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Technology Science

The Future of the Car 422

Posted by samzenpus from the what-about-rockets dept.
Gandul writes "Radar, lasers, wireless radio networks and other embedded tech will enable our cars to sense faraway traffic and stop accidents before they happen. But who will be in the driver's seat?"
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The Future of the Car More

The Future of the Car

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  • Duh? (Score:5, Funny)

    by cbrocious ( 764766 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @10:55PM (#13359931) Homepage
    But who will be in the driver's seat?

    Whoever's driving the car, duh.

  • I just got one question (Score:4, Funny)

    by jockm ( 233372 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @10:55PM (#13359933) Homepage
    Where is my flying car? It is the 21st century and we were promised flying cars. Where are they?
    • What are you willing to give for the flying car?
    • Where is my flying car? It is the 21st century and we were promised flying cars. Where are they?

      You know, I'm still waiting myself, but I was thinking about this a while back and came to the conclusion that they're already here. Of course, not everybody can afford them, much less have sufficient piloting ability. Here's just one of the many companies who make them [cessna.com].
    • Where is my flying car?

      I used to want a flying car. Then started looking around at how some of the dipshits we have around here drive on the ground. Then imagine all those assholes with flying cars. They'd be chasing flocks of geese trying to reach out and grab one, buzzing people's houses, cutting across controlled traffic flight patterns. No thanks. It's dangerous enough with those retards on the ground.

      Unless it's strictly auto-pilot. Then the most damage they could do is flying is drinking b

  • More to the point... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Junior J. Junior III ( 192702 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @10:55PM (#13359934) Homepage
    What will they be fueled with?
    • Biodiesel hopefully:
      http://biodiesel.org/ [biodiesel.org]
      Also, keep in mind that a computer controlled vehicle will get much better mileage. Almost no one gets the mileage listed in the window on purchase. Heavy feet on the accelerator and brakes take a toll on fuel efficiency.
      • Biodiesel can only provide a small fraction of our needs. The NREL's document "Business Management for Biodiesel Producers" shows that even if all vegetable oil production (in the US) were used for biodiesel, we would meet only 10% of our current diesel needs. That doesn't even scratch the surface of our petroleum fuel usage.

      • Not exactly. (Score:3, Informative)

        by Inoshiro ( 71693 )
        Engine fuel consumption is based on displacement and load. To use less fuel, you need less of a load (weight), or reduce the time (final speed). If you are accelerating slowly to 50, you'll find it has the same load as accelerating quickly to 50. This is, if you integrate the fuel consumption curves for both, the area is very close (around 1-2%).

        A better way to minimize load (since romping on the gas doesn't affect mileage nearly as much as people think it does) is to make your average speed higher. By
    • Whether it be petroleum, natural gas, hydrogen, urine, or garbage, I am pretty sure they will employ some sort of hybrid-electric design. The first goal will be to break fossil fuel dependency for the stuff on the grid, after that electricity may become a cheap/eco friendly enough solution to plug your car in at home/work/truck stops etc.
      Hybrid design will allow us to transition from our current fuel of choice to a continually greater role of electricity as an energy source.

  • Hopefully not people (Score:5, Interesting)

    by bigtrike ( 904535 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @10:57PM (#13359938)
    The vast majority of accidents are caused because human beings are either incapable or unwilling to drive a vehicle safely. Because of this, we have lost many civil liberties. Due to safety concerns, the police can pull you over and search your vehicle at almost any time without real justification.

    I'd rather have robots drive.

    • Flamebait? wtf? (Score:5, Interesting)

      by coshx ( 687751 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:08PM (#13359980)
      The vast majority of accidents are caused because human beings are either incapable or unwilling to drive a vehicle safely

      This is plain truth. Most accidents are caused either because the drivers chose to drive wrecklessly and/or under the influence, or were caused simply because human reaction time is not as good as computers' reaction time.


      Because of this, we have lost many civil liberties.

      This is also true, and quite an insight. Think about random road blocks where you're tested for being under the influence even if you're NOT driving wrecklessly or even swerving. The equation is simple: am I willing to give up a little bit of my privacy to prevent myself from being killed? Generally, yes! Of course! But, if drunk driving didn't cause accidents because people weren't driving, there would be no need to pull this person over.


      Mods, please please please stop modding based on your own beliefs, and rather based on the intelligence of people's responses -- I'm going to get modded down for that, eh?

