Testing autonomous technologies in public areas is essentially irresponsible. It goes from Google, who is extremely professional, but still gets rear ended a lot because the vehicle is over cautious and stops where humans would not to Delphi on down where I don't trust a damn thing they do and they really shouldn't be allowed in public at this time.
It's hard enough doing simple things like straight line freeway driving that it's seen as a major accomplishment when no one dies and they can out do drunk and distracted drivers under all conditions but only under clear sunny free flowing freeway driving. These courses, akin to closed courses for learning human drivers, are a necessary first step in bringing this technology to practical use.
The real problem with autonomous driving is environment variability, like road problems, debris, construction, animals, children and pets, other human drivers etc. when a computer 'sees' a cyclist they may or may even not recognize its a cyclist (ie maybe it assumes pedestrian given its sensor history) and form some standard metrics about the expected behavior. When a human does you immediately see if you make eye contact (so you know they see you something no vehicle does to my knowledge today), if they are on a pricy bike and clothed in biking gear or in dirty clothes in a beater and looking drunk - this allows humans to more accurately predict the future using things computers can't do for at least a decade out. For all the "nanosecond" decisions in urban settings computers can do humans are light years ahead in path planning and pattern recognition. Anyone in the field gets an immediate appreciation of how their toddler far exceeds a supercomputer and 500k in sensors even in 2015.
Making astronomical observations plblic access and the algorithms used open source can fuel all kinds of research at the corporation, university, and amateur levels. That alone is a laudable effort. Too much science today is pay walled and locked up behind restricted access.
A better method is likely to build better telescopes, perhaps large space arrays, and do transit analysis of many many worlds. You could, in theory with better tech and observation time, pick up on all kinds of signs of life both non sentient and sentient. These signals would be carried by electromagnetic waves, just not all in the radio spectrum. It's not as sexy as ET phoning home but far more practical in many people's eyes and is actually a main focus of research for many reasons extending beyond detecting life as you can still do analysis from earth.
Moreover why broadcast omnidirectionally instead of a tight beam in the desired direction? We already do this it makes zero sense to do otherwise. So on top of the long lanundry list of other things that all must line up we must have that physical line of sight too - like finding that needle in a haystack black hole that points a jet directly at earth.
I guess if you don't mind waiting a long time and use the atmosphere it wouldn't take a large amount of thrust. But watch the video. It shows the vehicle rotate 180 and the main engine fire.
Moreover where does the energy come from to deorbit? They have microwave arrays built around the flight paths everywhere on the globe? I'm guessing that any orbit high enough to launch a satelite in a stable orbit has a low enough drag to take forever to bring the craft down.
Maybe they can use a laser based correction large phased array to correct for the atmosphere? Because I'm going to assume at large distances with moisture etc this will be necessary.
None of it is going to be cheap. Garriott told me that the R&D phases up to suborbital flight are expected to cost about $200 million, and the total cost to scale up to full orbital flights will be around a billion dollars. Which means the capital for the next phases of their development will need to be raised as the company moves along its development path.
I dont think elon has anything to worry about yet in terms of competition yet though the design seems to not really be that much cheaper than conventional ones. Cheaper yes but not an order of magnitude cheaper. At the very least you would have an impressive weapon for defense with minor alterations. It's a nice PR touch to show its powered by renewables and to say they want to move away from chemical power when in all likelihood they will launch it on coal power.
Ok so it seems the biggest complaint is they don't take possible future policy changes into account. That's partally understandable and it's good to see them say that every prediction is likely wrong in some way. At least solar and wind seem to be quicker to implement than gas and coal - sadly nuclear is the slowest to implement. I'd expect any prediction to be off every year as that what predictions are. I'm not sure it's unreasonable to expect cronyism with fossil fuels and expect minimal action on renewables. I'm for renewables I just don't have billions to make my opinion matter.
