Driverless Cars

[3930dave]

Please watch this & decide for Yourself.

Tony Seba: Clean Disruption - Energy & Transportation - YouTube

Having lived through (and worked within) a few business and tech inflection points, I agree with some of what he said. Urban adoption rates for autonomous EVs (Uber fleets) will be fast.

TBN'ers who pick up groceries with 1 ton trucks, a bit slower.....

Biggest hurdle is not tech, but regulatory. Can't imagine that the US govt is in a big hurry to wreck both the auto and oil industry, simultaneously.

Rgds, D.

 

[/pine]

Having lived through (and worked within) a few business and tech inflection points, I agree with some of what he said. Urban adoption rates for autonomous EVs (Uber fleets) will be fast.

TBN'ers who pick up groceries with 1 ton trucks, a bit slower.....

Biggest hurdle is not tech, but regulatory. Can't imagine that the US govt is in a big hurry to wreck both the auto and oil industry, simultaneously.

Rgds, D.

The oil/gas industry is here to stay...they're not going anywhere ever...they may go through some transformations but recycling only offers so much...Technology is leaning towards replacing iron and steel with carbon and other fiber materials that are stronger and lighter...most are derived from crude, coal or gas feedstocks...

The key is improving the synthesis methods by reducing the energy required and finding ways to neutralize green house gas emissions in the processes...

 

[rd_macgregor]

I wonder what the insurance industry thinks of all this. Assigning responsibility when accidents (inevitably!) occur may be a nightmare...the police will need to get a lot more sophisticated, too. Car chase videos may look a lot different in 10 or 15 years...or maybe all vehicles will have some sort of emergency master override by then that lets the authorities shut down an errant vehicle.

 

[cqaigy2]

And people aren't getting better at handling their vehicles, so what happens when the car "hands" the wheel back to the driver? Not a tech problem, but one that tech will be expected to fix, because the cost of training to handle the vehicle effectively will be high.

 

[oosik]

What will we be expected to do when - riding in your driverless car - error code- 1721 flashes on the video monitor in BIG RED FLASHING LETTERS. Remember - you are buckled up and unable to bend over and kiss it goodbye.

How is the driverless/driver controlled scenario going to play out. I see road rage at its max.

Somehow I don't see the major oil companies taking the electric car revolution lying down.

Interesting times are on the horizon..........

 

[quicksandfarmer]

I wonder what the insurance industry thinks of all this. Assigning responsibility when accidents (inevitably!) occur may be a nightmare...the police will need to get a lot more sophisticated, too. Car chase videos may look a lot different in 10 or 15 years...or maybe all vehicles will have some sort of emergency master override by then that lets the authorities shut down an errant vehicle.

I think as an industry it will be a boon for insurance.

Driverless cars won't be allowed on the roads until they are significantly safer than human drivers. Which means overall fewer accidents, and smaller payouts by insurance companies.
There will be some interesting times while the insurance companies figure out whose company pays in particular cases, but overall they're going to be paying out so much less that it won't be hard to figure out.

 

[quicksandfarmer]

What will we be expected to do when - riding in your driverless car - error code- 1721 flashes on the video monitor in BIG RED FLASHING LETTERS. Remember - you are buckled up and unable to bend over and kiss it goodbye.

How is the driverless/driver controlled scenario going to play out. I see road rage at its max.

Somehow I don't see the major oil companies taking the electric car revolution lying down.

Interesting times are on the horizon..........

What do you do today when you're driving and the engine quits?

Do you realize that in today's cars, when you step on the gas you're not controlling the engine, you're sending a signal to a computer that controls the engine? And when you step on the brakes, you're sending a signal to the computer that controls the brakes? And it's been that way for about 30 years?

 

[3930dave]

And people aren't getting better at handling their vehicles, so what happens when the car "hands" the wheel back to the driver?

There's a good, albeit more complex, leading example of this situation. In the last 20 years, there's been concern growing in aviation, as avoidable accidents and crashes are occurring when pilots have to intervene when automatic systems fail or act up. Those situations are more complex than most on-road incidents, but aviation personnel also go through much more extensive training, so I see a good parallel with autonomous cars.....

2030..... you're heading through a Winter storm, and sensor arrays go down on your Tesla Z..... let's see how fast (and more importantly, successfully....) you can add to your total of 12 hours of hands-on driving time......

By then, available cars will probably be Level5.... those won't have human useable controls in 'em......

Rgds, D.

