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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?"
Unless there's some really radical new method of powering vehicals, I just don't see anything really new in the future for vehicals. We've had over 100 years of powered vehicals and they all pretty much follow the same pattern 4 wheels and some doors, slathering on new features or electronic controls is just a new way of marketing the same design over and over. Also speaking as a pedestrian I don't think "pedestrian recognition systems" is a good idea.
"It's so convenient to have a system where everyone is a criminal" - A. Hitler
has been around for over 100 years- it's called a bicycle
but they keep coming up with great improvements on the awesome machine.
Creationists are a lot like zombies. Slow, but powerful and numerous. And they all want to eat our brains.
I'm still waiting for foam to fill the car when you have an accident... Sandra is hot.
Improbablity drive powered space ships!
I like muppets.
This is for targeting...right?
Jon Bardin
Is that they'd get the turn signal thing fixed. Seems like 80% of the vehicles here in Seattle don't even have them.
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.
Do not read this sig.
I have used this a lot while driving on long trips and I totally love it. It takes a bit getting used to letting the car do the braking, but once you get used to it, you wonder what you ever did without it before.
So to answer your question, what will cars of the future look like, I would say the Infiniti FX35 is a good start...
D.O.U.O.S.V.A.V.V.M.
Helicopter
Blaze a trail to the New World
I always thought being able to drive one of these landmaster vehicles would be cool.
Vintage computer adverts: http://www.vintageadbrowser.com/computers-and-software-ads
Automated freeway cruising.
Honestly, the technology exists right now to automatically drive my car along a freeway. I could probably set this up today with a few thousand dollars in hardware and a lot of code. Self-driving car projects are incredibly expensive and not yet fully reliable because they try to use them in the city. This is an extremely difficult environment to deal with.
But a freeway is perfect. All you need are cameras to watch the lines on the road, radar (or more cameras) to watch for other vehicles and objects in the road, servos to actuate the car's controls and a computer to run it all. I've actually thought about designing such a system for my RV, since long trips in that thing are very taxing. I'd still have to sit in the driver's seat and keep an eye on things, but that's infinitely less stressful than the driving itself.
But this will never be a mainstream product in our society. Too many lawyers and other disinterested parties (such as insurance companies). We'll have flying cars before you can go down and buy a self-freeway-driving module.
Last summer, I saw a guy talking on a cel phone while riding a bike. What call is so bloody important that you can't pull over or take it later?
-paul
Pistol caliber is like religion: everyone has their favourite, and theirs is the only right choice.
I want the prices to go down. I want everything that is in a Cadillac now to be in a KIA price in the future. Maybe some new stuff in Cadillacs, but the stuff that is in the present I want a lot cheaper in the future. I think it will work that way.
I for one want to welcome our new semi-intelligent robot car overlords...
(still beats the less than intelligent polititans..
once we're past the gimmicks we should see some improvements, but come on, that auto park option that Toyota presented last year feels like the latest update to curb feelers! I see cameras on the back bumper (already in some fancy cars) and cameras instead of rearview mirrors to be the most important; anything that doesn't force you to look away from the road will help.
CB$#%^&*!
free ipod and free gmail!
i dont know about the future, but what I would like to see is vehicle controls (like cruise control and computer dvd games crap) regress.
;)
My mother just bought a new dodge durango, and it has way more features than she'll ever need. advanced engine control systems and emissions control systems are great, but i have too much crap in my car, and it's a 92 civic.
all of that stuff is just leading to driver distraction, and adding more stuff like cellphone speaker things just makes it worse. sure you dont need your hands when using a "handsfree" device, but you still need to look at the phone to see who's calling, answer the phone, and set up the device (volume, etc.). if it was available, i would choose a vehicle with a simplified, functional interface so i can concentrate on driving. one interface that would be very functional without being unnecessarily distracting would be voice control with either a HUD or voice feedback (with a customizable voiceprint, of course
Need a ride? Walk to the closest community car and touch the handle. The door opens, seats/mirrors/radio/temperature adjusts to your preferences and away you go.
