Davo Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 Ha ha . . . I live in a tiny town and use about twenty litres of petrol in a month . . . in fact, I need to drive the poor engine a little more. Welcome to the future! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Retroanaconda Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 Conversely I average over 100 miles a day - can't see home working catching on for me! The autonomous cars one is interesting, particularly how these 'issues' will be resolved. Insurance, liability etc. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shackleton Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 I'm doing my cars by hook or by crook now because I know it's over. These are the last years. No of course it won't happen overnight but it's already begun, and EV's (I'm not a fan at all) are already contributing to a better quality of life for many people. So not quite there for some but very practical for city living and short to mid commutes. I agree they haven't reached their optimum configuration (hydrogen powered/electric motored) neither for use nor the planet but literally every major manufacturer is throwing money at it and much of Europe is echoing Germany (as usual) in posturing to have fossil fuels phased out by 2030. That's only 10 years if you factor a few years for restoration RE autonomy in vehicles, I've no real interest in that either until I can tell my car to take me home from the local, but even then I'm not that lazy. The guy in the states who's Tesla ran into the truck was a great champion for autonomous vehicles, unfortunately his zeal was a little premature. Some of his videos of the car avoiding collisions were impressive. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 The problem with electric vehicles is the car manufacturers are doing it on their own. They need to do it with governments and petrol stations. I read somewhere that some electric vehicles in China are 5x more polluting than conventionally fuelled vehicles as the coal plants they are being charged from are very dirty. What they should develop is a standardised battery pack. A smart car might have one under each foot well. A people carrier might have one under each foot Well, 2 under the boot and 2 under the 'engine compartment'. The driver pulls into a garage and a guy with a little trolly swaps them out. You pay a fee which covers the depreciation on the batteries and the rechariging. From the users viewpoint the mileage is unlimited, the car is around £7k cheaper to buy as your not buying batteries outright and the station that's recharging them can have wind and solar and regulate the charging to match what's available. You only pull off the grid if your running out of charged batteries. Of course that would mean a pretty impressive rack to store and charge the batteries but I can't see how else they can replace the ic engine. U less you go the bmw route where they allow you to borrow ic cars so many times a year for the odd long trip. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shackleton Posted June 27, 2017 Share Posted June 27, 2017 (edited) The BMW i3 REX has a clever ic charging plant to go with it. Speaking to your point though; I believe what the car companies are working towards is hydrogen powered electric vehicles. That idea stomps all over the argument about the coal burning stations - which it should be said is the chief poo poo made by the EV naysayers, along with some horse **** about hydrogen fuelling stations not being prevalent enough. There were 60 in California last I read, if wiki is to be believed there could be 25+ active hydrogen stations in the UK today, and you can bet your ass fossil fuel stations didn't spring up across the western world over night. The reality regarding coal burning is many humans' lives are being powered by those stations anyway and they don't feature in the ultimate iteration of the EV. If you've ever passed a full blown oil refinery you'll know they're massively polluting just the same. Battery tech is leaping all the time, but packs large enough to power an EV a workable distance are not small enough yet that your [great] idea about swapping out when needed would be feasible. Edit: I've picked up this knowledge from a pal who is very into it, and I can't remember who but there is someone on youtube converting a LR to an EV. More than one actually. Edited June 27, 2017 by Shackleton Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Beardy Face Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 And the pro hydrogen brigade ignore the fact production is no more efficient than battery charging.. and uses just as much electricity, it still just exports the pollution to power plants. Tends to go bang in accidents too. Only advantages are faster refueling and more on-vehicle energy density. You don't get anything for nothing, basic physics. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Davo Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 I can't think of a single instance where humans, working in very large groups, haven't managed to completely stuff up every good idea humanity has ever had. So I'm not expecting some wonderful green revolution where suddenly we can all do whatever we want without paying for it in pollution or traffic or whatever. Usually we do the smart thing after we've been forced into it by circumstance and I suspect this situation will be the same. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
landroversforever Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 16 hours ago, CwazyWabbit said: I visited the office 4 times last month ...... that's 4 time more than in the previous 3 years. That's brilliant 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 There has been a hydrogen plant in Sheffield on the advanced manufacturing park for many years. It has its own wind turbine that it uses to generate electricity and the odd bus goes and fills up. That's how it should be done, the large amounts of electricity required to generate the hydrogen become less important as the environmental effect is reduced by the wind turbine and production of hydrogen can be matched to the output of the wind turbine as the hydrogen can be stored, for a short time anyway. The stop start green energy needs linking directly to things that can match it's output and store the energy in another form, blindly pumping it into the grid is just a headache and you can't decommission the traditional plants as you need them for when it's not windy / sunny etc. Nissan change out their EV batteries after 7 years, they still have life in them it's just they've got to the point that their capacity isn't acceptable to the customer. They are giving them a second life as a grid connected storage vessel. Not sure how or where but I guess it's a little better to get a bit more out of them before recycling them. One thing I think has been missed is parcel vans. There are dozens of LWB 3.5tonne vans around here running around with a few hundred kilos of parcels in them loosely scattered across the floor. You'd think with all the stop start, spare weight capacity and fact that they're parked up all night they'd suit EV. The drivers could have a fob they wore so that when they left the drivers seat it disabled drive to the vehicle but left the HVAC running for comfort. Got to be better than constantly stopping and starting a diesel? The government could even give a dispensation to 4.25 tonne electric vans so they don't need a tacho etc to give more battery capacity. TNT trialled a load of electric 7.5 tonners with around a 300 mile range but I don't know what came of it. These delivery companies are always looking for green points so you'd think it would be an obvious step? Maybe just too expensive? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Hybrid_From_Hell Posted June 28, 2017 Share Posted June 28, 2017 Mine has a mind of its f own already LOL 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