      • Re:Flamebait? wtf? (Score:5, Funny)

        by borg ( 95568 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:30PM (#13360061)

        uh, excuse me sir.

        but wouldn't a driver who drove wrecklessly not be in an accident?

      • Well, this assumes that computers can actually react quicker under driving circumstances than people can. Or for that matter that they can react well at all. The big difference between people and PC's(aside from the fact that pc's lack the processing capability to handle visual, auditory, tactile, etc data very well) is that PC's can't do anything they haven't been told how to do and people can. Perhaps not well, but they can react and maybe make a bad situation slightly better.

      • Re:Flamebait? wtf? (Score:5, Insightful)

        by bergeron76 ( 176351 ) * on Saturday August 20, 2005 @12:27AM (#13360238) Homepage
        This is the outrage/hazard formula. I forget whom developed it, but it basically states that if people become more outraged about something (than the hazard the thing presents) they will be willing to give up basic civil liberties.

        Basically, if you fire enough people up about some 'thing', they will take action even if the the 'thing' doesn't pose a direct risk/hazard to them directly.

        Kind of like the war in Iraq: scare enough people and they will do _anything_ to prevent it. In the USA for example, a country of 500 million people, the odds of being killed by a terrorist attack is infantesimal. Yet here we are, giving up our basic civil liberties in droves.

        If you don't think our [US] society as become over-paranoid, try boarding a mass-transit vehicle while wearing a ski mask. You'll be stopped/searched/seized faster than you can say, "Land of the free".

        They'll say they have 'probable cause'; you'll say 'it was cold out' or possibly 'I didn't want security cameras recording my every move'.

        Welcome back to 1984!


      • It actually is either flamebait or a moron. Anyone with even a passing knowledge of the facts would realize how unneccesarily contentious a point he makes.

        Accidents preventable by robotic driving are *not* the primary reason (or even close) for why vehicles can be searched, for starters. The more you unravel the statements he makes, the more asinine they are.

        It's a very common trolling/baiting tactic to draw misleading/false conclusions after initially stating a fact that most would agree to (that human e
      • This is plain truth.

        There are people walking around who have killed families with their driving. They aren't in prison, or destitute or threatened by anyone. At some point, they were indifferent to their responsibilities and wiped out members of our species.

        A question; why is this tolerated? It is tolerated, no question. I'm not indifferent to it, yet I participate in spectating.

        My answer is that this is my expectation. At some point, the fact that good answers aren't easy for anyone, including myself,
    • Driving is freedom. What you seem to advocate is giving up all the rest of the control we have. If all cars are robotically driven, it will take about six seconds for the government to mandate where they can and can't go - for your safety.

      People seem so willing to give up freedom in exchange for safety. Seat belts. Helmets. Speed limits. Astronauts, the modern epitome of risk-taking adventurer, now have to be kept perfectly safe, even.

      Tyranny is looking less and less like Big Brother and more and more
    • The vast majority of accidents are caused because human beings are either incapable or unwilling to drive a vehicle safely. Because of this, we have lost many civil liberties.

      Allow me to suggest a new one. People who can't see should not be allowed to drive. My grandmother (bless her soul) has no night vision whatsoever, but she is still allowed to drive. Having seen her drive, its a wonder she hasn't killed anyone yet. Unfortunately the burden of responsibility cannot be put on the family because old

    • I'd rather have robots drive.

      RAmen to that -- at least for general transportation / public roads.

      but I'd still like to take the wheel 'round a race course here and there on any Sunday or two.

      -calyxa

    • The vast majority of accidents are caused because human beings are either incapable or unwilling to drive a vehicle safely.

      To get the hell away from them before their next accident.

      Driving slower makes you the target for the next accident.

      Good luck out there.

  • Future of cars (Score:3, Insightful)

    by markov_chain ( 202465 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:02PM (#13359950)
    1. people will still drive
    2. cruise control will advance to auto-following
    3. diesel hybrids will take over, achieving awesome, high double digit mileages
    • I have a slightly different take:
      1. Computers will be developed that can drive better than people
      2. People will absolutely love it and will only take over occasionally when they feel like it
      3. Accidents rates will drop steadily as competition for the safest vehicle heats up
      4. Speed limits will be adjusted to reasonable levels since people will actually be going that speed
      5. More people will travel further and faster
      6. Fuel consumption will increase dramatically as a result
      7. Roads will have to be expanded and new highways built
      • 3. Accidents rates will drop steadily as competition for the safest vehicle heats up
        Er, no. You don't see a stampede to Volvo dealers...

