

And the Chinese will line up by the thousands to do it, too.

Wow, I am high...

[Anonymous Coward]

and I believe that the automotive industry will adopt nanotech. High as I am, I believe that the automotive industry is highly competative, too competative to be a "cheapskate" industry. It's a no holds bard race to build the best car for the best price that will appeal to the most people. Observe as oversized, overpriced SUVs sit on the lots while hybrids commmand prices far above MSRP.

The stakes are high, and the risks of not adopting a revolutionary technology such as nanotech while your competitors do are in the billions of dollars, if the company even survives. That is why these cheapskates are constantly innovating at a furious pace. Compare a car from 20 years ago to on of today to see if the auto industry was too cheap to use composits. Anyway nanotech shoudl eventually make it cheaper to build a car. wiw-win

As I set my cannabis down, I would like to remind the readers that being "high" is not the mind-destroying state that many purport it to be. Many graet ideas have come while smoking a joint, pondering the world around you. Legalize it.

Order Now!

[Anonymous Coward]

If you've got a machine that can
assemble, say, one billion atoms per second, your car
should be ready in about 10 million years.

Calls for some attitude adjustment...

[OlaL]

Couldn't agree more.

Safety has become a valuable sales argument for car manufacturers lately. Both passive safety and active safety have evolved quite a lot during the last few years.

Both will for sure keep on evolving in the future, but the only thing that has not and will not evolve are people. To be more exact, the attitudes have not evolved.

Everytime when an accident occurs you see the headlines screaming right at you in the news, and even the most hardened road hogs seem to calm down for a week or two. But after those couple of weeks people somehow forget and continue like they used to, just waiting for the next accident to happen and start the cycle again.

Either we find a way to change the attitudes for good OR we find a way to prevent (or at least minimize) the chance for an accident. Be it computer-driven cars (like in Minority Report if I remember right) or something similar.

We're on the right track for sure, e.g. several brands have cruise control which keeps the distance constant eventhough the speed is not constant. ESP (like the German brands call it) can correct some of the driver's mistakes when cornering. A long way still to go nonetheless!

Good luck, Detroit

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe then we will be able to produce a domestic car that will last more than 7 years.

Knight Rider...

[shawn(at)fsu]

Put all jokes concerning KITT moleculary bonded shell here

That's nice

[NetNinja]

But will it improve quality in American cars?

probably not. Cars will be as disposible as Cell phones in the future.

Re:sub-microscopic assembly lines

[NanoGator]

"ahh, scrub it. People will still find a way to drive like idiots, even in super nanotechnologically advanced cars."

You could have saved some bandwidth by shortening your post to shit happens.

legOS

[kookbox]

It's capitalized legOS, and it's an open-source OS for Lego Mindstorms.

Quality

[chunkwhite86]

if this nano stuff will improve the quality of American cars, I'm all for it. The garbage that the "Big 3" have been selling for the past 20 years or so can't possibly get any worse.

And the junk that the Japanese have been dumping on our shores for years.... Quality cant possibly go down on those recycled rusts-out-in-5-years crap boxes.

Just another excuse for them to raise prices..

[Anonymous Coward]

Did you know that over the years, it has become increasinly cheaper for the manufacturers to build cars, yet prices seem to keep going up?

Remember the car commercials from the 80's where it introduced a new car and listed the price tag at $6k? It cost them MORE to make that particular model than it does for the newer models.

All this does is give them an excuse to jack prices up that much more for some pretty trival innovations that really do sound better on paper than if they were actually used.

A nanotech car

[danila]

It seems that many people here are too attached to the present to be able to imagine the possibilities of the future. So as a public service, let me post a quote from the "Nanonet" book by Alexander Lazarevich.

In practical terms this means that if, for example, we design a automobile for the NanoTech, it should not have a dashboard - all the necessary information about the status of the car systems should be fed into the driver's optic nerve, to be superimposed on his actual field of vision. Also, such a car should not have a steering wheel or pedals - mental commands from the driver should be routed directly to the car's final controls, without any mechanical intermediaries. All this allows to radically simplify the design, and consequently, to considerably reduce the time needed to "grow" a car. ... an automobile built in compliance with the NanoTech principles doesn't have any transmission, and the function of the engine is performed by the wheels themselves...