 

[3930dave]

...or maybe all vehicles will have some sort of emergency master override by then that lets the authorities shut down an errant vehicle.

Onstar could do that, at least on certain vehicles, some time back....

Rgds, D

 

[aczlan]

Onstar could do that, at least on certain vehicles, some time back....
Rgds, D

Given that the new Onstar app can let you remote start your car from your phone, I would be surprised if any Onstar equipped vehicle that still talks to the cell network COULDNT do that.

Aaron Z

 

[/pine]

According to this man's imagination...the reality is there could be personal pilot-less flying vehicles as soon as there are autonomous wheeled vehicles...

Self-driving car experts offer online degree in 'flying cars' | Reuters

 

[John Fitzgerald]

I think the whole concept is unworkable except in designated routes in or near large cities and not going to happen for most of us.

 

[3930dave]

Given that the new Onstar app can let you remote start your car from your phone, I would be surprised if any Onstar equipped vehicle that still talks to the cell network COULDNT do that.

Aaron Z

I've been hanging around TBN long enough to keep in mind there are often factory engineers about.... So statements like Anything Onstar can lead to corrections like "except early production MYr 2014 Cruze without software patch XYZ+" etc...... so I'm generally loathe to make blanket statements about systems I don't know intimately.....

But yes, today, that telemetry is trivial. Heck, Google (or for that matter, just a top San Jose high-school geek club) probably has a secret Bagged-Bogey list of all the cars they can shut down remotely.....

Vehicle non-physical security is an issue, but that also applies to regular new vehicles.... Probably a good business to get into, crack-proofing the IT on high-end vehicles.....

Rgds, D.

 

[Mace Canute]

Why Tesla'''s Autopilot Can'''t See a Stopped Firetruck | WIRED

 

[Raspy]

Why Tesla'''s Autopilot Can'''t See a Stopped Firetruck | WIRED

Very interesting article. I'm suddenly much less trusting of this technology. Thanks Mace

 

[3930dave]

Why Tesla'''s Autopilot Can'''t See a Stopped Firetruck | WIRED

Yikes. Good article - well illustrates part of why I started this thread..... I'm a firm believer that if you are going to bet your life on a technology, it's a really good idea to completely understand the limitations.....

What's one of the first things covered in defensive driving..... Scan at least 1 mile down the road !

You won't see that traffic scenario every day, but it's not one in a million either.....

Rgds, D.

 

[cqaigy2]

Yikes. Good article - well illustrates part of why I started this thread..... I'm a firm believer that if you are going to bet your life on a technology, it's a really good idea to completely understand the limitations.....

What's one of the first things covered in defensive driving..... Scan at least 1 mile down the road !

You won't see that traffic scenario every day, but it's not one in a million either.....

Rgds, D.

True, and you only have to mess up one time.

 

[rd_macgregor]

This technology still has a long way to go. The rudimentary first steps clearly show that it encourages complacency in drivers. After the system successfully maneuvers a little ways, the "driver" starts to lose focus and gets distracted into other activities. Being perpetually ready to second-guess and override the self-driver just isn't going to happen, so the systems need to be more nearly foolproof than they are now.

 

[3930dave]

This technology still has a long way to go. The rudimentary first steps clearly show that it encourages complacency in drivers. After the system successfully maneuvers a little ways, the "driver" starts to lose focus and gets distracted into other activities. Being perpetually ready to second-guess and override the self-driver just isn't going to happen, so the systems need to be more nearly foolproof than they are now.

One thing I will be looking for is market acceptance in Germany, on the tech side of things.

Not really apples/apples to here though, as driving trainer is reportedly much higher in Germany.

Rgds, D.

 

[NorTracNY]

As long as sensors fail, there will be major challenges to this. I don't understand how the companies will be able to handle the lawsuits that will results. There is a younger generation that is working on this. So there is a lot of thought and energy going in, but my experience says it's a LONG way off for fully automated. How much sensor redundancy will you need? How much road salt, snow covering, and dirt before the car can't function? Living in NY tells me no way will this be workable. Most sensors can't work through snow.

I was shocked when a friend told me his F350 cut out on him when he was on a one lane bridge last year. He luckily was able to glide off the bridge to the side of the road with the momentum his truck had. The truck would not restart and needed to be towed. The problem was an oxygen senor in the engine. There was NOTHING wrong with the engine. Just the senor stopped working. The geniuses decided that if this senor goes off or fails, the truck should immediately stop! I certainly don't trust a company that fails here to be successful at fully automating a car.