1434 replies to this topic

[Guy In Rubber Suit]

It will be a fancy option at first. People will set the car to auto-drive and read a book or magazine with the radio on in the background.

That's pretty much the reason that I want self-driving cars. I'm not big on driving, even though I do it every day. All the time spent in the car, I can catch up on tons of reading and handheld video games. I could take the bus to work, however I would have to wake up a couple hours earlier than I normally do and I'd get home a couple hours later than I normally would.

[Ryan8bit]

What would you think of personal rapid transit as opposed to self driving cars? They would be even safer although they would require a big infrastructure. I think I'd feel more comfortable about that.

[Shervz0r]

What would you think of personal rapid transit as opposed to self driving cars? They would be even safer although they would require a big infrastructure. I think I'd feel more comfortable about that.

Ideally, sure...but only if it's as expansive as our road infra. Otherwise, it's too limiting. I dream of the day when we commute by tube.

[arise_shine]

I remember reading about a flying car a few years ago, similar to the one in this article. Maybe it was the same thing, but in an early prototype stage. Yeah, it sounds pretty cool, basically a Transformers type vehicle, but the reality of it seems not that great. I guess it would be nice not to have to have a separate vehicle to drive to your private hangar, and to not have to rent a car in your destination city ... But the thing that makes Jetsons-style flying cars so rad is their maneuverability: you can take off from the car port attached to your condo on the 348th floor and just zoom on over to Spaceley Sprockets for your triple shift.

As for automatic cars .. I remain skeptical. There are so many variables that influence how humans drive, that I'd think a computer would have to be VERY powerful to keep track of everything. A few years ago, my former employer participated in the DARPA Challenge, a race for automatic vehicles, and most entries didn't even finish. And if you had a few hundred of these in traffic, and something out of the ordinary happens (not if, but when), I could see the whole thing grinding to a halt and/or going haywire. Like when automated traders on Wall Street trigger runaway selloffs.

I like the "series of tubes" transporter idea, a la Futurama. They've been doing that in bank drive-thrus for decades, I think it's time for human-sized tube transporter thingies.

[raubhimself]

That flying car is cool on the surface but really completely useless. It takes up more space than a car, presumably uses more energy than a car, and has seemingly no storage capacity. And if it's propeller based you can't start and stop so it can't travel like a car anyways. It's really just a drivable plane, not a flying car.

Honestly I think if we truly want to maximize potential with travel technology we need to raze every city and start over. Most modern cities are heavily influenced by the automobile, but many older east coast cities were designed with only the most basic travel needs in mind and they don't even work well for cars. You can only shoehorn so much.

[XMark]

Yeah, unless some kind of crazy anti-gravity technology is discovered that consumes a tiny amount of energy to keep a car in flight, flying cars will never make sense from the perspective of energy efficiency versus ground-based travel.

Hovercars, on the other hand, could make sense. Taking advantage of the lack of friction while hovering above electromagnetic rails in all the roads, and just hitting buttons to tell the car whether to turn at an upcoming intersection (or you just set an end point and it figures out the route for you). You'd never have to gas up - your car would have a unique ID that the road grid tracks your usage with, and you'd be billed for your energy use accordingly.

[Radioeyes]

I like the autodrive concept, but I can see how a lot of suspicious people would be highly reluctant to having them on the road. Front page news, the very first time someone dies in an accident involving autodrive.

I really wonder how the insurance companies might handle this. Maybe they're better than humans, on average, so the insurance company gives you a discount for letting your Kia drive itself. However, when Dumbass Dudley driving the F950 pickup doesn't check his blind spot and crunches you, you had better bet your ass that he will claim your autodrive caused the crash. With crazy insurance and no-fault laws varying wildly from state to state, this gets complicated very quickly.

The only way out of this I'm envisioning are autodrive-only lanes or roads, exclusive to larger metropolitan areas.

[Rize]

You can bet your sweet ass that auto-drive cars will have upgraded black box technology that records a detailed log of events on rotation so that it can be used as evidence in court if needed. The box will make physical measurements of what the car is actually doing via independent sensors (certified by a government agency) in addition to a log of the driving instructions the car was given by the AI. They'll know what the AI wanted the car to do and what the car actually did and what the car was forced to do by the accident. That ought to give a very clear picture of who caused what. Insurance companies will have people on staff who can evaluate the black box data.