        The competition is about having the glitziest vehicle, nothing else.

  • drivers seat (Score:4, Funny)

    by convolvatron ( 176505 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:02PM (#13359952)
    my genetically engineered chauffeur-lemur

    duh

  • The changes that should be made (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Mishra100 ( 841814 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:03PM (#13359957)
    I really do think they need to start focusing on a rail type system that does all the driving for us. If we finally would convert roads to a electromagnetic railway system (like the bullet train) and just program cars to drive and stop when they need, then we would have a much much better system than we have now. This completly gets rid of Car insurance, gas, 95% of death related accidents(I would have the 5% is left for cars that malfunction), drunk drivers, pollution, and many other negative aspects.
    I definitely think it would takes a lot of time to complete and would cost a ton of money. But we as citizens and as a country would save a whole lot more money having this implemented as a final solution to all of the stable and rising issues that circles around transportation.
    • Like the RUF [www.ruf.dk]?
      -russ

    • Re:The changes that should be made (Score:5, Interesting)

      by egarland ( 120202 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @12:04AM (#13360152)
      Rail can't replace roads. It's much less flexible than pavement, more expensive to maintain and not compatible with the existing transportation.

      People aren't going to be running rails into their garages, to their front doors.. across the lawn to where you need to back up to hook up the trailer.. etc. When there's an accident a rail vehicle can't just drive on the dirt to go around which may not seem important until you think of the fire truck that's coming to pry someone out of the wreckage in that accident. Rail isn't flexible enough for a general purpose transportation system. That lack of flexibility is one of the two advantages you have with rail. It lets you predict exactly where things will travel and run things like power lines to them. That advantage is it's downfall when it comes to general purpose transportation though.

      The other advantage is lower rolling resistance. As speeds go up air friction accounts for a larger percent of the energy used to keep the vehicle moving so as speeds increase this is actually less important.

      Also, car insurance wouldn't go away it would just get cheaper. Gas may go away but you have to power the vehicles somehow and since we aren't building any more clean environmentally friendly nuclear power plants we'll probably be burning oil or more likely coal which dumps tons and tons of mercury into our food chain every year (anyone know what the half life of mercury is?)

      The benefits you describe could be here soon, but the only realistic way to get them is if computers drive our cars. That's the right answer.
      • Read a book called "Metropolitan Corridor" about rail and road evolution at the turn of the century. When oil gets too expensive, rail will become the primary method of transportation again. Your assertion that it costs more is bullhonkey.
        • ..because it's impossible to power cars that drive on roads with anything but oil?!? You can create gasoline from stuff that wasn't pumped out of the ground.

          Also, you say "When" oil gets too expensive which is making a lot of assumptions.

          People, very smart people, have always been around warning that you need to listen to them and do what they tell you to or all kinds of doom will come to pass. Rarely are they right. Human ingenuity and the free-market economy can route around just about anything. Most
          • Nope, the sky isn't falling. We will find ways to get around it. But just like all the other issues you refer to, if there aren't people like me urging folks to pay attention to the impending problem and make an effort to work around it, we won't. Anyway, steel on steel is vastly more energy-efficient than rubber on asphalt. As energy goes up in price, unless we're willing to piss away hundreds of billions on road infrastructure (instead of the tens of billions we do now) we'll start investing more in rail
            • if there aren't people like me urging folks to pay attention to the impending problem and make an effort to work around it, we won't.

              Thank you for saving us all. :) All I ask out of life to make me happy is a constantly over-inflated sense of self worth. Apparently, you already have yours. Me, I trust in greed to solve this problem when the time comes. It's naive to underestimate the power of profit motive.

              they're cheaper to build for the amount that can be shipped on them

              No they aren't when you are lo
          • The fact that water is more expensive per gallon than oil is a red herring. Bottled water at retail grocery stores are a high-end luxury item. Brands with the word 'spring' in it are often taken straight from municipal taps, with no processing whatsoever.

            If you are really interested in buying water for commercial purposes, you can buy reverse osmossis filtered, 99.999% pure H20 for about $0.13 per gallon.

            Oil will never be cheaper than water in any serious economic consideration.

      • Rail can't replace roads. It's much less flexible than pavement, more expensive to maintain and not compatible with the existing transportation.
        When there's an accident a rail vehicle can't just drive on the dirt to go around [...]