At your destination, you get out of the car. Your account is debited the appropriate fare and you... just... walk... away (and into the next car you need).
idiot next to me who's eating cereal and reading the paper while driving ... all those types of folks can do that safely if we get robot cars!
They are already in robot cars. You need to upgrade.
Free XBox, PS2
I can tell you one they won't do: they won't ever do anything to keep you from getting a speeding ticket. I.e., wtf does my car go faster than any legal speed limit in any state of the union? Do they imagine a time when I need to go that fast? If so, where are the laws that would allow for speeding? Why do cops never hide waiting for speeders going uphill?
/rant
Insurance companies, cities, states, local governments are running a racket with speeding tickets, and I can promise you this will never change no matter what technological advances there are. They're always going to allow drivers to break it and they're always going to profit from it....
Ok, ok, yes, I recently got a speeding ticket....
"All great things are simple & expressed in a single word: freedom, justice, honor, duty, mercy, hope." --Churchill
I don't know how much the car itself will change from a design sense (if that's what is meant by 'look like'), and I'm not sure how much the act of driving a car will change.
It does seem that there is a trend toward all these 'driver aid' tools, like GPS systems and ubiquitous Big Brother-like organizations that can control your car and track you. I do think, therefore, that the act of driving is going to be considerably less free, as an experience.
The real change will be under the hood, as Peak Oil passes, and the petroleum supplies begin to dwindle rather than grow (there are currently zero large oil fields set to come online in 2008, and only one in 2007, so it might be here faster than we think). I'd expect, therefore, that cars will become a luxury commodity once again, as the cost of powering them starts to become prohibitively expensive.
As this happens, there will likely be another trend in the 2010s similar to the 1980s, when there was a premium placed on economy, rather than size, because if the price of gas balloons in the 2010s to something more like $5-$7 a gallon, as some in the oil industry predict, it means saving a 10 MPG increase in economy can make a dig difference to the TCO of an automobile.
gameDB
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.
I think the largest obstacle to getting more advanced daily transportation (flying cars, etc) is the *human* element.
We need to take *out* the human element in *most* of the flight controls and make it so that a person gets in the vehicle, says where they want to go, or types it in, and the vehicle does pretty much everything else.
We need to build these flying or driving cars to be so smart that in the event of an emergency, they have built-in, completely separate, autonomous controls to shut or bring the vehicle to a *safe* stop. Barring a completely unforeseen disaster, the vehicles would almost maintain themselves, their electronics and controls as well as their operation.
Much like computers today, they do what we *tell* them to do, right or wrong. But that's the way I see it, humans (on average and without special training) aren't likely to handle the complexities of stable, controlled flight without hurting themselves or those around them either in training or in the daily routine of getting in a flying car and going to work.
What I'd like to see in the vehicles of tomorrow are better drivers.
Speak truth to power.
Even horses pollute (ie poop on the road & farts), so I don't see why a vehicle could be held to a similar standard. Unless it's a female horse, because as we all know, girls don't fart.
Bill Clinton: Pimp we can believe in. - The Shirt!!!
It's what I drive. FYI it lacks the following:
Anti-lock brakes
Air bags
Crumple zones
emmissions controls (well, beyond a o2 sensor anyway)
5 mph bumpers
fuel injection
What it DOES have is the following:
300 RWD HP
Manual Transmission
Limited Production
Triple Weber Carbs (a conversion from the original dual Strombergs)
Straight pipes
LOTS of sex appeal
IMO this is what the world needs more of, loud fast *sexy* cars. Down with Toyota Echos!
(note, for those of you who do not get this post, I do drive this car in reality, but the post is for humor)
So rise up, all ye lost ones, as one, we'll claw the clouds.
