Are we on the brink of an electric car revolution?

fuzzy · Post by **fuzzy** » 21 Mar 2018, 08:08

Guys the sun is shining today. Walk up the biggest hill near you, or dig some spuds out.

Thank you, that is all.

Little John · Post by **Little John** » 21 Mar 2018, 09:44

Aye... It's shining here...

Mr. Fox · Post by **Mr. Fox** » 21 Mar 2018, 10:11

...and here!

Whilst in Tempe, Arizona, it's a bit more:

Potemkin Villager · Post by **Potemkin Villager** » 21 Mar 2018, 12:08

fuzzy wrote:Guys the sun is shining today. Walk up the biggest hill near you, or dig some spuds out.

Thank you, that is all.

I agree. Although pedantically there are no spuds left to dig out.

RenewableCandy · Post by **RenewableCandy** » 21 Mar 2018, 16:53

I got as far as stringing up some washing. Our weather-station now says it's going to rain...

Meanwhile most 'automatic' things mistake my slight form for a cat and fail completely to respond. Oh, except metal-detectors, which tend to think I'm metal (WELL SHE IS!! _ed)

Therefore the prospect of silent cars who fail to see me is one I find... un-nerving.

And there's more... I seem to recall that someone in the States once found that an automatic hand-drier couldn't detect black persons' hands... was the woman black by any chance?

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 22 Mar 2018, 01:31

No. She was wheeling her unlit bicycle across the road and wearing dark clothing. I guess the bicycle blocked her infrared signal and scattered the lidar signal and it was too dark for visual object recognition. To be honest, from the onboard video I doubt many human drivers would have spotted her in time. The car was on dipped headlights, on full beam she would have been easily spotted. That said, the released video of the emergency human driver shows a person less than fully concentrating.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 22 Mar 2018, 14:11

PS_RalphW wrote:No. She was wheeling her unlit bicycle across the road and wearing dark clothing. I guess the bicycle blocked her infrared signal and scattered the lidar signal and it was too dark for visual object recognition. To be honest, from the onboard video I doubt many human drivers would have spotted her in time. The car was on dipped headlights, on full beam she would have been easily spotted. That said, the released video of the emergency human driver shows a person less than fully concentrating.

This just shows that we still have a way to go before autonomous cars are completely safe. What we are seeing now is that autonomous cars are probably a lot safer than human drivers but the humans don't want to acknowledge that fact. We will demand that autonomous cars are 100% safe before they are wheeled out on a large scale to protect our egos and our ability to get somewhere a few minutes quicker than everyone else.

If the accident is as Ralph says it just shows that humans have the ingenuity to circumvent most safety measures if we try hard enough and will always manage to do it somehow. By insisting that there is a human driver to supervise we are giving the human driver the least suitable job. Time and time again it has been shown that humans don't do boring very well and that machines are much better at "boring" while humans are better at the exciting stuff.

Aircraft are a case in point. The humans get the exiting take off and landing while "Charlie" gets the boring in flight control. Reversing a car into a parking space, though, would seem to be beyond the remit of many people but quite simple for a machine!

I think that the sooner we get a large majority of completely autonomous cars on our roads the better for us and the climate but we will have to find a way to stop humans, and especially young humans, playing chicken with oncoming vehicles. Perhaps roads will have to be completely fenced off eventually.

PS_RalphW · Post by **PS_RalphW** » 22 Mar 2018, 14:23

I still don't see autonomous cars as having a big market, at least in the UK. For one thing, they will (more or less) stick to speed limits, which will remove the long distance market where most people consistently drive 10mph over the limit to get there as fast as possible. As for the regular commute, that must be the hardest thing to automate, as the number and variety of hazards are enormous, and the least hesitation will see you get cut up. You will get the off peak and retired market, who are in less of a hurry, but they tend to be slower , more efficient, and cause least congestion.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 22 Mar 2018, 16:05

The early market will be for taxis, I would think, and then transport links to train and bus stations for commuter traffic. I would then think that regulation, insurance costs and good old fashion and peer pressure will force people into mainly hired, light weight, electric, autonomous vehicles.

That is if the current economic system last long enough, of course.