        That rail can be non-intrusive. 160 years ago, urban transit was done with horse-powered tramways that ran on rails, but could be routinely derailed to go to the curb to pick-up passengers right at the sidewalk. Then, the driver would simply drive the horses back to the cente

    • Bullet trains are NOT electromagnetic railways. They are almost always standard gauge rail with catenary and messenger wire. There are a few isolated bits of maglev out there, and a test track in Japan for possible construction of a new Tokyo-Osaka alignment, but afaik, there's nothing in public operation that's longer than the Shanghai airport maglev - somewhere on the order of 50km.

  • Honestly... (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:07PM (#13359979) Homepage
    Honestly, I wouldn't mind that much having a car that could drive itself. You see, the problem with public transportation is that its public. Even in a cab you have that smelly driver and the dingy cab. I think there is a huge market for people who would like to buy a reasonably priced car with an automated chauffeur, which these controls will eventually amount to.

    Imagine having your own car that can drive you on its own, and you can sit in the back doing whatever you want, be it getting another hours rest on the way to work, watching a movie on the way home, fooling around, getting drunk, you name it.

    The drinking aspect alone would make this a best seller. Can you say "Designated Driver comes standard with this model!"

    • Honestly, I wouldn't mind that much having a car that could drive itself. You see, the problem with public transportation is that its public. Even in a cab you have that smelly driver and the dingy cab.
      I think there's a market for a portable gas mask.

  • Who will be driving? (Score:3, Informative)

    by pair-a-noyd ( 594371 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:08PM (#13359981)
    Me. I'll have no parts of these new cars.
    They suck. Assembled in Mexico from Chinese parts.
    Garbage. OVERPRICED garbage..

    My car is 30 years old and it still runs fine and looks fine. How is that? It was made in Germany where they appreciate and exercise quality control.

    I have several trucks that are 20 years old or older.

    Guess what? I can fix them all myself. There is nothing in any of them that I can't troubleshoot or repair.

    I wouldn't have one of these new cars that you can't work on without $100,000 car-o-scope and a PHD..
    Screw that. I've never taken a car to be repaired by someone else except one time when I was traveling and had no tools.
    Son of a bitches told me the transmission was blown and it was going to cost me $800 to have it fixed.
    I told them to stick up their ass.
    They put the transmission in the trunk and I called a tow truck to bring it home for me. My dad came out to help me with it. The repair cost $24 in parts and took one day. That was the LAST time I ever took anything to someone else for repair. And that means anything.

    I get the service manuals, schematics, tools and test equipment for every thing I own, what tools or skills I don't have, my dad can cover as he's good with cars.

    Bottom line, I'll never purchase a new car, ever, for any reason. The older the vehicle, the better I like it.

    • My new BMW was built in South Carolina using American and German parts. My Toyota was built in Ohio using American and Japanese parts.

      Isn't there some saying about it being better to not say anything and avoid looking stupid than to open your mouth and remove all doubt?
      • My new BMW was built in South Carolina using American and German parts. My Toyota was built in Ohio using American and Japanese parts.
        American cars have high-quality components, and very shoddy assembly.
        Japanese cars have low-quality components, and very skillful, high-quality assembly.
        Japanese cars made in America have low-quality component and very shoddy assembly...
        • WTF are you talking about? Japanese machining is among the best in the world.

          American cars have shoddy assembly, and Japanese and German cars have high-quality assembly. The interesting part is that it doesn't matter much on which continent the assembly took place. What matters is who owns and runs the company. Japanese companies know how to operate efficient, well-run factories, whether they're using Japanese or American laborers. American companies don't have a clue about how to operate factories dec
    • I wouldn't have one of these new cars that you can't work on without $100,000 car-o-scope and a PHD..
      Oh boy! This old chestnut. What's the matter, $49 for an OBD II reader too much for you? Four buttons too many to figure out?

    • Re:Who will be driving? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by Zackbass ( 457384 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @12:55AM (#13360315)
      You must be talking about American cars, since you can still buy well made German cars and well made Asian cars.

      You're quite wrong about new cars being worse than the old stuff. It was not so long ago that a car ran for 100,000 miles before it was at the end of its usable life. Well built modern cars are expected to go well over 200,000 miles before needing major repairs. Even Ford Exploders last longer than the old stuff. Not only that but modern cars use much less gas due to better engine design and electronic fuel injection and are many times safer. Perhaps you've heard of airbags and ABS?