And to completely visualize a NanoTech-style car, please remember that it always has just as many seats as it has passengers and its trunk is never larger than the luggage it carries. And if you take into account the fact that it just doesn't make any sense to transport things that can always be grown at your destination, it means that usually such car doesn't have any trunk at all.

That was an explanation given in one of the dialogs. And here is how it works:

In the street, a few amazed passers-by could see how a big white bubble started to grow from a puddle right opposite the main entrance to a gloomy imposing building without any signs. In a few seconds the bubble turned into a very strange-looking, compact single-seater car. One could see only one seat under its transparent upper body. There was no driving wheel in front of the seat, no pedals, no control panel. The strangest thing of all was that the car didn't have any doors. In a few more seconds a mustached guard with high cheekbones came out of the building and approached the strange car. A big oval hole suddenly appeared in the car's upper body. The passers-by were staring with their mouths wide open. "Good morning" - said the polite guard, eased himself into the hole, and sat in the only seat there was. The hole immediately healed over as if it had never existed, and the car pulled out without producing any sound or exhaust gases.

In fifteen minutes' time, when Levshov was already driving along an out-of-town highway he saw his pursuers. The car increased its speed. And then it sprouted wings, like aircraft wings. In one more minute it got off the ground, and its wheels dissolved - not retracted or folded, but dissolved, while at the same time the wings became a little longer. In a few more seconds the plane left his pursuers beyond the horizon.

The book is available online at http://www.webcenter.ru/~lazarevicha/ntn_toc.htm and can be freely distributed for non-commercial purposes.

Big Dig: most expensive highway project ever

[Ars-Fartsica]

So if Boston has such great mass transit, why are they undertaking the most expensive highway project ever?

Re:Big Dig: most expensive highway project ever

[Dun Malg]

So if Boston has such great mass transit, why are they undertaking the most expensive highway project ever?

Because the interstate was running right through the middle of the city and was a big-ass mess. You're not going to improve traffic on an interstate highway with a subway system.

Clarification

[Ars-Fartsica]

Specifically you are correct, what I was referring to was the ability to punch the glass out like a window, or shatter it like a jar, which I think we both understand you do not want to be able to do.

My understanding is that safety glass is engineered to shatter in a way that the pane deforms but does not come out of the frame, at least for low speed impacts. This is why you see glass that actually looks "bent" by the shape of an impact - the glass has shattered but the shards stay adhered together along cleavage lines.

Re:Clarification

[ross.w]

You are confusing two types of safety glass.

The first is the laminated type, which has layers of plastic between the glass layers to hold it all together and prevent penetration and decapitation. This is typically used for car windscreens.

The second is toughened safety glass which has water sprays played on it during manufacture to produce residual stresses in the glass that give it more strength. When it does break, it shatters into granules that are relatively harmless.

This type is used in mirrors and side windows. Both types are also used in buildings for shower screens and glass doors (mandatory in NSW)

The toughened type used to be used for windscreens also, but had the problem of instantly obscuring the drivers vision when hit by something hard enough to break it. That's why laminated glass is used for widnscreens now.

Side and rear windows of toughened glass fixes the problem of emergency access, but the poster who is worried about getting out if his car falls into a river should consider buying that cheaper model that lacks the electric windows. Then he can just wind them down. Far safer than trying to break them no matter what they're made of.

This is just another report to boost stock value.

[Jackie_Chan_Fan]

This is just another attempt to inspire stock investor confidence in new technology.

The investment community has been all a buzz about nanotech. Its the next selling point that crooked stock brokers are using to sell crappy stock to folks.

Its the same thing as the medical community releasing a story about a cancer cure being found every year. Its just a silly way to boost ones stock value.

Gotta love them corperations!

Very Interesting

[NDPTAL85]

The usual Anonymous Coward who replies to any post that makes light of "Pound-Me-In-the-Ass prisons" hasn't replied angirlly yet.

Apparently this individual is the person on earth with sympathy for prisoners serving hard time. He's always saying things like "What if it was YOUR brother" at which point I usually reply, I'd laugh at the dirty lawbreaker everytime he complained.

Mmmm my dinner's ready. Bye.

Re:Very Interesting

[Master of Transhuman]

Well, the NON-"Anonymous Coward" who spent eight years in the Federal joint and who knows that Federal prisons are NOT "pound-me-in-the-ass" joints (at least if you're too old and unattractive to attract the sexual predators) once again writes in to request more objectivity and less stupidity in referencing the Federal prison system.