I have to ask you why flying cars would be good? It requires a lot of energy to lift, say 3000 KG, 500 m in the air. If this would be done millions of times each day, it seemes as a huge energy waste.
I do not believe in flying cars. Heavily congested areas could be helped by computerized driving, where computers synchronious drive the cars in high speeds and verry close to each other.
I believe there was some example on this but on rail. So ie, there would be a "monorail"-network thruought the city, you drive your car yourself (if you want), until you reach any of the on/off ramps to the monorail net. On which your car gets controlled by a decentrialized computer network, or something like that, and each vechile is driven in huge speeds extremely close to each other (say a few hundred kph).
Can't you even manage a drive-by shooting without an aimbot?
Proper starting. Automobile engines are started all wrong. Cranking, compression, fuel, and spark all start at the same time. Oil pressure comes later. As a result, half of engine wear occurs during start. Many big engines (locomotives, marine diesels, some big tractors) are started properly - oil pressure first, then a few turns with compression released to oil up the cylinders, and finally combustion starts. Wear is much reduced.
Once 42-volt electrical systems become popular, and valve control goes electrical, we may see electric booster oil pumps and valve actuators. Once you can crank the engine with compression off and oil pressure up, you need a much smaller starting motor. The starting motor and alternator can then be combined.
A lot of progress has been made on this over the past couple of decades, and we have a couple more decades of progress to go before it's safe enough to use in the real world, but as soon as an autopilot is invented that drives better than the average human (especially under emergency conditions), there will be a large insurance break for using it. Shortly after this it will become the norm.
My money's on methanol or methane, as both can be stored as liquids (methanol more easily), and methanol can be burned in a conventional engine with a bit of tweaking (making the switch from internal combustion to electric engines much more graceful). You even have interesting hybrid options available, like an electric car with a gas turbine burning methane (or propane, which you can fill up with at gas stations now, making the switchover to _methane_ easier). Methane and methanol can both be synthesized directly from water, CO2, and electricity, meaning that they're suitable fuels for an electric vehicle infrastructure after fossil fuel supplies of them run out (and after we need more than we can get by reclaiming biological waste). We have lots of experience with moving hydrocarbon gases and volatile liquids around, so the transport infrastructure's already here. Methane and methanol have nowhere *near* the storage and handling problems hydrogen has.
It'll be interesting to see when the first point happens (I think it's pretty inevitable that it's going to). A methanol (or a methane) fuel system might or might not happen. If compact energy storage and vehicle efficiency get good enough, a direct electric scheme might work. However, most non-chemical methods of electric storage don't have high enough theoretical densities (even with nanotube-reinforced flywheels and induction rings), and a purely electric vehicle infrastructure is a lot harder to phase in gracefully. Alternatively, we might just keep improving our ability to harvest lower-grade and less-accessible hydrocarbon deposits, and push the fossil fuel problem far enough off that by the time the crunch hits, technology will be different enough to drastically alter the space of possible solutions.
Definitely interesting times ahead.
Why would you need to have pedestrian recognition systems?
Unfortunately, emission standards are only going to get more strict in the coming years so unless the clean air technologies in diesels can keep up, we may not see many options on the market.
Automatic point assignment.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Here's an idea I had a couple years ago:
Put a liquid crystal display coating over the windshield that can selectively darken specific parts of it. Have a sensor outside the car facing forward that notes any super bright light sources like the sun or headlights at night. It also tracks where the face of the driver is and, if it determines a glare situation is occurring, does the geometry to find out exactly what part of the windshield is between their head and the light source and applies a tint at that one place. The person could still see that the light source was present, but it wouldn't blind them.
Try driving west in the evening as the sun is setting, and something like this starts to look pretty good.
Even larger cupholders.
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.
-Better Fuel Economy
-Better sound systems
-Headlights that are bright but dont blind oncoming traffic
-Can run past 100,000 miles without major repairs
-Less rusting, even on newer cars
-And finally, the ability to work on them without the need for 3 different diagnostic machines that cost 10 grand each!