      Just because you don't know how to use simple modern diagnostic equipment doesn't mean it's useless or made the job any harder either. It's invaluable to be able to plug in and find out that the problem is the oxygen sensor in bank 2, or that there's an overheating condition in the transmission. I'd like to know when your carb lets you know that the power valve is stuck open and has been spewing gas all over for the last few weeks or that your 13.8 AFR isn't optimal for cruising.

    • The $800 repair was $24, eh? (Score:4, Insightful)

      by SeaFox ( 739806 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @03:09AM (#13360682)
      Son of a bitches told me the transmission was blown and it was going to cost me $800 to have it fixed.
      I told them to stick up their ass.
      They put the transmission in the trunk and I called a tow truck to bring it home for me. My dad came out to help me with it. The repair cost $24 in parts and took one day.

      Sorry to point this out. But the parent poster hasn't given us enough information for us to deduce to whether this repair was truly a huge ripoff.

      The repair only cost him $24 in parts, but he didn't specify what the problem actually was. Transmission repairs can be very labor intensive. He didn't say how long the repair took in hours either (and keep in mind this is two people working together). On a front wheel drive, transverse mounted engine, you might find transmission removal to be a simple bolt-off affair, but on an older, rear wheel drive car removing a transmission may mean hoisting an engine or removing major suspension parts.

      So to give a more accurate comparision between these two jobs consider:

      * The shop is charging probably $60/hour in labor for the repair. The poster had "free" labor (I'm sure beer was involved).

      * The shop has various environmental/shop fees it charges. Not to mention state taxes.

      * The shop repair undoubtedly has a warranty of some sort (many shops give 1-3 yrs/12-36,000 mi depending on what they're doing).

      * The tranny was already off the car by the time the poster started working on it. (I'm sure the shop wanted some reimbursement for the time they spent pulling it).

      * The poster had to have his car towed home to work on it - that wasn't free.

  • "Virus kills hundreds on I-95" (Score:4, Interesting)

    by sexyrexy ( 793497 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:08PM (#13359983)
    It has generally been the trend that the more complex a system becomes, similarities it will have to the foundations of the modern operating system. ATMs are a prime example of machines that started as moderately sophisticated PCBs and now routinely run Windows Embedded.

    If a vehicle is "smart" enough to handle driving, it will have the computational power and flexibility to run reasonably sophisticated software. Consider that increasing wireless bandwidth (WiMax, anyone?) will lead to offloading the heavy-duty positional and map processing to a remote service over the Internet, with the software to display becoming a thin client for a remote database. A clever programmer will find a stack overflow in MapQuestClientForYourCar and BAM! Suddenly cars are automatically veering for each other instead of away.

    The level of scrutiny and security applied to such systems will have to be on par, or higher than, such applications as air traffic controlling before it can be considered safe.
    • I do agree with wireless communications being hard to implement because of hacking. Most games are hacked because they send false information to the servers. What happens if terrorists drive around sending information to other cars to swirve, which makes them crash. So I do agree on that.

      Most cars are locked down. You can't access their operating systems and other information. At least you can't create anything for them. The computers are locked down. They need to remain locked down and only available to
    • I don't think virii will become a fatal problem simply because of the way the cars are likely to be controlled. I can't imagine any sane engineer linking the OS to the intercar communication system in a way that would allow direct control of the car from an outside source. The external communication/gps positioning is purely for additional road sensing and navigating-not for the actual driving and avoiding of obstacles-and will probably happen in a separate system. The core driving operation will likely
    • Technically, you are incorrect. A computer-driven car need only be a little bit safer than a person-driven car. We're talking low-hanging fruit here, given that 50K people die on America's roads every year.

      Politically, you are completely correct. People will tolerate humans killing each other much more than machines killing people.
      -russ
  • I mean when it comes down to it people may not be in total control, aka "the driver's seat" when this far-off car revolution happens, but they will be in the car, and that is all that matters. In general people use cars to get places so whether they are driving or not they really just want to get to their destination.

    Of course non-destination based travel idiosyncracies(sp?) arise because it is taken for granted that someone has to drive the car. Hence you have "cruising the strip", "joy-riding", "drive-i

  • But who will be in the driver's seat? (Score:3, Funny)

    by craXORjack ( 726120 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:15PM (#13360010)
    Big Brother, of course.
  • If your falling a sleep on the highway, perhaps you should have made an effort to get a good 8-9 hours sleep the night before.

    Our vehicles don't need to become more complex - automakers need to focus first on making vehicles that dont fall apart while your driving them. Just go to the library and take a look at all the vehicle problems in the Lemon-Aid guides. If automakers can't make vehicles with reliable tie-rods or good quality alternators - then why would i want to ask them to add problems?