neil110 Posted June 30, 2017 Share Posted June 30, 2017 On 6/26/2017 at 3:32 PM, SPendrey said: I'd like to see one handle a green lane! Although, in truth, I hope they never do because I enjoy driving them. Unless things have changed markedly since I retired, that is one of the problems we had with computer controlled systems, their inability to predict events in a constantly changing environment Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Mo Murphy Posted July 1, 2017 Share Posted July 1, 2017 Aren't they already autonomous ? They steer where they want without any input from the driver. Mo ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
geoffbeaumont Posted July 1, 2017 Share Posted July 1, 2017 55 minutes ago, Mo Murphy said: Aren't they already autonomous ? They steer where they want without any input from the driver. Mo ? They've engineered that out of the newer ones. Now they're having to put some traditional land rover values back in by other means Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
landroversforever Posted July 1, 2017 Share Posted July 1, 2017 On 30/06/2017 at 11:20 AM, neil110 said: Unless things have changed markedly since I retired, that is one of the problems we had with computer controlled systems, their inability to predict events in a constantly changing environment One of the tennants at work has a self driving Bowler Wildcat which competed in a big rally raid type race just for autonomous cars. 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted July 2, 2017 Share Posted July 2, 2017 On 01/07/2017 at 10:12 PM, landroversforever said: One of the tennants at work has a self driving Bowler Wildcat which competed in a big rally raid type race just for autonomous cars. Not much traffic / pedestrians on that sort of thing though... much like electric cars they seem to be very carefully picking their battles, bigging up the stuff that is easier done and ignoring the rather tricky stuff they don't like. They're still easily fooled: google-self-driving-cars-get-confused-by-hipster-bicycles http://motrolix.com/2015/09/test-finds-self-driving-cars-could-be-easily-fooled/ https://www.digitaltrends.com/cars/driverless-cars-mother-nature-may-have-a-few-things-to-say-about-that/ http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20170410-how-to-fool-artificial-intelligence I just have an image of car-jackers of the future stealing your car in a Wylie Coyote style by painting a tunnel on the back of a truck and trapping it inside or just painting white lines in a circle around it so it can't calculate a "legal" way out. 3 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Shackleton Posted July 2, 2017 Share Posted July 2, 2017 Couple of awesome articles there (In the public interest I move that the tunnel painted truck "experiment" be carried out post haste) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Inigo Posted July 3, 2017 Share Posted July 3, 2017 I liked this one: https://creators.vice.com/en_us/article/qkmeyd/meet-the-artist-using-ritual-magic-to-trap-self-driving-cars 1 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 I enjoyed this - worn out white lines confuse it: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos-autonomous-infrastructure-insig-idUSKCN0WX131 Quote Volvo's North American CEO, Lex Kerssemakers, lost his cool as the automaker's semi-autonomous prototype sporadically refused to drive itself during a press event at the Los Angeles Auto Show. "It can't find the lane markings!" Kerssemakers griped to Mayor Eric Garcetti, who was at the wheel. "You need to paint the bloody roads here!" Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Bowie69 Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 Or.... you need to make a car that doesn't rely on white lines? Sigh Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
FridgeFreezer Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 1st time a builder's wagon spills a tin of dulux down the road there's going to be a pile-up Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mad_pete Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 I think those articles are missing the point . Yes AI isn't perfect (yet) but humans also make perception errors get tired and get distracted. The stop sign is the only one that's an octagon so really should be easy to pick out even with a sticker on (that's why it's the only one that's an octagon....). I was at Beaulieu at the weekend and think the newspapers carried similar articles about 100 years ago as people driven cars were just starting to come on the scene. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
cackshifter Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 It seems amazing that we are even considering driverless cars when we can't yet have driverless trains or trams, and they don't even have to steer. And who fancies flying by drone? Surely much easier than coping with the North Circular on a wet Monday morning. The problem as I see it is when the driverless car is faced with either possibly killing its passenger or hitting a bus queue. How does it decide? Google would presumably feed it all life stories so it could decide who was worth saving. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
GW8IZR Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 there are driverless trains in use in many cities. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
mad_pete Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 1 hour ago, cackshifter said: It seems amazing that we are even considering driverless cars when we can't yet have driverless trains or trams, and they don't even have to steer. And who fancies flying by drone? Surely much easier than coping with the North Circular on a wet Monday morning. The problem as I see it is when the driverless car is faced with either possibly killing its passenger or hitting a bus queue. How does it decide? Google would presumably feed it all life stories so it could decide who was worth saving. How often does that really come up in driving ? If you are near a bus queue it's a 30, passenger should survive that. Other than that it's so rare how much is it going to matter based on the fact a human will randomly pick on or other or both. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Cynic-al Posted July 5, 2017 Share Posted July 5, 2017 Heathrow has driverless cars in this country to take you from the car park to terminal. They have their own lanes and you call them from a stop then tell them when to go. All very confined though. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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