[armor]

You can bet that newer man driven vehicles will incorporate the same black box technology to scare freedom-drivers into going auto.

I can't believe there are still so many trucks on the road, trains are so much more efficient.

It's funny that autodrive crashes would be big news that might destroy the chances of the technology because when over one hundred people die in conventional automobiles every day it's no big deal.

[Leonidus]

Hopefully autodrive is developed further by the military into autokill and they make an automobile robot warrior army to spread freedom and democracy into mexico.

[Guy In Rubber Suit]

..trains are so much more efficient.

I really wish we would put some money aside for the high-speed rail system for the USA. Unfortunately, a lot of the airline companies are afraid of it, which is one reason why it's been stalled.

[Radioeyes]

Now this seems interesting.

Koepf, a doctoral candidate in mechanical engineering, has designed a novel reactor that employs highly concentrated sunlight and zinc oxide powder to produce solar hydrogen, a truly clean, sustainable fuel with zero emissions.

Essentially, the machine takes in zinc oxide powder, water, and concentrated sunlight. The chemical reaction produces pure hydrogen, with byproducts of zinc and oxygen, which chemically recombine into the very fuel you put into it.

It's clearly a lot less controversial than the primary way hydrogen is harvested, that is, reclaiming it from burned hydrocarbons.

I'm very curious as to the efficiency of this contraption's conversion of direct sunlight to hydrogen versus a photovoltaic connected to a electrolysis apparatus.

[Rize]

Very nice. Instead of photo-voltaic, it's a photo-chemical reaction. If it produces zinc oxide at the same rate as at burns it, then the sum results would be simply converting solar energy into hydrogen. The machine sounds very complex though. It could be difficult to maintain.

EDIT:

Some things to keep in mind about liquid hydrogen. It's highly reactive (dangerous), has 3 times the volume of gasoline for the same energy content (takes up a lot of space in the vehicle) and of course there are no hydrogen gas stations presently and may never be. Currently it is a good fit for mass transit like buses in cities that make short trips and can return to a special hub for refueling. Not good for Interstate travel and mass consumption though.

[arise_shine]

Yeah, I think that's a big knock against fuel cells, isn't it? It requires highly reactive/flammable hydrogen for fuel?

I keep waiting for plasma arc technology to mature. Feed it trash, and get power out of it. Reduce landfills, and provide energy. Byproducts could be problematic though, but is it worse than burying that crap in landfills?

[Radioeyes]

Some things to keep in mind about liquid hydrogen. It's highly reactive (dangerous), has 3 times the volume of gasoline for the same energy content

Both very true, which is why people are studying ways to contain and pressurize it safely and efficiently.

Any energy storage medium, be it gasoline, propane, lithium batteries, supercapacitors or even flywheels pack a ton of energy into a small space, so there's always going to be some inherent risk. If all we worried about was risk, then we'd have ditched gasoline back when Pintos were blowing up after every wreck. I liken it to, "if the Hindenburg was full of gasoline, the whole city of Lakehurst, NJ would have been fucked."

There's a lot of fascinating work using carbon "meshes" to increase hydrogen's density. It seems really counter-intuitive to increase the amount of hydrogen in a fixed volume by adding other crap to there, but it really works.

The simple example is that, given two jars at room temperature and 1 atmosphere of pressure, there is far, far more hydrogen in 1 liter of water than there is in 1 liter of pure hydrogen gas. You've increased its density by storing it at a lower energy-state (in oxygen bonds). Whereas you have to use a ridiculous amount of energy to liberate hydrogen from water, it can be liberated from carbon meshes just by heating it.

The research into using hydrogen as a portable fuel is mostly along the lines of how to manufacture these meshes cheaply, and redesigning other containers/fuel lines/etc such that they won't corrode or leak from hydrogen exposure. I'm not saying it's the silver-bullet solution to everything, but it's a field that's quickly evolving and thus very interesting.