    Ok, in

    • Our vehicles don't need to become more complex - automakers need to focus first on making vehicles that dont fall apart while your driving them. Just go to the library and take a look at all the vehicle problems in the Lemon-Aid guides. If automakers can't make vehicles with reliable tie-rods or good quality alternators - then why would i want to ask them to add problems?

      They can't. It would be unproductive. To survive, automakers have to make as much cars as possible, and convince people to change them

  • Automatic speed control (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Migraineman ( 632203 ) on Friday August 19, 2005 @11:17PM (#13360020)
    Automatic speed control will never happen. Not because the tinfoil-hat brigade will be successful in lobbying against it, but rather it'll be the law enforcement personnnel who will kill it. Speeding fines are too large a part of the police budget, and that opportunity must be maintained. The police vehemently oppose any measure that justifies a reduction in the number of officers required. The insurance companies will probably oppose anything that eliminates fender-benders, too. Fatal accidents cost them money, but the fender-benders are income generators.

    I'm not paranoid, just following the money.
  • Hasn't this dumb shit been on the drawing board for like, 20 fucking years? Last I heard they were planning on rolling it out in Orlando, which of course never happened. Is this any closer to fruition now?
  • Let's look at the list of advantages:

    *No worries about Opec raising prices
    *Unmatched acceleration ability. If you hit the accelerator pulling out of a light and see craters out the window, you've gone too far. Turn around and drive toward the round blue orb.
    *Sure, you might get tailgated. But not twice by the same person!

  • Dual-mode vehicles (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Russ Nelson ( 33911 ) <slashdot@russnelson.com> on Saturday August 20, 2005 @12:10AM (#13360173) Homepage
    I think the future of the car is dual-mode vehicles. That is, a car which operates as today's cars do, but which can also drive up onto a monorail. One design is the RUF [www.ruf.dk]. On ordinary roads, it runs off batteries. Not a trunkfull of lead-acid batteries, but a modest battery, sufficient to get from home to the nearest monorail. Maybe a 50 mile trip max. Once on the monorail, electrical pickups power the vehicle. On the monorail, the vehicle is mechnically inherently safe. Braking works by gripping the monorail, not relying on the weight of the vehicle and a constant coefficient of friction with the road. So with reliable braking, vehicles can form a phalanx, to increase traffic density and reduce wind resistance.

    Vehicles on a monorail will drive a 90 MPH, and do so with great safety. Even grandma, because the cars are computer-controlled on the monorail. You designate your exit, and the computer takes care of routing you. Each car does its own routing based on global traffic announcements. Just like BGP4 on the Internet.

    Damn but I'd like to say "Take me to Boston and exit onto Boylston St." and then read a book, or fall asleep, or use the Internet access provided by the monorail connection.
    -russ

  • Sure, you fixed the cars, but... (Score:3, Insightful)

    by xxxJonBoyxxx ( 565205 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @12:11AM (#13360177)
    Sure, you fixed the cars, but tagging all the deer that pop put into traffic will be a bitch. You know crap like this would only fly in places where the only scenery is either pavement or desert.


  • fuck all those lasers and radar, where is my Johnny Cab? [imdb.com]

  • Ford/Volvo is doing safety testing for cars that will take over if the driver falls asleep at the wheel. http://media.ford.com/newsroom/release_display.cfm ?release=17087 [ford.com]

  • Thousands of deaths caused . . . (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Ph33r th3 g(O)at ( 592622 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @12:23AM (#13360227)
    . . . by humans at the wheel: acceptable risk. One death caused by a computer at the helm: lawsuit of Biblical proportions.
  • I'm no technophobe at all (my posting on Slashdot should be proof enough of that), but I really hate this sort of technology in cars.

    The Lexus mentioned in the article decides for you how hard you should be braking in an emergency. I wonder if you can turn that off ... That's just one example of computer interference in the article.

    My car has traction control. I couldn't get it without it. It has a "Trac Off" button, but it doesn't completely turn off. It still chooses to apply brakes to wheels when it

    • You think you're better than the traction system?

      So then, you can adjust your engine's speed within tens of RPMs, and modulate each brake cylinder 20 times per second or better?

      I think not. A lot of people THINK they're better than the computer is, until the snow and ice come out anyway.

