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What Effect Will VW's Scandal Have On Robocars?
pRobotika writes: It's looking bad for Volkswagen, German car manufacturers and possibly even car manufacturers as a whole. But the revelations that VW put software in their cars to deliberately cheat on emissions tests could have even greater repercussions. Robocars' Brad Templeton looks at the effect for manufacturers of autonomous vehicles. From the Robohub article: "There may be more risk from suppliers of technology for robocars. Sensor manufacturers, for instance, may be untruthful about their abilities or, more likely, reliability. While the integrators will be inherently distrustful, as they will take the liability, one can see smaller vendors telling lies if they see it as the only way to get a big sale for their business."
Tomorrow's Slashdot headline:
"How Will The Apple Watch Affect the Future of Self-Driving Cars?"
or,
"What Year Will The Self-Driving Car Cure Cancer? We Ask Travis Kalanick."
You are welcome on my lawn.
Most cars will be owned by large corporations, not individual pwople. Lyft, or Thrifty Rent-a-Car, or possibly automakers like Ford themselves. (I'm curious how it shakes out, for investment purposes, but bet the automakers will try to corner the market).
At that point, when a car has a problem, it's not Joe Smith on the phone shaking a hand, it's the Big Owning Company with Lawyers who is. I expect the consolidation of purchasing power into a fewer, much bigger hands will make this unlikely to occur, at least more than the one time it takes for the surviving firms to understand the cost of lying.
As the early history of industrialization shows, unregulated companies have no problems poisoning people for short-term profits. Aggressive business people tend to only think about 5 years out. If they believe the chances of getting caught is relatively low for the next 5 years, they'll often gamble to get here-and-now power and wealth. They are thinking with the "2nd head".
By the time 3-eyed babies appear, the perps or their trail may be long gone.
Table-ized A.I.
By the time 3-eyed babies appear, the perps or their trail may be long gone.
Indeed, this is why I support some regulation despite my libertarian tendencies. It's entirely too easy to cause far more damage than you could every repay in seeking what amounts to a 'modest' profit. By the time it could be handled in a post-liability fashion, the person is already dead or broke. Leaving potentially thousands or even millions of people injured without the ability to seek redress.
As such, stopping them sooner rather than later is a 'once of prevention is worth a pound of cure' move.
I don't read AC A human right
Exactly. Pollution is one of the most basic examples of an "externality" to a business.
The business is happy to make more profits and doesn't care if it pollutes.
If the consumer has the choice between a cheap car that belches smog and an expensive car that is relatively clean, the rational self-interested choice is to choose the cheap car. The direct benefit to them of money in their pocket outweighs the relatively small amount of pollution that their individual car will create. However, when taken in aggregate, it's better if *everyone* chooses the clean car.
Since we can't persuade human beings to always selflessly consider the good of the community over their own interests (and we shouldn't), we agree on laws to protect our shared resources.
This is absolutely false, posted by a well-known troll. Vdub cut engine power during car tests to meet emissions standards, then cranked it up to 11 to make it "fun to drive". The real-world emissions were 10-40x above epa standards. This is the unethical, because it relies on fraud to make money sacrificing the environment.
Passenger car emission standards are g/mi and are the same for all fuel types. Epa is exploring ways to combat this type of fraud. But any test they make needs to be objective and reproducible for all vehicles, so it may be hard to eliminate this cheat vector.
My biggest fear is that the rep of all diesel vehicles will be tarnished. This isn't fair; both Mercedes and BMW make diesels that meet all emissions requirements and are fun to drive. Diesel vehicles are more fuel-efficient than gasoline vehicles and are definitely part of the fuel mix for a low carbon future.
There's another twist to this. I once worked with a company that had developed a little sensor that would let you know if you'd left your infant in the back seat. They ultimately decided not to market it at all; the liability insurance required, should it ever fail, even once, dwarfed the modest profit it would have brought in. I understand LOTS of things don't make it to market, for that very reason. The number one cost in my aluminum ladder isn't aluminum, or transportation, or sales; it's liability insurance. For a damn ladder.