Ok I read the links but there is no evidence in them the EIA is ignoring them. Nor is there evidence to support we are moving to this extremely low use of coal in almost no time considering these installations would need to be built now to be put in service by 2020. I'm all for renewables but I'm realistic as to the cost and timeframe. I don't expect us to magically move to 25% coal in the us for power generation even by 2040. Did you have any evidence of that claim? I'm actually interested not trying to be adversarial.
You may have to replace items in a conventional car you would not in an electric, brakes, brake components such as master cylinders or brake system flushes, timing belts, spark plugs, starter motor, etc. these are numerous small repairs that can add up do significant amounts yes. But unless the engine is abused, such as not changing the oil, 99.7% of modern engines will last 10 years no problem. I'm trying to point out that the cost of gas in an efficient car balances the battery cost which is approximately true. And that the cost of the small repairs balances the increased reliability of electrics which is also approximately true.
That's only partially true. The average lifespan of a car is around 10-15 years and changes to the grid also take around that long. Buying a coal powered car now and believing it's solar powered is like driving a conventional diesel and believing it's powered by biofuel.
Did you read the article? It's 5500 with a 1000 credit you may or may not be able to get. Further that's the battery not the cost of replacement. That pushes it to 7k+ easy. And i do believe i said 7-8k which is realistic.
No the cost of ownership may be slightly less - or not depending on the resale value of a vehicle that needs a multi thousand dollar repair to work. It's Definately not as low as the media would like you to believe. Please though I don't mind reading sources if you would like to source some more.
I hate to burst your bubble but the coal hungry parts of the USA do not drive world markets nor world technology trends. If you live in a specific region of California, or California for example - or better yet Norway then electrics may make sense now. For the overwhelming majority of America they do not and will not for what will likely be at least a decade. Where i live in the upper Midwest without purchasing solar im no better off with a tesla than an efficient diesel for co2 per mile and that's not an uncommon story. Moreover the cost of the technology will come down because it is used in many other areas besides automotive
You save money untill the end of the 8-10 year battery life and someone has to foot the 8 thousand dollars (with a projected real cost of around 17 thousand just sold below cost so as not to ruin the entire viability of the pricing model). It pretty much zeros out the difference between a leaf and an economy gas car for mileage cost. You could argue maintance is cheaper but then again the leaf costs a ton more than efficient economy cars. In the future the costs will be lower, no doubt, but right now, dollar for dollar, the best savings for limited money and the enviornment is still the much cheaper efficient gas and diesels. Too bad no one wants either the electrics or efficent cars.
Good luck getting people behind nuclear when France and Germany, leaders in nuclear, are pulling out over public opinion. Facts and evidence never convinced a significant fraction of the populace of anything they didn't want to hear already.
As for your rosy outlook the EIA has a 100% completely different story saying we are going to stay the course and keep using fossil fuels : http://instituteforenergyresea...
Do you have a source for this we aren't using any coal in the next four years argument when something like 70% of our nation depends on it for power?
What are you even talking about? You make zero sense. The co2 saved by driving efficient fossil fuel cars exceeds that by electrics. Because so much electricity comes from coal, electrics are only slightly better for co2 emissions in America, and almost one drives electrics due to the cost and reduction in performance of most models. The best solution, given limited money, is to move people to efficient fossil fuel cars now, then electrics when the cost comes down and we move away from fossil fuel production of electricity.
Nice idea but power plants change by the decade. Buying a car now locks you to the current grid unless you purchase a solar or wind installation. For a greater impact you probably should have just donated $$$ to research.
If you are talking enviornment it is more informative/intuitive to talk about the co2 per mile. In Norway electrics can get upto and exceed 150 equivelant miles per gallon co2. In the USA, due to coal, it's more like 60 and in India it's more like 20. Particulates are another story but most people seem concerned over co2 and yet don't realize their 100k tesla used in the USA may be only 15% better for the enviornment than a 22k econobox diesel - they are misled to think its far far better.
You can have a diesel vehicle and use a biofuel or regular diesel. But to use regular fuel and claim you are reaping the benefit (if any) of biodiesel is just plain fantasy. For the exact same reasons you need to know where the power for your electric comes from and not claim what isn't real.
