Vehicles of Tomorrow?

Human Factors Guy writes "We've seen here before car manufacturers putting more and more technology into cars, but what are the cars of tomorrow going to look like? Driver monitoring through head and eye tracking (which Volvo is already implementing), Adaptive Cruise Control systems, maybe even pedestrian recognition systems. With cars becoming more like semi-intelligent robots every year, what do /. readers think will and won't make it?"

Comments

My #1 Wish for Tomorrow's Cars:

[H0NGK0NGPH00EY]

I just wish that they will be powered by something, anything other than the internal combustion engine. It's time for something new. But then again, maybe you already knew that I feel that way.

Re:My #1 Wish for Tomorrow's Cars:

[Bohnanza]

The reason the internal combustion engine has stuck around so long is that it works GREAT.

Internal combustion engines are powerful and efficient. The basic concept has been refined so much that a car powered by one can usually run over 100000 miles with only occasional routine maintainence.

My point is not that there are no problems with the Internal Combustion Engine, only that it will be very difficult to find a replacement that is actually superior.

Just one small request

[nharmon]

If I could make one small request to the car making industry, it would be: Please do not dumb down driving.

Driving is a learned exercise that requires experience to become good at. The introduction of things like traction control, and anti-lock braking systems have caused much of the driving public to ignore time-tested techniques for maintaining control over a vehicle.

Case in point: A cousin of mine was recently endowed with a driver's license. However, nobody thought it necessary to tell him how in certain vehicles under certain conditions, pumping the brake pedal is necessary to stop. They assumed anything he drove would have anti-lock brakes.

Things like smart cruise control are going to make us become complacent about things like safe following distances and paying attention to the conditions ahead of the vehicle you are following.

Until we're ready to turn over 100% control to the robots (which shouldn't happen for a very long time), please make vehicles safer by encouraging driver experience, not by doing things for him/her.

Re:Just one small request

[tie_guy_matt]

Maybe the problem isn't drivers who are dumbed down, maybe the problem is drivers that are too aggressive. I had a car with ABS for several years and the only time the ABS would ever turn on was in the snow and ice. When I drive cars without ABS I really almost never need to pump the brakes because I almost never have to slam the brakes hard enough to get them to lock.

The trick is to leave plenty of room between you and the car in front of you. It might also help if you don't drive that much faster than the posted speed limit. In this way if the car in front of you suddenly stops you have plenty of time to react and to stop the car. I realize that this may burn a few precious seconds from your life but in the end it may allow you to live longer.

I am just saying that in normal driving (even in rush hour traffic) if you have to slam the brakes hard enough to get them to lock more than a few time per year maybe the problem isn't with the car, or with other drivers, maybe the problem is with you!

Better Instruments.

[mbrett]

I wish better instrumentation became ubiquitous. Every car should have an instantaneous and average MPG indication, tire pressure indicators (and self-inflators), oil pressure, and so forth. This would help improve fuel efficiency for the country, and help reduce fuel and maintenance costs for individuals.

Re:Community Cars

[Canthros]

Thanks, but no thanks.

I've seen how people treat public parks, public restrooms, public sidewalks, and public transportation.

What would happen here is that you walk up to the car, hear the door unlock so you can get in, and find out that somebody broke the rearview trying to manually adjust a little too far. The seat doesn't adjust, because someone else poured coffee into the seat and shorted out the servos. The radio display is cracked, and has chewing gum stuck to it. But you won't need to adjust the radio, but the someone has done you the favor of blowing out the cones on the car speakers. You might have one side mirror, but the climate control will be stuck on 'heat'. In July.

Did I mention that the seat is sticky because the nimrod who spilled their drink into it didn't clean it up? Or that someone else has been scrawling dirty limericks on the dashboards, and phone numbers with exhortations of a 'good time' to be had? But be glad you didn't get the Com-U-Car next to it, because you saw the guy get out, and it looked like he'd thrown up in the passenger seat.