How well do the lane sensors work when you throw some snow on the road?
Dogma - "let's just say we'd like to avoid any empirical entanglements."
I wish I could set my volume control to a certain level and then it would adjust if for example I rolled my window down, or had the AC fan on high.
The Honda Goldwing (motorcycle) has it and I always wondered why cars never did.
...it's the twenty-first century and I still don't have my flying car and I still don't have my rocket belt.
Why bother asking what the vehicles of the future are going to look like; we still don't have the vehicles of yesterday's future!
And done so many times that people aren't even just beating a dead horse. Rather, the horse rotted away ages ago and they're now just beating the idea and ghost of a dead horse.
The Glass is Too Big: My Take on Things
I'm not anti-car, but decided long ago to live near where I work, and haven't owned a car in ten years.
I'm now $60K US richer than I would have been, calmer, and twenty-five pounds lighter.
That's advanced enough for me...
You can't talk about Wikipedia's flaws on Wikipedia
The automobiles of the future will look like trees, because, based on how little road building is taking place, they won't be able to move anyway. So they may as well look good sitting there.
Unless it has zero pollution and runs without petrol I don't see anything innovative.
Zero pollution and no petrol is not very realistic.
What I would like to see is a car that can "scale". By this, I mean that a car for 99.9% of its use is to transport one person and little to no extra payload. It would be cool to have a car that was about the size of an Insight, but it could expand with an extra motor and space to the size of an SUV. Yeah, I said SUV on slashdot in a positive context, so mod me down now.
It would be cool if this car had expandable, temporary compartments for payloads like groceries, and maybe even come with something like one of those roof luggage carriers.
It kills me that so many people buy a big car to drive back and forth to work so that they can have the big car the couple of times a year that they need it. I fall into this category, but my car is 13 years old, has over 180,000 miles on it, and it was free, and it works.
because my double decker 3-foot erector set wing just isn't big enough sometimes
add to that list:
brighter neon
louder steros
larger exhaust pipes
louder exhaust pipes
a wider range of stickers
bigger uglier rims... spinners and lights were a good start, but how about embedded video screens, or ultrashiny chrome that blinds other drivers?
more places to stick useless video screens (see above)
brighter, more obnoxious colors
larger body kits, with more of that panel-gap appearance that looks so good
did i miss anything?
May you be touched by His Noodly Appendage. RAmen.
The biggest change I can imagine is when drive-by-wire will be fully implemented. This means among other things that steering will no longer will be done mechanically. This will change the interior or cars dramatically, see here and here.
I thought for a second about how cool it would be to have my car turn wherever I looked, until I realized that the girls who like to jog around where I live would make this a dangerous technology.
Synergy is your friend
Every driver gets a moron gun. When someone cuts you off, is speeding like a maniac etc. you "tag" their car with a moron bullet. If they get enough of them it's a ticket...
Introducing Microsoft Vacuum 1.0 The first Microsoft product that doesn't suck.
Actually, we already tried disposable cars, and they failed miserably. Anybody else remember these cars?
The power to split hydrogen from water or charge batteries has to come from somewhere. Producing hydrogen from natural gas creates by-products. Generating electric power from nuclear reactions produces radioactive waste. Electric plug-in cars get their power from the grid, which in some states is the same as using a coal-powered car, in terms of pollution
You have to weigh the bad against the good. Hybrid engines are the best bet with current technology. They can run fuel-powered engines in their cleanest mode. Combustion researchers say there is still room to improve in the area of reduced emissions, now that hybrid engines don't rev the combustion engine to accelerate (it's drawn from the battery). Nuclear power creates no atmospheric pollustion whatsoever, but what to do with the waste? (Lots of room for improvement there, as well) How about putting energy production into space? The biggest nuclear reactor of all is out there, producing all kinds of radiation (the big yellow thing in the sky). Too bad solar energy requires so much surface area.
