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You don't need autonomous vehicles for braking issues. Plenty of "safety" automatic braking systems have slammed the brakes on for no apparent reason. Funny we don't read much about it.
BTW, it's happened to numerous professional testers at places like CD, R&T, etc.
People see some motorcars but they say "no way those things will ever replace our existing setup". After all, they have trolleys and trains and ships and horses.
That's where we are with the EVs and with Autonomous Driving. It's not even a question any longer. At some point the insurance companies will say that you can pay $2000 a year for your ICE with manual control or $800 a year for your autonomous car. Add in the maintenance and fuel and it will cost big time if you want to drive. Plus, it's likely that when and if you get in accidents, it will be 100% confirmed it is your fault, because the systems will clearly show what you did. Then you will pay even more.
Those not in favor of autonomous vehicles are effectively saying "the millions of lives affected by car crashes are not as important as my feelings of pleasure when I floor my car".
There will be tracks and course for that stuff. I predict they won't be too popular. Look at Nascar - surely didn't end up being a sustainable setup.
Not exactly horses and cars.
Think more automatic vs manual transmissions.
I'm not sure that's true. The chemistry of the battery is well known. It is all about energy density, and that is pretty well known. Not much new chemistry to invent.
Sure there is, Lithium Ion replaced Nickel Metal Hydride, and Lithium-air or Aluminum-air is set to replace Lithium Ion. Until the Volt did it, no one used Lithium Ion in cars, and now everyone does. But replacement chemistry is being worked on quite heavily. When we will see it in mass production is the big question...
Not exactly horses and cars.
Think more automatic vs manual transmissions.
Well - the combination of:
Autonomy
Lack of ICE
Controls based heavily on Software
Is certainly more than just manual/automatic!
Electric cars will eventually be so simple (they already are - in the case of a Tesla 3) - you have eliminated thousands of parts and operations and simply went to an electric motor and the energy that powers it.
A Tesla drivetrain has 17 moving parts compared to 200 in an ICE vehicle.
ICE cars have something like 2,000 moving parts - Tesla far fewer.
This is not evolution. It is revolution. It's closer to the IC replacing the Vacuum Tube. This happens with many technologies - we do them the hard way first, then eventually figure out that there is a simpler way. Who would have thought a piece of sand would replace billions of tubes?
Even the small revolution of LED lighting is major in terms of the effect. 1/10th of the energy used. Bulbs that last 5 to 10X longer. That's not evolution. Halogen was evolution.
Autonomy
Lack of ICE
Controls based heavily on Software
Is certainly more than just manual/automatic!
Electric cars will eventually be so simple (they already are - in the case of a Tesla 3) - you have eliminated thousands of parts and operations and simply went to an electric motor and the energy that powers it.
A Tesla drivetrain has 17 moving parts compared to 200 in an ICE vehicle.
ICE cars have something like 2,000 moving parts - Tesla far fewer.
This is not evolution. It is revolution. It's closer to the IC replacing the Vacuum Tube. This happens with many technologies - we do them the hard way first, then eventually figure out that there is a simpler way. Who would have thought a piece of sand would replace billions of tubes?
Even the small revolution of LED lighting is major in terms of the effect. 1/10th of the energy used. Bulbs that last 5 to 10X longer. That's not evolution. Halogen was evolution.
Great way to put it, EV's are much much simpler than ICE vehicles. It's literally a car sized version of the electric scooter taking over the streets. I never even thought about it you don't have to worry about transmission problems, fuel pumps, any of that stuff wow this makes me very happy.
I suspect Autonomous Vehicle capability will be a big deal in the major cities with saturated traffic.
I'm imagining freeways in Los Angeles or in the Bay Area. Commuters suffer through hour+ commutes at stop-and-go or sub-30 mph speeds on freeways because of saturation. It is all about throughput - how many vehicles can pass a given point over the course of an hour. Adding throughput capability is frequently not feasible due to a combination of costs and lack of right-of-way.
Now, I can imagine AVs on freeways "linking" together like centipedes, shrinking the space between vehicles to inches or feet. This increases the throughput substantially. I can imagine commuters down in Silicon Valley or on the Peninsula hopping on 101 or 280 for the bone-crushing commute to San Francisco, and once they are on the freeway, their vehicle joins a centipede/train of 20 or 30 vehicles also headed to San Francisco. Along the way, other vehicles join the "train" of AVs linked wirelessly together and acting as one. Some vehicles break free of the train from the middle to exit the freeway along the way, and the train reassembles.
All this increases throughput.
This all fine and dandy, until one of these cars are hacked. The hacker can then do what they want with the vehicle, maybe while your in it. This is a problem they havent fixed yet. Vehicles linked together, as some will be. Hacking will effect several vehicles. Imagine this at rush hour. This is just one of many problems to solve.
There's plenty of benefits to autonomous driving from a big 'planning' perspective. People - especially in government - have been working on the concept for 40+ years both theoretically and practically. I think they already figured then that the technology would be available to make it work if everyone was forced to use it in a closed system, but not if you got 5 autonomous cars and 5 individually controlled ones and unpredictable factors like animals, pedestrians and cyclists. The technology for that is only now starting to become practical.
But there have been plenty of things that sounded great in papers and projects, and that nerdy fed scientists working for this or that department will argue for all day long...but that never took off in society at-large and never got the political support to force it on people. I suspect that this would be a pretty divisive issue. Many people hate giving up their independence and autonomy.
Imagine cars that have inbuilt mechanisms that if a traffic rule is broken the authorities are informed and tickets are automatically written and charged to the driver's account. Imagine a mechanism where the police could automatically stop a vehicle via remote control. Perhaps imagine an added mechanism where the driver could be remotely stopped from leaving the vehicle. Perfect for apprehending suspects with little manpower or danger, right?
Letting the government have access to your car is probably not what autonomous driving proponents envision, but it's not *so* far-fetched that it won't be used to rally civil libertarian opposition to any attempts to make autonomous driving more than an individual choice.
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