All things considered, I think I'd rather the bus, taxi, or just drive my own. At least my own car doesn't have any odors I don't already know about.

Re:Future is here now...

[cmoney]

I concur! I've got an FX35 as well and it's been a sleeper feature for me. I got the Tech package only for the nav system and DVD entertainment system and it turns out the Adaptive Cruise is the one I use the most now!

It's especially useful during my commute where I'll end up stuck behind some grandma on a 3 mile road who can't keep a constant speed. I just set it on smart cruise and I find I get less aggravated at following someone who can't keep a constant 40mph.

And while it won't brake to a stop, it will hit the brakes pretty hard and take you down to around 25mph. All the while it's beeping like crazy and you should have enough time to react since it's already started the braking process for you.

Re:Nothing new

[Anonymous Coward]

Rotary engines, over head cams, fuel injection, super/turbo chargers, active suspensions, disc brakes, and of course electronic stability packages too. But I want the vehicle of tomorrow to be like a f1 car of the early nineties, high rev v-10, traction control, active suspension, ABS, slick tires.

Re:What's coming

[infinite9]

Proper starting

This will never happen for the same reason that proper corrosion protection will never happen. There has to be a reason to make you buy a new car when you get to the end of your five year loan.

Re:Tomorrow's Cars:

[Beardo the Bearded]

Where the hell do you live? What kind of work do you do? 30 miles is a long bike ride. I found that about 20km is as much as I want to do on the way to work. (That takes about an hour.) I guess I'm lucky. I found work about a mile way from home and I live five minutes (walking) from a grocery store. When I move at the end of the month, I'm about 2.5 miles away from work and spitting distance to a grocery store.

My view's not optimistic; it's pragmatistic. It requires people to make serious sacrifices and lifestyle changes. It means a redesign of communities so you can live near your work and shop where you live. I don't think people are ready for the changes or willing to make the sacrifices required.

On wanting comfort

[Masker]

Hey, when comfort can be had without:

1) Destroying the ecosystem
2) Unnecessarily causing huge wars over scarce resources
3) Setting up an economy based on a non-renewable resource which is doomed to crash

then I'm all in favor of it. However, using fossil fuels to go everywhere is a short-sighted solution to an problem that can be solved without causing any of the problems like the three above.

So, yeah. If you don't wanna occasionally ride a bike or pedal a car, even though it's better for everyone on the entire planet, then you are lazy as well as selfish.

Remove the driver.

[Moderation abuser]

It's the next logical step. Then you have a car which can drive itself...

But if cars can drive themselves it doesn't really make sense that everyone has one, after all, it isn't really a good use of resources to have a car or three sitting idle in office/mall garages for an individual when it can be off transporting your children to school and your wife to the shops or her own job. There's no longer a need for a 3 car family, you simply call the car and tell it when and where you want to be picked up. Why spend 80 grand on multiple cars when you can spend 30 grand on one car and the other 50 on something more enjoyable?

But wait, we can take this a step further, why limit it just to private transport, the same applies to public transport. Why own a car at all when you can simply call an autotaxi and it'll pick you up when and where you want and deliver you when and where you want. Instead of investing 80 grand in hardware which depreciates by 30% the second it rolls out of the showroom and then continues to cost you 2 grand a year in fuel, servicing and insurance. Simply call an autocab.

Course there's still the problem of traffic, just because most of the cars are driven automatically doesn't reduce the numbers on the road and there are still going to be normally driven cars on the road so you're still going to get stuck in traffic jams during rush hour. You could take the public autotaxis off the road and put them on separate raised "roads" which allows full computer control and which bypass the normal roads, thereby bypassing the traffic jams.

e.g.
http://www.skywebexpress.com/

and
http://www.atsltd.co.uk/

and
http://www.yorkprt.com/

and
http://www.austrans.com/

The concept is called Personal Rapid Transit and is basically a packet based mass transit system. It's perfectly possible to implement today.

More info:
http://faculty.washington.edu/~jbs/itrans/P RT/
http://www.cprt.org/
http://www.acprt.org/