As for being a "dirty lawbreaker", I am PROUD (if not too impressed) to have robbed two banks in a (wasted) effort to overthrow your suck-ass "dictatorship of the morons" society.

Have a nice day. And I hope you get to occupy a cell some time - you seem like the type to need it.

One also hopes Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld and the other war criminals also get the opportunity once the UN refuses to pass the US exemption from war crimes rider - which is now a total joke given the mass murders and torture in Iraq.

Again, have a nice day.

Re:Very Interesting

[NDPTAL85]

So you robbed two banks not for the money, but to make a political point, and you call OTHER people the morons? What exactly is so bad about our society that you had to have a nonconformist tantrum over anyway?

Do you not see the irony here?

And why do we need more objectivity concerning the prison system? Who cares about dirty law breakers?

Re:Very Interesting

[Master of Transhuman]

What exactly is so bad about our society that you had to have a nonconformist tantrum over anyway?

I don't think /. has the disk space to explain it to you and obviously based on the mere fact that you have to ask the question, you couldn't possibly comprehend the answer anyway.

The same applies to your comment on prisons.

Which is WHY you're a moron.

Re:Very Interesting

[NDPTAL85]

Ahhh yes the one of the oh so convienent "You are too stupid to comprehend the answer so I'm not going to state it" which really translates into "I don't really have a legitimate explanation for my actions/point of view because I'm just a rebel fucktard without a cause"

That sum it up correctly?

Re:Very Interesting

[Master of Transhuman]

Your description of yourself as a "fucktard without a cause" sort of sums it up better, I think.

Have a nice day, moron.

Re:Very Interesting

[NDPTAL85]

Now that you are a felon, do you enjoy all of the jobs you cannot be hired for because of your immature hippie like protest?

The two forms of Nanotechnology

[fullofangst]

Two common meanings when people talk about using nanotechnology.

1. Using "nano" materials in construction - the more common meaning when people talk about nanotechnology, is when materials manufactured on the small scale give interesting effects and properties used to make a product better in some form

2. Construction on the atomic scale - this is the (in my opinion) real killer-app of technology, where products, materials, literally anything ... is put together atom-by-atom by a process - whether it be tiny machines with gripper arms, or a use of biotechnology to connect atoms together - using plain, simple, raw materials. Think carbon, oxygen, hydrogen rather than wood, steel, concrete.

It's the number 2 usage of nanotechnology that I'm waiting for. If it becomes possible to construct a motor vehicle using the atom-by-atom build process, you can build cars, trucks, whatever for minimal costs. It will of course, be interesting to see how the companies will handle the logistics and pricing strategies ...

Primary goal of nanotechnology

[EmbeddedJanitor]

Generate funding opportunities.

Generate the next wave of dotbomb style IPOs.

What a waste of resources.

[node159]

Given all this development it would be nice if they could actually spend some time making renewable energy source powered cars.

I mean honestly, how hard is it to just rip out the power system of an existing design and replace it with an electric type design.

No one asked you to redesign the car into something so but ugly that no one would consider buying it.

But then again making electric cars would probably have a negative effect on most of the CEO's muti-billion-dollar portfolios.

Re:What a waste of resources.

[Anonymous Coward]

I mean honestly, how hard is it to just rip out the power system of an existing design and replace it with an electric type design.

... the inference being "not very hard". Well, if that is so, why don't you do it, tough guy? Sure, you'd become rich and powerful (and much more "attractive" to the ladies), but don't let that stop you.

Or maybe it really is difficult?

Re:What a waste of resources.

[node159]

If you provide the venture capital, sure.

nanotechnology could be used in tyres

[rapiddescent]

Nanotechnology could well have a serious use in car tyres. The big tyre companys, rather surprisingly, want tyres to last for the lifetime of the car. The commercial advantage in being 'first' is enough to desire this technology.

