RE: Self Driving Cars - A Technology Destined For Failure
Interesting, I believe cars will be forced into a different configuration, but I do not believe that their future is in danger.
On the roads, they must be maintained,or we starve, food flows on roads, and especially the big cities will starve quickly without regular delivery of foodstuff. So the roads must remain, or civilization collapses.
To the live downtown, and ride a bike, will Not work. I have done this myself for three years while I was in school. I lived through it, but it was not a decent way to live. I am not a Rabbit to live in a warren....
Self driven cars need a dedicated sealed road system that only a self driven car could access for high speed moves over significant distances, followed by ejection back to normal driving mode and speeds. These may take the form of linear accelerators for a roadway controlled run.
The configuration change will be a car that uses different power sources. Electric is obvious (Batteries, fuel cells, and superconductor energy storage), as well as CNG, Browne gas, alcohol, and high pressure air, but gasoline will remain due to existing infrastructure, and the possibility of synthetics.
That said, I do agree that the present auto drive car expectations are not reasonable, and will be beyond a cost effective solution for at least another decade. The hardware costs are prohibitive, and cars are hell on electronics! BUT we will see massive changes in cars them themselves. I am moving to the country myself, but I do NOT believe there is anyone big and mean enough to force me to live in a down town situation; and I am looking at building my own automobile powered by alternate energy.
Enjoyed your post a lot, thanks! :)
My current thoughts on an alternative energy car is a Tesla turbine powered by CNG or Propane driving a genset. Then, your standard electric motor drive. The problem with turbines has always been trying to build a transmission for a engine that doesn't like to change speeds much. But, running a genset should be easy, (technically easy) but there will be a lot of playing with fuel flows, inlet types and how to handle the heat, etc...
For actual transport, i feel we should start looking at mono-rail / i-beam tracks. And put automated cars and delivery pods on them. Trains and cars are really obsolete, except that the existing infrastructure, there is far better ideas.
All i can say is that the future will be interesting.
It will be interesting at that!I have an operational generator that will power the electric car I am building. I have not been able to load it down yet, so I am unsure of the maximum output thus far. But I can up-size it if I need to later.
:D