Autonomous Cars - The Future

BodyButter

BodyButter

Vital Football Legend
A company have started trialing self-driving taxis in Singapore. It's very limited at the moment, as you'd expect, but it's testing something that anyone with an eye on the future car see coming down the road.

Everyone from Google and Apple to Ford and Volvo is scrambling to get something on the market ASAP. Tesla have promised fully-autonomous cars in 2018. Most other manufacturers are looking towards 2020.

Obviously, this has huge implications for everyone. Anyone thinking about buying a new car would want to think again. Cars you have to drive yourself will plumber in value as the world adapts to the new system. Car parks will be empty. Electricity consumption will soar if these vehicles are fully electric.

It will also have massive implications on car design. If we aren't driving, the focus on comfort and entertainment will replace safety and cost of ownership as the main concerns for customs.

It will also put millions of drivers out of work.
 
It's all well and good having machines do all the work for us in the future but what happens to jobs? How are people supposed to make a living when a machine can do the same job, without human error and not demand a salary?

Is any of it really being thought through?

 
In 1981 my late Mom was told by a manager where she was working at the time ''that he had just seen a machine that would put 11 out of 12 people out of work''

That machine ofcourse was the PC/laptop www world. It did lose alot of jobs. We are now a service industry country instead of a trade industry country
 
HeathfieldRoad1874 - 14/2/2017 20:52

It's the same argument they had at the start of the Industrial Revolution, computer age and robotics. We find a way.
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Perhaps.

I did watch a documentary a while back about the future, where most human labour had been replaced by machines, and theories and ideas on how it could work.

But that was coming from a world where huge changes had taken place and we lived in a far more caring society where people and the environment were the priorities.

It's a far cry from the world we live in now.
 
HeathfieldRoad1874 - 15/2/2017 05:52

It's the same argument they had at the start of the Industrial Revolution, computer age and robotics. We find a way.
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It certainly feels like we are coming to the end of an age. Trump, Brexit, the probable end of the Euro if Le Pen wins in France, self-driving cars will have a huge impact and then comes AI.

Interesting times.
 
BodyButter - 15/2/2017 06:54

HeathfieldRoad1874 - 15/2/2017 05:52

It's the same argument they had at the start of the Industrial Revolution, computer age and robotics. We find a way.
Click to expand...

It certainly feels like we are coming to the end of an age. Trump, Brexit, the probable end of the Euro if Le Pen wins in France, self-driving cars will have a huge impact and then comes AI.

Interesting times.
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We will be driving on the right hand side of the road soon too, Cars will start next Tuesday and it if its a success Lorrys and Busses will change on the Thursday.

 
Only just seen this.

I don't even like driving an automatic to be honest, so the above wouldn't suit me!
 
I think we are light years away from these cars yet , many companies playing about with this , in fact most of them are .
We were talking about it in a meeting last week about HEV's PHEV's MHev's Bev's and all the Electrification vehicles . Battery vehicles would flatten the national grid if we suddenly all bought one.
I can't imagine one that was controlled purely by my Garmin satnav let alone a fully automated one !!!
 
Villan57 - 22/2/2017 05:42

I think we are light years away from these cars yet , many companies playing about with this , in fact most of them are .
We were talking about it in a meeting last week about HEV's PHEV's MHev's Bev's and all the Electrification vehicles . Battery vehicles would flatten the national grid if we suddenly all bought one.
I can't imagine one that was controlled purely by my Garmin satnav let alone a fully automated one !!!
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Don't you work in the car industry? Tesla are talking about having a self-driving car for sale in 2018. The others are looking at 2020.

I saw the Daily Mail ran a story about the UK running out of electricity if everyone switched to electric cars. Of course, it's totally misrepresenting the reality of the situation (it's the Daily Mail). Still, electric cars are the future one way or other.

The real concern is the millions of people who make their income from driving. It's going to become a bigger issue than electricity supply.
 
Employment has three basic functions. It is a means of generating wealth, iy is a means of distrubuting that wealth and it provides people with structure and meaning in their lives.

I'd argue that it is not very good at any of those things but society ceases to function if you do away with/replace just one; it has to be all three and at more or less the same time.
 
:2: Looking at it from a slightly different prospective, does that mean we won't need to pay motor insurance anymore?

If this is so, then I'm all for it..... :4:

:19:

 
Chastitty - 4/3/2017 00:32

Employment has three basic functions. It is a means of generating wealth, iy is a means of distrubuting that wealth and it provides people with structure and meaning in their lives.

I'd argue that it is not very good at any of those things but society ceases to function if you do away with/replace just one; it has to be all three and at more or less the same time.
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If autonomous vehicles take over as predicted, millions of people will be out of work.

Elon Musk and those boys are predicting an AI revolution but I'm not sure how far off that is.

If we were better at organising society, we could dedicate those millions of hands and brains to projects benefiting humanity but we seem incapable of thinking that big. We'll probably just have a big war and have them all shoot each other.
 
France has announced that it's going to ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2040.

Why? Petrol and diesel cars will be obsolete by then anyway. Volvo announced yesterday that all of its cars will be hybrid or electric by 2019. Tesla has started production of the $35k Model 3 this week.

Governments really need to be pushing us forward, not waiting for the change to happen and the retrospectively acting.

They could ban the sale of petrol and diesel cars by 2020 and the public won't notice.
 
If this new method of separating Hydrogen from water works out, then Hydrogen cars will be the future, not horrible, non-recyclable, poison laden batteries.

It could cut the production to just 10% of current costs. The only emission would be water, I think.

https://phys.org/news/2016-12-approach-hydrogen-production.html
 
All this talk of electric vehicles, how would the national grid cope if the motor industry went all electric.
 
Fulford - 7/7/2017 21:34

All this talk of electric vehicles, how would the national grid cope if the motor industry went all electric.
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The motor industry is going all electric at a very rapid pace. We need politicians to get out in front of this issue and direct it rather than hysterically believing that the market will solve everything.

We need politicians with vision to shape the future rather than constantly reacting to yesterday's crisis.
 
I work in the battery industry and I'm involved in the Lithium development that's currently going on. I also have a close contact with the fuel cell industry too. It already exists and several thousand trucks are out there mainly in the USA with fuel cells. The issue is the cost , safety and complexity of producing the Hydrogen. You cannot have the means of production within 100 metres of a warehouse. Work is going on in lower cost refuling stations.
Also charge points for electric cars are becoming more available and I was told yesterday of a low cost system using lampposts as source.
 
Fulford - 7/7/2017 12:34

All this talk of electric vehicles, how would the national grid cope if the motor industry went all electric.
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We have more capacity than you think. Renewables are growing at an enormous rate. Oil uses electricity when it's refined, so cut down consumption, and we free up resources.

Easy.
 
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