Autonomous vehicles

[OldBoomer]

You need to study up on how driverless cars respond to problems. So, non fatal accidents where people are crippled, but left alive are OK? Today's WSJ had a really interesting article on the future of e-cars. It was in the third section. You should seek it out.

Malfunctioning AI is capable of repairing itself while responding to an imminent crash at 75 MPH? Fascinating. I suppose that's one way to stop people from getting crippled in car crashes.

I see no reason why I wouldn't take your word for it since you studied it in depth on the 3rd page of the WSJ.

Leaving what you need at home is a different problem. You need to solve that one first, then the "going back" issue goes away.

So far these self driving cars sound super convenient.

 

[Moriarte]

^^ Feels like horses vs automobiles all over again.

Even though it would take time to get there, advantages are undeniable. As a driver and enthusiast (20 years) I often take notice what folks do wrong when driving. Some shortcomings are astonishing and, I believe, almost impossible to eradicate, like this one - people rarely keep distance, somehow there is comfort in hugging the front car's bumper, as I call it. That one often ends bad, especcially in connection with this new one called "surfing the web with one eye".

All in all a rare driver has instintcs and trained reflexes to be able to make appropriate decisions at higher speeds. AI has the advantage of eventually learning all the necessary driving techniques from best human drivers and be relatively safe. New sensors and cameras will put it's capabilities way above and beyond what human can do. But even that isn't all that important. The most important thing is - everyone will be able to spend extra time surfing the iphone. That's why the revolution seems inevitable.

 

[civvver]

The social benefits of self driving cars are too great to be delayed. Now is the time to be planning changes. I think that it won't be long before fuel cell engines will replace electric battery vehicles as the go to technology. That may be the place to investigate. Battery are a transition tech.

We already have fuel cells, the problem is infrastructure.

One of the programs we had at work (I think it finally ended, not sure) was a data logger for toyota that they used in hybrid hydrogen fuel cell vans in california. They had engines that ran on hydrogen via fuel cells. I don't know that much about the tech, just that it used electrolysis to separate hydrogen from water to make the gas. Anyway the main issue was not range or performance of the car, it worked as well as any combustion engine and range was like double an EV, I think it was around 300 miles. But at the time it was cost- they were over 80k to produce but that was 12 years ago- and there were no fueling stations. They could only do test runs in this little tiny area where there were hydrogen fueling stations.

Batteries are easy to charge cus everywhere has electricity already. But to get a hydrogen fuel distribution network up and going? It's like chicken and egg problem, who's going to invest in a fuel network with no demand, and who's going to make fuel cell cars without a refueling network?

Other auto makers dumped most of their resources into battery tech, and I think toyota gave up on fuel cells too. But I guess it could come back.

As far as social benefits to replacing cars, yes there are tons. Just not having to pay car insurance or own one is a huge cost savings in the suburbs, potentially. I worry a little cus companies always want to max profit and thus may tack on a ton of charges so it's still cheaper than owning your own car but may be well above market value and artificially inflated. Like are we going to have to buy personal insurance now from state farm since they're going to lose their whole auto market? Will this be government mandated? It's some of the same issues you see in health care where it's a huge industry and single payer systems would obliterate it. The other stuff like job losses etc are just social problems we need to deal with with new tech anyway. I worry because tech seems to be making the divide between the ultra wealthy and the rest of us even bigger, when it should be reducing it. But hey, if life style quality goes up dramatically even as income goes down does it even matter?

 

[hobbsyoyo]

Plus most proposals to build out a hydrogen network depending on cracking hydrogen out of water or hydrocarbons through the use of burning fossil fuels. I'm not sure on the total end-to-end efficiency relative to gasoline but it does come in well behind electric vehicles in carbon emissions. Even if you cracked the hydrogen using purely clean methods, it will still be dirtier than electric cars powered by clean energy due to the need to distribute the hydrogen with pumps and trucks.