So just saying "I don't want a car that makes pollution" is a more complicated question than it may seem.
The private automobile and the infrastructure needed to support house and maintain it is already a climax technology and all the new gadgets and alternative energy sources aren't going to make any difference in the long run. The true future of transportation is feet. This of course is after the collapse of western civilization which is already groaning under it's own weight.... but seriously... The near(er) future in urban areas should be mass transport not individual automobiles. In a densly populated area such as a city where most of the vehicles are individual automobiles are an absurdity. Do a small spacial dislocation exercise and hover over a large city, say Houston, or L.A. or Paris or Hamburg and look down at the roads and vehicles and the absurd waste of materials time and energy and on and on. Mostly for people to move around for very little reason while moving tons of material around, using huge amounts of energy to move one or two people and and an occasional bag of groceries. And then remember that the raw material for fueling and more importantly building the vehicles is in increasingly short supply. Now you should realize that all the new tech being tucked into automobiles is there for marketing and for nothing else. A sane society would be designing transportation systems not building more of the same krap with extra toy value. So go and buy your way cool toys but don't fool yourself into thinking that is anything more than that. Any utility gained by your new features is of marginal significance. You may as well by spinny rims...
It's probably worth mentioning again, as we discuss smarter cars, that insurance companies are declaring a car "totaled" more quickly these days, even with relatively minor structural damage, because the cost of replacing all of these electronic gizmos after an accident is adding signficantly to the typical repair cost. Reference, for example: http://csmonitor.com/2004/0419/p13s02-wmgn.html
So as we contemplate even smarter cars with even more electronics installed, even relatively minor accidents might result in a car being declared "totaled" and thereby increase insurance costs overall. Ironically, it may not be the purchase cost of the electronics that eventually constrains the smart-car market (particularly since smart electronics seem to get cheaper all the time), but rather the insurance considerations instead!
I hope that after I die the one word people use to describe me is "resurrected."
"My automatic breaking system failed"
"My distance detention system was faulty"
"The Xtreme Cruise Control X-5000 messed up"
While you might be able to proove/disprove such claims, I can see the suits now. I also worry about people thinking it's ok to be LESS attentive (or worse, sober) because their car will protect them, and other drivers, from their own poor driving.
I'm very much a believer that you should be doing one thing while you in a car - driving; which means 2 hands on the wheel unless you're shifting, and watching the road and other cars - NOT having a business meeting on a cell phone, combing your hair, having dinner, watching a DVD, etc. etc. Cars a big, powerful, fast machines that require full operator attention, at all times, period. [Ok, unless parked, while you're in the backseat with your gf/bf]
I think too many gadgets of convienence will only make driving less safe as drivers become lazier and generally less attentive, if not less skilled.
'The unexamined life is not worth living' - Socrates
This kind of echoes one of the previous posts about powering with anything but the internal combustion engine: Some years back, there was a company called Rosen Motors that developed a powertrain that was all-electric, with the juice coming from a jet turbine under the hood. To start the thing, there was a flywheel that stored a significant enough electrical charge to start the turbine in the morning. The flywheel would spin, unattended for a couple days before needing to be spun back up again. The idea was cool but never took off. I have a feeling that it was because when you reduce a powertrain to four moving parts, you pretty much put mechanics and dealer service shops out of business. Nevermind that the system got something like 120 MPG.
I happened to overhear a guy trying to use his OnStar system when his nice custom diesel truck wouldn't start. It sucked. The voice recognition system they've got is a real stinker. This could be improved a lot.
I saw something on television (like SciAmFrontiers or something like that) about a capsule car idea. The gist of it was that you had a little cube-ish looking car with a steering wheel and a seat and kind of a lounge area in back. You'd drive to a local "station" where your capsule would be taken over by wireless command to fit into a pod of similar capsules and then the whole pod would leave at the same time, keeping about 2-3 feet between capsules, kind of like a convoy. The pod would end up at the destination station where you'd take over driving from there. The idea was to free the driver from the long, middle, highway portion of a lengthy commute and allow the person to do other stuff for that time. It's a little like the cars in Minority Report.