Where did i cite anything? I said this one is paywalled and as such was intending to not use it as a reference. In general I'm not in favor of paywalled science. At least make a thorough summary of the research non-paywalled.
You mean the ones nobody drives like electrics? Lol. Just as many people drive high efficiency conventional economy cars, if not more, than electrics. Don't let reality spoil your opinion.
This one is paywalled but if you go off pretty much any report full electrics in America get around 60 mpg co2 equivelant. Hybrids are just about as good. Really efficient gas and diesels can get nearly 50. So I'm going to go and say that, particulates aside for another discussion, co2 wise no electrics barely do better due to coal. In my specific region it's pretty bad electrics do about the same as efficient gas cars.
Umm this is slashdot. Maybe they figured no one would miss the article. I for one am not paying 5 bucks for something as obvious as coal powered electric cars could have a net negative effect or subsidized electric cars could have a bad net negative effect.
There is no bypassing entropy. Every car has a tailpipe. Yes centralizing the system can simplify some pollution problems but it introduces others such as electrical transmission losses, battery voltage conditioning losses, battery charging losses, etc. Yes you may pay less money per mile but when you factor in the heavily subsidized battery sold way beneath cost needed at around 8-10 years it often comes back to around the same price only worse - many wont replace the 3k battery in an old hybrid, 7-8k in a leaf or 8-12k (30k+ production cost) for the larger tesla.
I'm all for electric cars, they are great! But I'm pro science and pro facts and when people run around half informed and when media spouts half truths it bothers me quite a bit. It should bother you as well.
The tesla is a great sports car. But if you want an electric for enviornmental reasons find out where your regional power comes from and do the math. It's not likely to change much for the life of your car - any changes are definitely also public record. If you need a solar instal to actually make the difference large then factor in that cost benefit too.
Never under estimate the ability of an efficient economy car to nearly get the enviornmental savings of what anelectric gets at 1/2 to 1/5 the price.
Slashdot Mirror
Testing autonomous technologies in public areas is essentially irresponsible. It goes from Google, who is extremely professional, but still gets rear ended a lot because the vehicle is over cautious and stops where humans would not to Delphi on down where I don't trust a damn thing they do and they really shouldn't be allowed in public at this time.
It's hard enough doing simple things like straight line freeway driving that it's seen as a major accomplishment when no one dies and they can out do drunk and distracted drivers under all conditions but only under clear sunny free flowing freeway driving. These courses, akin to closed courses for learning human drivers, are a necessary first step in bringing this technology to practical use.
The real problem with autonomous driving is environment variability, like road problems, debris, construction, animals, children and pets, other human drivers etc. when a computer 'sees' a cyclist they may or may even not recognize its a cyclist (ie maybe it assumes pedestrian given its sensor history) and form some standard metrics about the expected behavior. When a human does you immediately see if you make eye contact (so you know they see you something no vehicle does to my knowledge today), if they are on a pricy bike and clothed in biking gear or in dirty clothes in a beater and looking drunk - this allows humans to more accurately predict the future using things computers can't do for at least a decade out. For all the "nanosecond" decisions in urban settings computers can do humans are light years ahead in path planning and pattern recognition. Anyone in the field gets an immediate appreciation of how their toddler far exceeds a supercomputer and 500k in sensors even in 2015.
Making astronomical observations plblic access and the algorithms used open source can fuel all kinds of research at the corporation, university, and amateur levels. That alone is a laudable effort. Too much science today is pay walled and locked up behind restricted access.
I suppose but of you tack that on the ass end of the drake equation its not very promising.
A better method is likely to build better telescopes, perhaps large space arrays, and do transit analysis of many many worlds. You could, in theory with better tech and observation time, pick up on all kinds of signs of life both non sentient and sentient. These signals would be carried by electromagnetic waves, just not all in the radio spectrum. It's not as sexy as ET phoning home but far more practical in many people's eyes and is actually a main focus of research for many reasons extending beyond detecting life as you can still do analysis from earth.