  • The real future of the 'car' (Score:5, Insightful)

    by Simonetta ( 207550 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @12:32AM (#13360249)
    The upper-middle-class (both those that have lots of money and those who have lots of education) will be buying hybrids and other smaller cars that get very good fuel economy.

        As the price of gasoline continues to go up, people who are currently driving giant SUVs (here I'm talking about Mommy going a mile to the supermarket in a vehicle that is almost as big as a space shuttle) will sell them off to the lower middle class and working class people.

        Then as they break and wear out, the working class people won't repair them. Instead they will strip out the non-functioning systems. Here's a scenario from 2008:

        Some light on the dash goes on that says "Engine problem". You take it to the dealer who charges you $80 to plug in an OBD cable and find out what the problem is. They say that it's a bad Bi-Nitrogen Catalytic Emission sensor (don't tell me that this doesn't exist, I know it. This is a scenario). It has an 89 cent microcontroller and a $3 relay in a $2 little plastic box. It costs $369.87 and you have to replace all four if one goes out because there 'calibrated' to each other.

        So is the working-class guy going to replace the dohickey? No way. He goes to his brother-in-law's cousin who knows this guy who can take care of these little SUV problems. Year after year the car works less and less. Finally it doesn't pass emissions testing and can't get a registration renewal. Joe Six-Pack just say's the hell with it and drives it anyway, maybe even with a fake license plate year sticker.

        One day the cops stop him and run the VIN through the DMV computer. They confiscate the vehicle and tow it. It gets sold at a police auction to a wholesaler who sells it again to an illegal immigrant no questions asked, no papers. It's back out on the street.

        This is the real future of the car. Millions and millions of loud, junky, polluting, giant stupid and ugly half-broken SUVs. All driven by guys with no money and serious attitude problems.

        Thanks a lot, Detroit. It's nice to know that we can count on you for well-balanced long-term positive solutions to our tranportation needs! How's you stock ratings? Still as junky as the SUVs that you sell?
    • "Still as junky as the SUVs that you sell?"

      Yup, still as junky as the SUVs YOU buy.

      The profit margin on truck based SUVs is huge. You, the consumer are willing to pay way over the odds for something that uses 1970's technology and a modern body. Quite why YOU are so happy to do this is a mystery to me, but, given that YOU want to pay me to do it, I am happy to oblige, since the profit margins n the rest of the range are pretty lousy. Incidentally did you know that Toyota claim a return on sales of 1% in Aus
    • Fortunately, the scenario you're looking at IS getting less likely to happen.

      Newer cars are just as simple as an old carbureted car, just inherently different.

      Put simply, the computer measures air in, meters fuel, and corrects itself based on exhaust oxygen. The only thing different about the mess is that a computer controls it, not a godawfully inefficient mechanical wonder on top of your intake.

      If exhaust oxygen is low, catalytic converters work. Just like in an old car, you'd clean the carburetor, in a n

  • Its bleak. (Score:4, Insightful)

    by TenPin22 ( 213106 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @12:37AM (#13360260) Homepage
    The future of the car is very bleak given that at the current rate of oil consumption we have enough reserves (optimistically) for 40 years. Even that is irrelevant because oil production will peak over the next few years when demand is soaring in Asia.

    Forget about Hydrogen, it's only a means of energy storage not a source. There is no way we could biuld the infrastructure let alone produce enough hydrogen or hydrogen powered vehicles.

    Forget about LNG, there's no way we can replace even 5 million barrels of oil equivalent given that natural gas will peak in the next 15 years and North America has peaked already.

    Forget about biogas/biodiesel, most of it doesn't even have a positive net energy return.

    I would hazard a guess that if we maxed out all the alternative liquid fuels that we could use for air/road transportation we might make up less than 5% of global oil demand. That's a guess, I would be interested in some real numbers.

    Don't give me any of that "The markets will automatically react, adjust and allow alternatives to become economically viable" BS. The economic system that we live in depends on growing energy supplies to feed the system so that people can pay the interest on their loans. The energy supply is going to stop growing then start declining and the worlds economies will crash to various degrees: The larger they are, the harder they will fall.

    Personally I think hardly anyone will be driving cars in 10 years time.

    • Re:Its bleak. (Score:2, Insightful)

      by joelsanda ( 619660 )

      Don't give me any of that "The markets will automatically react, adjust and allow alternatives to become economically viable" BS. The economic system that we live in depends on growing energy supplies to feed the system so that people can pay the interest on their loans. The energy supply is going to stop growing then start declining and the worlds economies will crash to various degrees: The larger they are, the harder they will fall.