Have cars like the ones in Minority Report!
.. pa-ra-bo-la, pa-ra-bo-la, 2 pi R, 2 pi R, where's your latus rectum, where's your latus rectum, 2 pi R
The idea is to get rid of the personal repulsion properties of the drivers.
What about implementing separation techniques (much like IFR flying) that would permit vehicles, first in specialty lanes and then later on the road at alrge, to operate safely at predetermined distances.
Together with reversible-direction lanes, we could save many of the billions of hours (how many human lifetimes is that) wasted sitting in traffic each year.
Tomorrow's cars will be the same cars as today's cars. They'll just put in a few more gadets so you'll think you have to have a new one.
Realistically, your next car should be your feet or a bicycle. Walk to get your groceries. Bike to work. Get fitter. Live longer. Pollute less. Get big things delivered. Talk to your neighbours. Smile at strangers.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
My personal wish is for a cruise control that's intelligent enough to recognize that it has to apply more gas to the engine when going uphill, rather than my current one that first slows down by 10 mph, then finally tries to speed back up.
Have you read my blog lately?
Due to the new technology, the accidental run-over rate for cute young ladies wearing mini-skirts and tube tops will rise dramatically.
There are some interesting write-ups here:
The Internal Combustion Engine
and
Concept IC Engine
Seriously
Autopilot for Airplanes is relatively easy.
And if airplanes didn't require pilots, they would be more economical than cars, which need to stop and start to avoid hitting each other, which need very expensive roads, which tend to hit pedestrians at a frightful pace, and tend to run into each other - largely because roads are sort of an everlasting game of chicken.
Per mile travelled, airplanes are much safer.
Autopilot would prevent them running into skyscrapers, and actually reduce the threat - who wants to hijack a commuter plane with 30 gallons of fuel and 12 people?
So we convert to electric golfcarts to drive us to and from the community airdrome.
And save gas by sharing a better ride on a point to point nonstop mass transit.
AIK
As for all this fancy stuff that will improve safety, well I doubt it will really have a huge benefit. People tend to drive to a certain risk level. If it feels dangerous, then they drive slower and more carefully; if it feels safe they drive faster and more carelessly. If you pack the car with "feel safe" stuff then all you nend up with is people driving faster in more extreme conditions.
Safe driving, at the end of the day, comes down to the nut that holds the wheel. Expecting electronics etc to significantly improve safety is asking a bit much.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
Whatever happened to the ideas of Rosen motors?
Their design was to have a car that has a TURBINE engine (only one moving part really), to generate electricity and then use that to drive electric motors on the wheels.
It is a much more efficent use of gasoline, and could double the life of our oil supply.
A turbine engine and electric motors are MUCH more reliable and efficent than the internal combustion engine.
If you ask me that would be a great first step toward tomorrow where the internal combustion engine is a thing of the past, and eliminates the need for all this battery stuff etc.. but gets us all in the process of using electric motors and can start that whole progress of technological improvements that will surely happen with mass adopton.
-- Given enough time and money, Microsoft will eventualy invent UNIX.
I really hate those red turning signals, combined with brake lights. It is hard to distinguish red-turn signal in a heavy traffic / merge area as every one is using brakes and it is a sea of RED.
Use YELLOW for turn signals. It is highly visible, and stands out. So I don't have to guess if you are tapping the brake or trying to come into my lane.
Does any body knows why auto makers do these RED turn signals? I honestly don't.
A few years ago, I was at an SAE committee meeting where a project was presented. The gist of it is that cameras look at the road's lane markers. If the system detects that the vehicle is drifting too close to or maybe over the edge of the lane (without the turn signal active to signal a lane shift or turn), the system sounds an alert (loud noise) to wake up the driver who has (presumably) started nodding off. I don't recall seeing that kind of system offered in a production vehicle, but it seemed pretty far along when presented. I'd guess that all by itself, the cameras and processing power might be a bit pricy. However, if the cameras and processing power could be shared with other uses that could justify their cost....