Moreover why broadcast omnidirectionally instead of a tight beam in the desired direction? We already do this it makes zero sense to do otherwise. So on top of the long lanundry list of other things that all must line up we must have that physical line of sight too - like finding that needle in a haystack black hole that points a jet directly at earth.
I guess if you don't mind waiting a long time and use the atmosphere it wouldn't take a large amount of thrust. But watch the video. It shows the vehicle rotate 180 and the main engine fire.
Moreover where does the energy come from to deorbit? They have microwave arrays built around the flight paths everywhere on the globe? I'm guessing that any orbit high enough to launch a satelite in a stable orbit has a low enough drag to take forever to bring the craft down.
None of it is going to be cheap. Garriott told me that the R&D phases up to suborbital flight are expected to cost about $200 million, and the total cost to scale up to full orbital flights will be around a billion dollars. Which means the capital for the next phases of their development will need to be raised as the company moves along its development path.
I dont think elon has anything to worry about yet in terms of competition yet though the design seems to not really be that much cheaper than conventional ones. Cheaper yes but not an order of magnitude cheaper. At the very least you would have an impressive weapon for defense with minor alterations.
It's a nice PR touch to show its powered by renewables and to say they want to move away from chemical power when in all likelihood they will launch it on coal power.
Ok so it seems the biggest complaint is they don't take possible future policy changes into account. That's partally understandable and it's good to see them say that every prediction is likely wrong in some way. At least solar and wind seem to be quicker to implement than gas and coal - sadly nuclear is the slowest to implement. I'd expect any prediction to be off every year as that what predictions are. I'm not sure it's unreasonable to expect cronyism with fossil fuels and expect minimal action on renewables. I'm for renewables I just don't have billions to make my opinion matter.
Ok I read the links but there is no evidence in them the EIA is ignoring them. Nor is there evidence to support we are moving to this extremely low use of coal in almost no time considering these installations would need to be built now to be put in service by 2020. I'm all for renewables but I'm realistic as to the cost and timeframe. I don't expect us to magically move to 25% coal in the us for power generation even by 2040. Did you have any evidence of that claim? I'm actually interested not trying to be adversarial.
You may have to replace items in a conventional car you would not in an electric, brakes, brake components such as master cylinders or brake system flushes, timing belts, spark plugs, starter motor, etc. these are numerous small repairs that can add up do significant amounts yes. But unless the engine is abused, such as not changing the oil, 99.7% of modern engines will last 10 years no problem. I'm trying to point out that the cost of gas in an efficient car balances the battery cost which is approximately true. And that the cost of the small repairs balances the increased reliability of electrics which is also approximately true.
That's only partially true. The average lifespan of a car is around 10-15 years and changes to the grid also take around that long. Buying a coal powered car now and believing it's solar powered is like driving a conventional diesel and believing it's powered by biofuel.
Did you read the article? It's 5500 with a 1000 credit you may or may not be able to get. Further that's the battery not the cost of replacement. That pushes it to 7k+ easy. And i do believe i said 7-8k which is realistic. No the cost of ownership may be slightly less - or not depending on the resale value of a vehicle that needs a multi thousand dollar repair to work. It's Definately not as low as the media would like you to believe. Please though I don't mind reading sources if you would like to source some more.
I hate to burst your bubble but the coal hungry parts of the USA do not drive world markets nor world technology trends. If you live in a specific region of California, or California for example - or better yet Norway then electrics may make sense now. For the overwhelming majority of America they do not and will not for what will likely be at least a decade. Where i live in the upper Midwest without purchasing solar im no better off with a tesla than an efficient diesel for co2 per mile and that's not an uncommon story. Moreover the cost of the technology will come down because it is used in many other areas besides automotive
You save money untill the end of the 8-10 year battery life and someone has to foot the 8 thousand dollars (with a projected real cost of around 17 thousand just sold below cost so as not to ruin the entire viability of the pricing model). It pretty much zeros out the difference between a leaf and an economy gas car for mileage cost. You could argue maintance is cheaper but then again the leaf costs a ton more than efficient economy cars. In the future the costs will be lower, no doubt, but right now, dollar for dollar, the best savings for limited money and the enviornment is still the much cheaper efficient gas and diesels. Too bad no one wants either the electrics or efficent cars.