The idea is that the tiny wee nanotubes can make a FAR stronger tyre compound than todays rubber solutions. Of course it would also be lighter - fantastic for unsprung mass of the wheel/hub/brakes improving ride quality. Except, one problem is static discharge. Tyres are black because they have carbon in the rubber mix to allow static discharge through to the road - nanotubes wouldn't conduct!!! bzzzzzzzzzp!

rd

Re:Better maths

[ishmaelflood]

You did the hard bit, got the easy bit wrong. One mol of iron is .12 lbs, so with 3000 lbs of steel you'd get 3000/.12, 24000 mols of iron.

(Oh the big deal is that a mol is around 6*10^23 atoms or molecules)

Howvere I would point out that iron is probably only about half of the weight in a car. (it says 55% here http://www.designnews.com/index.asp?layout=article &articleid=CA151549&cfd=1)

Most of the other atoms are lighter, so this (10^28) is an underestimate of the number of assembly ops required.

On the other hand the grey goo enthusiasts would have you believe that the assembly process will be massively parallel.

No way

[ishmaelflood]

Are there vegetables in space?

Most hydrocarbons are in space.

Maybe, but you have your facts wrong

[ishmaelflood]

These are not American figures but I doubt they are much different over there. If we sell a car at the dealers for 30k then the factory will have paid about 15k for parts, and about 1k for assembly labor.

Development costs are about 1-2k, averaged over the entire build.

We'd typically invoice the dealer for 21k

He pays car tax and so on, that's about 20% of the sticker price, ie 6k. We also pay for some marketing.

Cars have got somewhat more expensive to build, simply because catalysts, engine management computers and airbags cost a lot, and general spec levels have increased. Your 1980s high volume derivative would not have had a/c, auto, power seats, power glass, CD player, airbags, ABS, as STANDARD. It would have had 14 inch tires, not 16s. It would have had 120 hp, not 200 (not that, that cost much). In the last 13 years the car I work on has increased in weight by 15%, that weight costs money.

Re:MOD PARENT DOWN, "1, FUNNY" IS TOO HIGH ALREADY

[Anonymous Coward]

i agree

Now Detrioit will control residual value of a car

[myalias]

I really expect them to control the usable lifetime of a car well before they actually improve cars for the consumer's benefit.

Or, at least figure out how to use "nanotechnology" to get more money out of us beleagured consumers.

Remember "crumple zones"? They were an after-market booster (at least for the low-end cars) disguised as a safety device. Even minor parking lot bumps would cause a crumple.

I'm left wondering how much Detroit is planning to charge for the "technology benefit" of nanotechnology!

And hot...

[leonbrooks]

...once the phosphorous got going, the nickel would act somewhat like magnesium. Is that a distress flare in your pants or are you just pleased to see me? (-:

...and what happens when you bend the sucker?

[leonbrooks]

Nanotech repair shop? Or just throw all of the bent bits away and replace them? Either way, not cheap. Hardened paint and all, you'd live in constant fear of vandals.

I, er, can't wait for the nanotech warez. Spray this on to lower your stock sedan... oops, the suspension fell off at speed. Spray this on to grow a bug-proof layer on your windscreen... oops, some asswipe played a BSOD joke with the recipe (you discover as you fly through the midge swarm and straight through the numberplate of the oncoming truck with your trendy new - and opaque - metallic-blue windscreen).

Or possibly bacteria...

[leonbrooks]

Here's a fascinating read.

Given nanotech, surely...

[leonbrooks]

...you could at least do stuff like turn every surface into a solar panel to help a hybrid car along, however, suspect nanotech might be more useful for reducing the embodied energy in a vehicle than for revolutionising the propulsion system.

WRT you tagline, been there, done that.

Maybe now...

[localman]

Maybe now they'll be able to make cars that don't suck ass.

Sorry, I'm not trying to troll here, but it's amazing they're doing advanced research like this and still every American made car (read: GM, Ford, Chrysler) I use feels like they haven't learned the basics of design or quality control.

Just this past weekend I rented a Chevy Impala from Alamo. The car was brand new, with less than 100 miiles on it. Aside from the interior detailing looking and feeling cheaper than any similarly priced Asian or European car, it actually had a number of faults, including a trunk that wouldn't stay shut unless you slammed it, and a terribly laggy response from the throttle.

And I've tried higher end American made cars as well. It just seems like buck for buck you can get a better machine from Europe or Asia.

Nanotech or no, I would like to see the American car manufacturers clean up their act. I love my country, but I am frankly embarassed that we're still trailing a full two decades after the Japanese schooled us in automobile manufacturing.