"This signature quote intentionally left blank"
On another note, check out the possible 25th anniversary DeLorean!
"You may all go to hell and I will go to Texas"
Sen. Davy Crocket to US Congress, Nov. 1, 1835
Personal Rapid Transit, a packet based mass transit system.
e.g.
http://www.cprt.org/
Not that PRT will make the car obsolete, but it will reduce the need for it as day to day transport leaving it mainly as a pleasure vehicle.
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
Here's a story for ya: While driving over to pickup an iTrip at the Apple Store for my new, free, 4G iPod, my brother and I ended up behind a guy who, coincedentally, had an Apple sticker, a Newton sticker and also a big ol' "Hand Up And Drive!" bumper sticker on the back of his Jeep Wrangler.
:P
Well, we were on a 2 lane road and he was in front of us and was tailgating the car in front of him pretty badly and I could tell it wasn't your normal, this is how I drive all the time, style tailgating. Obviously, this guy was pissed at the person in front of him. Suddenly he swerved into oncomming traffic and passed the car he was tailgaiting, popped back over onto our side into a second lane that had just opened up and then proceeded to scream and yell at the person, who was driving beside him now, while we all slowed and stopped at a stoplight.
My brother and I were dumbfounded! What did this person do to make this guy drive so dangerously?
What we saw through the back window of the tailgaited car, now in front of us, we saw that the woman in the car had been/was on a cellphone! Ohnos! Makes you wonder who the truely dangerous drivers are, doesn't it?
PS - Just to figuratively give the guy the finger over this whole incident, I used my cellphone while driving too! But I didn't use it to talk. Instead I used it to take a picture of his road raging ass: http://flickr.com/photos/celerityfm/312722/
IN YOUR FACE CELLPHONE NAZI!!!
...unfortunately no one can be told what The Mat^H^H^HGoatse is...they must experience it for themselves...
1938 Velocar Type H
1953 Velo-Velocar (I'm not sure this is the right picture as it mentions 4 wheels in the description)
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
it works so well on the sites with moderating systems...
I would wager trains are more fuel efficient per person/kg, far easier to automate an autopilot for (speed up, slow down), and don't have the tendency to fall 30,000+ feet when the autopilot for whatever reason, decides to commit suicide. Plus with more dedication on infrastructure, they can go pretty quick too.
The design consideration of the Abrams was for speed, not fuel efficiency, figuring a battle range of less than 100mi, hence the gas turbine rather than the diesel engine that almost all other tanks use (and yes, diesel engines are inherently more efficient). The type of turbine that's being described by the OP is a turbine to generate electricity, not to move a 60+ton vehicle, so the comparison with a battle tank that uses a different type of turbine for a different purpose seemed pretty senseless.
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.
---------The early bird gets the worm, but the second mouse gets the cheese.
Removable lights, windows, locks, stereos, mirrors, wheels, engines etc. Cross compatibility.
I.E. Upgrade engine? Upgrade Headlights? Buy new body? Etc.
Also why don't they just make the speed lane on highways 130 kmph (faster as cars become faster) and force drivers to stay at that EXACT speed. then there will be no bunching etc. If your car cannot do that deal with regular traffic.
I'd also like to see a slowdown in car safety regulation upgrades, it's the number one reason consumers cannot stick with older model cars and designing new ones is the reason for the cost increases, the safety benefits are minimal in each new model upgrade, I'd like to see car weight maximized at approx. 750pd. Then they will be a smaller threat to pedestrians and each other.
As anyone who has ever strayed from Vault 13 would know, the car of the future is 100% analog, no computer of any kind.