      I don't think this will happen - to the degree you seem to indicate.

    • Re:Its bleak. (Score:2, Informative)

      by tepples ( 727027 )

      Forget about biogas/biodiesel, most of it doesn't even have a positive net energy return.

      Correct, ethanol is storage not power, but biodiesel does have about a 4:1 energy return, and biodiesel grown without petrochemical fertilizers can have an even higher energy return.

  • Many problems yet to be solved. (Score:3, Interesting)

    by Pemdas ( 33265 ) * on Saturday August 20, 2005 @12:41AM (#13360272) Journal
    I've actually worked for a number of years on autonomous vehicle technologies, and am more than passingly familiar with most of this stuff.

    Wireless ad-hoc traffic information networks run into some major security issues. How do you establish trust? If the trust model is basically wide open, then antisocial people are going to put together systems which look at your route and start telling other cars "Avoid these roads at all costs! It's backed up for miles!", so that their own personal drive is relatively free of cars.

    How do you prevent this? Do you require warnings from multiple sources before you believe them? Then you've just increased the required critical mass before usability by an order of magnitude. Do you trust that automobile makers can put together some sort of embedded crypto system that's "secure enough" and "tamper proof"? Well, that's worked so well for the DRM people, hasn't it?

    Of course, if you're relying on the wireless system for safety, you're essentially giving the ability to swerve/brake hard to systems you don't own, so the matter of trust becomes even more significant, and liability becomes killer. Any way you tie the systems together to try to keep people safer, there's someone who's going to argue (with a non-negligable probability of success) that you should have done it a different way, and now you owe someone $millions.

    In addition, liability is going to keep this stuff down for a while yet. No autonomous system is ever going to be perfect, and when dealing with loss of human life, liability more or less demands perfection. If I could put together a fully autonomous system tomorrow which provably had 99% fewer accidents than human drivers, I'd still get sued by the 1%.

    This is the primary reason all remote sensing tech on the market today is in the form of "driver assist". If your system screws up, it's still primarily the driver's responsibility to avoid accidents.

    I'm not a complete pessimist. I don't think the issues I'm raising are insoluable, and I believe we'll have good autonomous systems eventually. I just think the problems are fundamentally hard, and the legal environment doesn't help; it may be a few decades before the more exotic stuff gets into production cars.
  • You any your buddies have just spent a night drinking. Nobody was nice enough to be the designated driver, and everyones broke from buying rounds of drinks (so no taxi)

    Cop see's your car, driving normally, but you're asleep at the wheel. He pulls you over, starts giving the DUI tests. Touch your nose while standing on one foot, recite the alphabet backwards, touch your fingers, etc. You're obviously smashed.

    Are you really driving drunk though? All you did was tell the car "take me home".

    When cars do st

  • Talk about a many-body problem (Score:3, Insightful)

    by SuperKendall ( 25149 ) * on Saturday August 20, 2005 @01:31AM (#13360460)
    I don't think this will ever become practical because the calculations and sensors and reliable communications really required to do this properly are going to be out of reach for a long time.

    Imagine a simple accident on a crowded highway - most cars slow down but one doesn't get the message, and comes upon the accident simply too fast to stop as dictated by the laws of physics and traction. Blam! An accident that did not have to happen if a driver could have seen the whole thing from further away.

    Is a computer supposed to really anticipate if an object by the side of the road is a hazard or not? I guess you bikers are out of luck because you'll confuse the hell out of the AI.

    I can also see humerous stories about things like flying debris from a truck going through the windshield of a car, which then arrives at the destination with a dead driver. Great I guess because no-one else got hurt, possibly bad if a real driver could have seen the debris and swerved and didn't have to die to start with.

    Take responsibility away from drivers and they really will abdicate all attention away from the road, meaning the most intelligent part of the car is out of commission. How soon to we get AI's that equal human intellect?

  • But who will be in the driver's seat? (Score:4, Funny)

    by mpaque ( 655244 ) on Saturday August 20, 2005 @02:00AM (#13360542)
    Why, Clippy, of course.

    http://msdn.microsoft.com/embedded/getstart/devpla t/winauto/default.aspx [microsoft.com]

    Clippy: "I see that you are attempting to apply the brakes. The Microsoft Brakes 2006 feature is not currently Installed. Please insert Microsoft Automotive Disk #7 in order to Install Microsoft Brakes 2006."

    What? You'd prefer a "Johnny Cab?"

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