Good luck getting people behind nuclear when France and Germany, leaders in nuclear, are pulling out over public opinion. Facts and evidence never convinced a significant fraction of the populace of anything they didn't want to hear already.
As for your rosy outlook the EIA has a 100% completely different story saying we are going to stay the course and keep using fossil fuels : http://instituteforenergyresea...
Do you have a source for this we aren't using any coal in the next four years argument when something like 70% of our nation depends on it for power?
What are you even talking about? You make zero sense. The co2 saved by driving efficient fossil fuel cars exceeds that by electrics. Because so much electricity comes from coal, electrics are only slightly better for co2 emissions in America, and almost one drives electrics due to the cost and reduction in performance of most models. The best solution, given limited money, is to move people to efficient fossil fuel cars now, then electrics when the cost comes down and we move away from fossil fuel production of electricity.
Nice idea but power plants change by the decade. Buying a car now locks you to the current grid unless you purchase a solar or wind installation. For a greater impact you probably should have just donated $$$ to research.
If you are talking enviornment it is more informative/intuitive to talk about the co2 per mile. In Norway electrics can get upto and exceed 150 equivelant miles per gallon co2. In the USA, due to coal, it's more like 60 and in India it's more like 20. Particulates are another story but most people seem concerned over co2 and yet don't realize their 100k tesla used in the USA may be only 15% better for the enviornment than a 22k econobox diesel - they are misled to think its far far better.
You can have a diesel vehicle and use a biofuel or regular diesel. But to use regular fuel and claim you are reaping the benefit (if any) of biodiesel is just plain fantasy. For the exact same reasons you need to know where the power for your electric comes from and not claim what isn't real.
Where did i cite anything? I said this one is paywalled and as such was intending to not use it as a reference. In general I'm not in favor of paywalled science. At least make a thorough summary of the research non-paywalled.
You mean the ones nobody drives like electrics? Lol. Just as many people drive high efficiency conventional economy cars, if not more, than electrics. Don't let reality spoil your opinion.
This one is paywalled but if you go off pretty much any report full electrics in America get around 60 mpg co2 equivelant. Hybrids are just about as good. Really efficient gas and diesels can get nearly 50. So I'm going to go and say that, particulates aside for another discussion, co2 wise no electrics barely do better due to coal. In my specific region it's pretty bad electrics do about the same as efficient gas cars.
Umm this is slashdot. Maybe they figured no one would miss the article. I for one am not paying 5 bucks for something as obvious as coal powered electric cars could have a net negative effect or subsidized electric cars could have a bad net negative effect.
There is no bypassing entropy. Every car has a tailpipe. Yes centralizing the system can simplify some pollution problems but it introduces others such as electrical transmission losses, battery voltage conditioning losses, battery charging losses, etc. Yes you may pay less money per mile but when you factor in the heavily subsidized battery sold way beneath cost needed at around 8-10 years it often comes back to around the same price only worse - many wont replace the 3k battery in an old hybrid, 7-8k in a leaf or 8-12k (30k+ production cost) for the larger tesla.
I'm all for electric cars, they are great! But I'm pro science and pro facts and when people run around half informed and when media spouts half truths it bothers me quite a bit. It should bother you as well.
The tesla is a great sports car. But if you want an electric for enviornmental reasons find out where your regional power comes from and do the math. It's not likely to change much for the life of your car - any changes are definitely also public record. If you need a solar instal to actually make the difference large then factor in that cost benefit too.
Never under estimate the ability of an efficient economy car to nearly get the enviornmental savings of what anelectric gets at 1/2 to 1/5 the price.
Nor drive to the front wheels. Even under heavy acceleration significant weight is on them.