Are Driverless Cars Finally Here?
No longer science fiction, autonomous vehicles have the potential to reshape the transportation landscape. But are drivers ready to let go of the wheel?
"In 2004, when the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency held its first Grand Challenge for driverless cars, none made it more than seven miles. At Darpa’s next Grand Challenge, in 2005, five cars made it 132 miles to the finish. And then, last month, six cars completed a 60-mile course that was the grandest challenge yet because they had to deal with traffic along the way.
These empty cars drove themselves around an Air Force base in Southern California, finding parking spots, obeying stop signs, idling in traffic, yielding to other cars at intersections and merging into traffic at 30 m.p.h. There was one accident and a few near misses, but the cars’ engineers are so buoyed by the results that they’re hoping the next competition will be a high-speed race on a Grand Prix course.
“Within five years, it’s totally feasible to build an autonomous car that will work reliably in several limited domains,” says Sebastian Thrun, a computer scientist at Stanford and head of its racing team, which won the 2005 Darpa competition and finished second in last month’s. In five years he expects a car that could take over simple chores like breezing along an expressway, inching along in stop-and-go traffic, or parking in the lot at a mall or airport after dropping off the driver. In 20 years, Dr. Thrun figures half of new cars sold will offer drivers the option of turning over these chores to a computer, but he acknowledges that’s just an educated guess. While he doesn’t doubt cars will be able to drive themselves, he’s not sure how many humans will let them."
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Driverless and fuel-less
Have any of these geniuses considered how we are going to run all of these automatic cars? Don't tell me hydrogen, I'm sick of it.
Current yearly rate of increase for a gallon of gasoline: $0.82 cents. So, five years from now, if production remains stable and no major catastrophe ensues, we will have $7.09/gallon. Production peaked in 2005, so until you can show me a graph with production going up since 2005, I'm right. You can kiss your happy motoring utopia goodbye.
All of this money and research is being wasted on techno gizmos.
Plug-In Hybrids
Unfortunately, it looks like plug-in hybrids are going to take the edge off of rising gasoline prices.
Toyota says it is planning to start selling one in 2009. The electricity to run it will cost about two-fifths as much per mile as the gasoline to run a conventional hybrid (at current prices), largely because electricity prices are regulated and are less than marginal cost.
I expect that plug-in hybrids will take over the market very quickly, because they let you avoid high gas prices. If so, some results will be:
-- More VMT: though plug-in hybrids emit about 85% as much CO2 per mile as ordinary hybrids, lower fuel costs will encourage people to drive more miles, so there will be more congestion and sprawl and no reduction of ghg emissions (compared with ordinary hybrids).
-- More SUVs: with the lower fuel cost, there will no longer be a disincentive to buy a plug-in hybrid SUV. The regulated cost of electricity generally causes wasteful use of energy, and the plug-in hybrid Hummer will be the ultimate example.
-- A slower transition to clean electricity: with this large new source of demand for electricity, it will be harder to retire the most polluting coal plants: even as we build alternative power plants, we will still need the electricity from the coal plants. And it will be harder to shift to solar energy, because hybrids are charged at night, when the sun doesn't shine.
-- Higher electricty prices: increased demand will drive up prices, even in the regulated electricity market. People will have to pay more for the electricity that they use for useful purposes, because other people are using electricity to power their SUVs.
There is no guarantee about any new technology, but it does seem likely that plug-in hybrids will take over, given rising gas prices.
If so, we will not be able to rely on rising gas prices to help transform our cities into more livable and more convenient patterns of settlement.
Charles Siegel
No, Hal !! Do NOT park the car right now !!
Lexus now offers a model that parks itself. In this car, there are two words never to be used together while driving down a freeway: "Park" and "Car". The Lexus little computer voice will interupt with, "Dave? Do you really want me to park the car now?" "Dave? I'm not sure that would be a good idea, Dave." "Wouldn't you rather wait until we're moving at a slower speed, Dave?"