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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."
Excuse my ignorace, but surely nanotechnology would produce safer, lighter and cheaper (depending on the meaning.. I'm assuming consumer-side cost) everything?
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".
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
...I, for one, welcome our -
ahh, scrub it. People will still find a way to drive like idiots, even in super nanotechnologically advanced cars.
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.
+++ ATH0 +++
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.
Another movie quote that is ontopic. "Plastics! Plastics! Plastics!" from 'The Graduate'. It's about time to start screaming "Nanotech! Nanotech! Nanotech!"
Zoeith
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.
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.
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.
I thought that nano-tech products from cabon are super strong. This will turn every car into a bulldozer. How will this be safer?
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.
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).
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?
... y Dios vio que Linux era bueno... Genesis 99.666
??? 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.
If a job's not worth doing, it's not worth doing right.
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.
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.
At what point then could we just download 'plans' off P2P and just 'grow' our own car, house, dinner....
... 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.
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
The Future of Human Evolution: Autonomy
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.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
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.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
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!
But will it improve quality in American cars?
probably not. Cars will be as disposible as Cell phones in the future.