Mod parent up.
Seems most automobile makers will now be subject to advanced testing methodologies. I'm not so sure that this incestuous bunch will emerge untarnished.
If this gets a lot of engineering departments back to the drawing boards, we'll know soon by delays in 2016 models. Then the excrement will hit their stocks as they lose sales. Sit still and watch.
---- Teach Peace. It's Cheaper Than War.
what ever happened to personal responsibility?
Personal responsibility is whatever the court and/or jury decides it is. Sometimes the judgement is probably too far in favor of giving idiots what they don't deserve. Sometimes it allows a company that's negligent to get off lightly for something that they really should not have ever sold. Sometimes it works out as it should.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
Cars from the sixties and seventies that were fun to drive were horribly wasteful on fuel when driven hard. Carburetors are like that. The point now, is that we have technology to sample the air pressure, air temperature, and exhaust mixture to try to achieve the most thorough burn possible, which is why the cars of today are more fun and more powerful than they were in the sixties and seventies. And I say this as someone that is mid-restoration on a seventies Mopar.
The tradeoff is complexity and cost. The cars are much more complicated because the systems that regulate fuel pressure, nozzle duration, spark duration and timing, and valve timing are much more complicated than an accelerator pump, a venturi, and a simple vacuum-advance distributor.
Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
You'll get your 'robocars' about the same time you get flying cars and hoverboards.
In my opinion, at best you'll have a sophisticated 'autopilot' system to supplement your full set of manual controls, and it'll be a boon on long highway trips, and maybe to keep you safe if you fall asleep at the wheel in the middle of the night. Assuming you're rich and can afford a luxury car, that is; economy cars won't have such things as an option. Sorry, kids, but you'll still have to learn how to drive, pass tests, and pay for insurance, and you'll have a steering wheel, accelerator and brake pedals (if not a clutch pedal) in front of you for quite some time to come; please do learn your driver training lessons well so we're all safe on the roads, OK? Thanks.
Are YOU using the TOOL, or is the TOOL using YOU? Think about it!
american v8's from late 70's to 80's are both fuel guzzling AND badly performing.
and the modern system is actually a lot SIMPLER to tune. if you want to pay for it you can get a custom ecu map in a day.
you make it sound like the carburetor is easy to get right. it's not. a fuel injection system is much more straightforward to setup. had you an aftermarket fuel injection system you would get your project tuned far better.
world was created 5 seconds before this post as it is.
One thing has nothing to do with the other. This is just misleading propaganda from companies that have dropped the driverless ball. This is about lying cheating executives. Executives can lie and cheat about anything. Are those tires safe? Is the gasoline really unleaded? Do the ignition switches kill people?
If anything the companies that are leading the charge with driverless don't have a long track record of cheating and killing their customers. The reality is that they are going into this new arena with unblemished records. This probably scares the crap out of the old companies.
For instance, anything that Ford, GM, or Chrysler tell me is probably a lie or an exaggeration. I don't really trust any of the Japanese Manufacturers and even the Koreans aren't looking too good with the emissions testing. Thus I am far more likely to believe a Tesla, Google, Apple, etc. If they say their car can go 200 miles on a charge I will actually plan on going roughly 200 miles on a charge. If GM tells me that I can go 200 miles on a charge I will assume that they lobbied the government to allow them to have a tail wind and go downhill the whole time. Plus they won't mention that the battery caught fire 3 times each test and the driver's seat is the battery.
So this straw man argument is just pure PR being put out to distract us from the fact that the old school car companies are run by a bunch of psychopathic MBA types. And instead of changing their ways they are trying to paint the aggressive young newcomers with the same brush.
So everyone needs to perform a full audit of what they're buying, including purchasing something to test that it's safe/fit to purchase? I hope you have a lot of free time or vanishingly small respect for your own safety...