Simple vehicles weigh less, last longer, and have greater cool factor. Seriously, my favorite transportation is the mostly 1979 Harley Sportster I built with my own two hands. It has 3 circuits, a headlight, a breaklight, and an ignition coil.
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
It's the next logical step. Then you have a car which can drive itself...
P RT/
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/
http://www.cprt.org/
http://www.acprt.org/
Government of the people, by corporate executives, for corporate profits.
At least here in Europe, we see the signs of the future cars today, and I hate it. All trends seem to converge to make traffic laws self-enforcing like laws of nature.
Want to drive too fast - sorry, the car won't allow you.
Want to park where you shouldn't - the automatically request a parking ticket for you.
The pieces for this total traffic control are already here today. A few examples:
We already have black boxes for cars. Those will see wide adoptions as soon as the insurance companies give rebates for having them installed. For them it makes sense, as it provides better data about accidents. No more fibbing how fast you were.
We already have active on-board-units toll-collection for highway and automatic verification of the box is present. At the moment, it's only for trucks on highways here in Austria, but the system is still young.
We already have working number plate scanner which tag entry ond exit time of cars on a road section and generates automatically speeding tickets if the average speed is too high.
A lot of cars already have GPS navigation to know where they are. Some of those have online updates for traffic jams and other up-to-date news. I can imagine some of them even can tell you today if you're driving too fast.
The engine-management software of all sports cars in Europe won't allow you to exceed 250 km/h, even if the car could.
Tamper-prevention software is in wide use and mostly works if used together with verification. Think about the XBox.
Now put all those ingredients in a big bowl, add a healthy dose of total-control-freaks in burocracies, bake for 10 years with insurance and motor-tax incentives and you get self-enforcing traffic laws.
The car will know where it is and what the speed limits are. The car will make sure for you, that you stay a good citizen via the motor management. The car will know how big the distance to the front car is and will make sure you keep a healthy distance.
Now why not rip the little dictator out of your car? Your car will have to identify itself to the autorities for toll collection on the most travelled roads. While doing that, it's very easy to verify that an untampered control-unit works in the car. If not, they have your license plate from the traffic camera.
All in all, for most purposes it won't be possible to escape. Due to the numerous checkpoints, the recognition-rate doesn't even have to be perfect. 80 to 90 percent is good enough.
Why develop auto-pilots if it's so easy to make the life of the drivers miserable.
- Safety: carbon fibre is super strong! (Formula one, remember)
- Environment: lighter means less fuel consumption,
...
- Durability: no corrosion or metal fatigue.
Check out the article. (dutch, use babelfish-- debian linux - vim powered
The number one problem with driving is the other drivers. therefore the only solution would be to get rid of drivers. why put so much effort into monitoring the driver, when a driverless world could be realized with current technology.
for example you would need gps units in each car with detailed maps of all the roads and addresses. the cars would also need appropriate sensors like those used in addaptive cruise control. for extra precision throw in some in-road or next-to-road things that the car could sense. next, use some form of wireless connection to network all the cars together. finaly, mix in some government to regulate it all with some infastructure and software that monitors and control the network.
cars like this could go 100 mph, or as fast as the road allows. they could be sent to park themselves, maybe a mile away, after droping you off. driving drunk won't be a problem, and insurance costs should be lower. when there is an accident, all the cars would automatically know and reroute themselves. as more and more cars became like this highways could be made thiner, 2 or 4 lanes down from 6 or 8.
of course there are downsides. taxi drivers would lose their jobs, as would truck drivers, parking vallets, meter maids, etc.
That's commuting.
:)
This is driving.
Why bother with programming a network of CPUs when nature has given us an animal ready, willing and able to do all the clever stuff we're only now beginning to build into cars?
A hundred years ago, a doctar called out in the night could catch-up on his sleep in the drive home, letting the horse do all the navigation and traffic management.
Then, too, show me the car that can make another car...
New mod option wanted: -1 DrunkenRambling