Cheers.

Re:Maybe now...

[geekoid]

The Japanese methos of Aoutomobile building failed. They didn't have any magic trick except forsight. They produced economical cars when they where needed, while American cars where still the size of boats.
That gave Japanese manufactures a huge amount of sales. as it turns out, they are adapting a more 'American' style. Less window seats, actually letting people go. Some Japanese companies have hired American executives who will fire people, and judge someone on productivity, not who is working them selves to death.

Personally, I find the corvette to be the most kick as car, and a far better performer then some sports cars the cost twice as much.
I have also founf to new Cads to be pretty spiffy.

Re:Maybe now...

[localman]

Sure, maybe "The Japanese" didn't do anything... but Toyota and Honda are still making more tightly designed and QC'd cars than pretty much anything over here... no?

ALL the parts can be improved?

[Anonymous Coward]

In fact, all parts in a car can be improved by using nanotechnology, according to the article.

Hmmm... I really hope nanotechnology can improve the driver, but I really doubt it.

Nano-Particle Clearcoat on current Mercedes Benz's

[onpaws]

New Mercedes Benz, some since 2003, have nano-particle clearcoat that better resists scratching of small particles. This clear lacquer supposedly provides 3 fold better scratch resistance in situations such as mechanical car washes.

check it out here:
http://www.germancarfans.com/news.cfm/newsi d/20312 03.001/mercedes/1.html

Re: Downloading OpenSource cars

[some guy I know]

You'll be able to do it, it just won't be legal! (Hence why you have to download the plans off P2P.)

I'd be more worried about embedded viruses, etc., in the car plans.
Or, even worse, automobile DRM.

Re: Freedom from excessive patents and copyrights

[some guy I know]

If "harmonization" succeeds, there will be no such place

Maybe not on this planet.
Yet another reason to colonize Mars and other parts of space.

Nano is a sexy buzzword.

[phyzik]

I wonder if we put Nano- in front of "hybrid"... nanohybrid... or nuclear... nanonuclear

if this would make the auto industry execs go for cheaper energy... could be a start.

bouncing makes it worse

[pwarf]

Bouncing in a collision is BAD. The total impulse to a car in the collision is increased by whatever speed it gains in the opposite direction from what it was originally going. (If the car was going 100 mph north and bounces such that it is going 50 mph south, you've increased the impulse to the car and the passengers by 50%.) Also, the time of impact probably decreased considerably, too. This makes the peak force much higher with bouncing than without. You want cars to crumple gradually, extending the time of impact as much as possible and the force of impact over as much time as possible, leaving the cars stuck together like two lumps of clay colliding (with preserved passenger cages keeping the people from being crushed). Superstrong is good for the passenger cage, but not good for safety for all of the car.

By the way, neither the Brits nor us Yanks spell aluminum/aluminium "alumimin."

Another poster has already noted that diamond has other downsides as a building material for many applications. There is no one such thing. What you want is customizable properties.

Re:bouncing makes it worse

[colinrichardday]

You also want the force to be spread over as much area as possible, to minimize the pressure at any one point.

unfortunatly,

[geekoid]

with nano technology, you could change the design.
Also, when everybody relizes they can be driving a really nice car for free, a lot more people will get involved and see that the law is changes.

Grey goo?

[ChronoWiz]

So instead of the earth being turned into grey goo, it'll get turned into one giant Ford Falcon instead?

Nano cars

[ChronoWiz]

I think they are shooting themselves in the foot here; I don't see how anyone would buy a car that small. Maybe for novelty value but it would seve no practical use.

LMAO!

[Anonymous Coward]

Truely... Classic!!!

Fucking hilarious!

You gotta love the nutcase morons. They make me laugh.

And buddy, vote and/or start a political action group. You don't have rob a fucking bank.

And rent Office Space some time.

It's just technology, dude

[BishopBerkeley]

This is not nanotechnology. It's conventional technology. GM is still making materials that are made in reactors in batches that yield anywhere from pounds to tons of material. The only thing that is new here is that the reactions are guided by some systematic knowledge of how the molecular interactions improve the characteristics of the bulk.

