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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."
At what point then could we just download 'plans' off P2P and just 'grow' our own car, house, dinner....
---- Booth was a patriot ----
Good technology, just too much hype.
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.
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
G-Force music visualization
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.
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.
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.
Information: "I want to be anthropomorphized"
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.
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.
Vote for new mod!!! Score:-2,Imbecile
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I hope I didn't brain my damage.
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.
Presently here, but not there.
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.
Ok, I'll bite. How will the unions block this new technology, like they have so many others?
... 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
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.
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
God, root, what is the difference?
Future Wiki -- If you don't think about the future, you cannot have one.
Two common meanings when people talk about using nanotechnology.
... 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.
...
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
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
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.
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.
i d/20312 03.001/mercedes/1.html
check it out here:
http://www.germancarfans.com/news.cfm/news