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 22 Mar 2018, 16:41

PS_RalphW wrote:I still don't see autonomous cars as having a big market, at least in the UK. For one thing, they will (more or less) stick to speed limits, which will remove the long distance market where most people consistently drive 10mph over the limit to get there as fast as possible. As for the regular commute, that must be the hardest thing to automate, as the number and variety of hazards are enormous, and the least hesitation will see you get cut up. You will get the off peak and retired market, who are in less of a hurry, but they tend to be slower , more efficient, and cause least congestion.

I think they can solve the speed limit problem. Might take legislation to let the autonomous cars go with the flow or even prohibit them from slowing down traffic. No reason to think they can't have their own set of rules different then for human drivers. Also in cities all the AV's will probably be connected to a common server so will know where every other AV is as well as the timing of the traffic lights and the location and walking speed of every pedestrian and bicyclist and their likely position when the AV will encounter them. The central server will constantly be solving the problem of getting traffic to flow smoothly with the fastest trip times for the passengers. Human drivers will benefit from the AV in front of them going just the right speed to hit the green lights without waiting.

Post by **kenneal - lagger** » 23 Mar 2018, 12:37

I would have thought that by the time we get to VT's estimation of things the concept of actually owning the vehicle might, to a great extent, have been lost and people will just call up the nearest free vehicle (Uber anyone?). We might even have by then multi pod single vehicles that can pick up many people for the same journey but still give them the single vehicle privacy. I doubt that the average speed of these new vehicles will drop in cities, where congestion is now the norm anyway, so the odd stop to pick up another passenger will not effect the speed at all.

By then we might even have tracked or virtual track vehicles running along a wire buried in the road so, to all intents and purposes, we will be travelling by train, albeit one that can send individual carriages onto any "line" it wants.

Potemkin Villager · Post by **Potemkin Villager** » 23 Mar 2018, 18:35

"According to the authors of the report, the production of lithium-ion batteries for light electric vehicles releases on average 150-200 kilos of carbon dioxide equivalents per kilowatt-hour battery. One of the smallest electric cars on the market, Nissan Leaf, uses batteries of approx. 30 kWh; many new models have batteries of 60 and 100 kWh. An electric car with a 100kWh battery has thus emitted 15-20 tons of carbon dioxide even before the vehicle ignition is turned on. This calculation assumes a 50-70 per cent fossil share in the electricity mix."

https://www.ivl.se/english/startpage/to ... ction.html

vtsnowedin · Post by **vtsnowedin** » 23 Mar 2018, 20:53

Potemkin Villager wrote:"According to the authors of the report, the production of lithium-ion batteries for light electric vehicles releases on average 150-200 kilos of carbon dioxide equivalents per kilowatt-hour battery. One of the smallest electric cars on the market, Nissan Leaf, uses batteries of approx. 30 kWh; many new models have batteries of 60 and 100 kWh. An electric car with a 100kWh battery has thus emitted 15-20 tons of carbon dioxide even before the vehicle ignition is turned on. This calculation assumes a 50-70 per cent fossil share in the electricity mix."

https://www.ivl.se/english/startpage/to ... ction.html

Perhaps it is in the full report but the article does not give a comparison to the amount of CO2 emitted by the manufacturing of a ICE car. And what electric company still has a 70 percent fossil fuel source share?
So perhaps a good article but it can't be used to condemn high capacity car batteries without knowing the energy sources of the EV factory.

cubes · Post by **cubes** » 23 Mar 2018, 21:21

BMW says electric car mass production not viable until 2020

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-bmw- ... SKBN1GY1BQ

woodburner · Post by **woodburner** » 23 Mar 2018, 21:54

By insisting that there is a human driver to supervise we are giving the human driver the least suitable job. Time and time again it has been shown that humans don't do boring very well and that machines are much better at "boring" while humans are better at the exciting stuff.

Aircraft are a case in point. The humans get the exiting take off and landing while "Charlie" gets the boring in flight control.

Not quite word for word but pretty near what I wrote earlier, except the bit about aircraft is misleading. Most airliners auto-pilots now can do the landing as well, but the point is the pilots are monitoring while the auto-pilots do the flying, and in some cases crashing while the pilots fail to understand the situation.