Nanotechnology used to designate a field of enquiry concerned primarily with manipulating atoms and molecules. This is clearly not the case with what's reported here. The problem is that the definition of nanotechnology has been broadened so much that the term is almost meaningless. In fact, some investors have encouraged Eliot Spitzer to sue several financial corporations because the nanotechnology funds that these companies claim to manage contain no nanotechnology companies.

Nanocomposite is an accurate term because these new materials are engineered with the fundamental molecular interactions in mind. But this is not nanotechnology because the materials are not made one atom at a time!! They are still made pounds or tons at a time. Even the nanoparticles that are supposed to improve catalytic converters are made in bulk. They are incredibly small particles, but they are made in chemical reactions that involve anywhere from grams to pounds of material. The final converter is not assembled one nanoparticle at a time, either. What happens is that instead of depositing a layer of platinum either electrochemically or evaporatively, a layer of nanoparticles is deposited by passing a solution of the nanoparticles over the substrate.

To get an appreciation for what it means to manipulate molecules, try Mark Reed's or Paul McEuen's work.

Steamed Atoms!

[newpath4com]

If they can conceive of that they should like my new engine. It will use lots less atoms. www.newpath4.com/steamedheatengine.html Surely it isn't >>> THAT HARD TO UNDERSTAND. Compressed (liquified) nitrogen droplets injected into a cylinder already WANT TO EXPAND ANYWAY, so having the steam there forces a really major conflict. The supercold nitrogen forces the steam moisture to instantly collapse, drawing the expanding nitrogen into a superspeed expansion condition by engaging the Power of an instant Vacuum. It is an explosion without combustion or combustion by-products. Gee whiz Wally, it isn't rocket science! It's a true 100% symbiotic catalyst that works both sides of the street. Is that so hard to understand? hehehe No gasoline, no diesel, no crude oil, no burnt hydrocarbons, and NO DRILLING NEEDED IN ANWAR !!! Several days ago I was attempting to cook again. Dropped a few droplets of water into a hot greased skillet and the STUFF EXPLODED ALL OVER THE PLACE. This engine does the opposite -Steam to Water! What's so hard to understand about this kind of Power? It's natural. Are we now afraid of natural? Do we prefer nuclear pollution wastes being trucked all over, buried in someone else's back yard? Don't know how to explain it any better than this. ABC News is still running articles since 1997 about the nitrogen powered LN2000 car built & run by Dr. Hertzberg. My solution is just a baby step beyond Hertzberg, a step he & his team missed seeing is all, and a completed LN2000. http://www.newpath4.com/anwar_drillitfastdrillitgo odforgetaboutthneighborhood_anwar.htm

Engines of Creation

[murat]

You can read Eric Drexler's Engines of Creation on the matter. Quite interesting read.

Just who thinks this will lower the cars price?

[DirkDaring]

"But that's only the beginning. Your next car could have a nanocoated windshield that resists cracking and breaking, a lighter body that provides better crash protection or even cup holders that keep your coffee steaming in the morning and your Coke cold on the ride home."

And the article says this will also make the cars cheaper? What planet do they live on? The money grubbing companies will hark these as premium features and charge up the yin yang. We went from rusting metal cars of the 60s and 70s to composite and plastics of the 90s - are cars super cheap and 'closer to your budget?'. I don't think so.

Yep all of them.

[Dagonkin]

Hmmm...

• Eyesight improved with artificial lenses and wide spectrum light sensors.
• Continual monitoring of body chemestry to make sure the driver doesn't die or pass out unexpectedly.
• Armour plating to reduce the risk of death or injury in accidents.

There are certainly others, and i don't know how many of these are feasible but as this is just off the cuff stuff i cannot be bothered to think about them too much.

Of course the best way to improve the driver in the majority of cases is to replace the fucker with a computer(or in many cases a crack addled monkey but I digress).

In summation - doubt all you like but i will be strongly betting the other way.

but what does it all [nano-XXX] mean?

[Anonymous Coward]

it's not that spectacular.

[the following is a true example]

1. take a bit of clay (particles are ~10nm thick plates)
2. add it to your momomer
3. stir liberally ("exfoliation" of "nano-particles")
4. add catalyst
5. extrude your fancy new "nano-composite"

&c.

now, don't get me wrong -- this actually does improve [some of] the properties of the polymer (modulus, barrier properties, &c.), but it's not building a part atom-by-atom. "nano[XXX]" has become a buzzword.