I tend to see lithium ion battery technology as a transitional state for better battery technology instead of transitional for fuel cells.

Though I wonder how plausible it would be to have a car tank up with water and electrolize it and condense they hydrogen itself. If paired with clean energy, that would be a very clean type of car.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Sure the future is murky, but unless batteries can be made smaller, lighter, easier to charge, and last longer, they will be just a transition to fuel cells or something even better. Water as fuel would be ideal. Gas station owners beware. Imagine owning 250 stations and trying to sell them once EV become the obvious direction? The real estate becomes the value of your business.

 

[TheMeInTeam]

The pushback I see when this is brought up is always amusing. As if people would be more effective drivers on average somehow, despite that it is very likely that average accident rate is much lower for these, to say nothing of the benefits of not needing to focus on the road at all times.

Most drivers don't even manage to focus on the road at all times, regardless of their own physical condition. Looking away, driving too closely to people in front (far outside the constraint of their reaction time if they needed to stop suddenly), not signaling properly, coming to complete stops unnecessarily, trying to merge into 70 mph roads at 50 mph (in one case I saw someone on an onramp at a complete stop), texting or otherwise looking away while driving...I see these out of other drivers often. I'm better than that class of drivers by a significant margin, but I have no delusions about being able to outperform a computer at a mundane task. It won't be long until challenging at collision avoidance will be like challenging it at arithmetic or even chess.

That makes people who think they're good drivers while texting to the extent that they would be afraid to let a computer do it get an eye roll. Younger generations like to chastise the older for being stuck in their respective times, but are all too happy to do it themselves even while young.

As a society at some point we need to operate off evidence better.

 

[Mega Tsunami]

Sure the future is murky, but unless batteries can be made smaller, lighter, easier to charge, and last longer, they will be just a transition to fuel cells or something even better. Water as fuel would be ideal. Gas station owners beware. Imagine owning 250 stations and trying to sell them once EV become the obvious direction? The real estate becomes the value of your business.

Hydrogen fuel cells might well be the future but I think there are many years of batteries in the meantime.

Just today Tesla has brought out a car capable or over 600 miles on a single charge, and a new 36T Truck capable of 500 miles that can be recharged in half an hour to give a further 400 miles.
GM has just announced 18 new electric cars over the next 5 years.
VW has just announced a $12bn investment in building new electric cars in China.

And this is current (sorry) battery technology.

Apparently the next big thing in batteries is the use of solid state batteries. These have been around for a while but both Toyota and, separately, Dyson have announced they will produce cars with this technology in the early 20s. They appear to have overcome the problems associated with them. Toyota described the new batteries as ‘a game changer’ and Dyson as ‘a quantum leap’.

These batteries have 2.5 times greater energy density, don’t need cooling (and no fires) and apparently charge up much, much quicker. I have heard various claims about how quick they will be to recharge but sports car maker Fisker who say they will also bring out these batteries in a few years claim it is “one minute” to re-charge.

We have to wait and see but, whilst I know little about Fisker, Toyota and Dyson are two companies that I would trust are being honest about this tech.

Autonomous cars don’t need to be electric to succeed but I just think they will fit together very well indeed and bring monster changes to the auto industry.


Toyota Exec: Our Solid-State Battery Tech Could Be Game-Changer For EVs, But We Aren’t Backing Away From Hydrogen Fuel Cell Vehicles
https://cleantechnica.com/2017/10/3...ent-backing-away-hydrogen-fuel-cell-vehicles/

Will solid-state batteries give Dyson an edge in electric vehicle market?
https://www.theglobeandmail.com/glo...e-in-electric-vehicle-market/article36529124/

Fisker Patents Battery It Claims Could Charge A Car In One Minute
http://www.iflscience.com/technolog...y-it-claims-could-charge-a-car-in-one-minute/

Also:
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/arti...uild-radically-different-electric-car-by-2020

 

[Truthy]

Given that it is likely to be a convolutional neural network that no-one understands it will be a lot more difficult than that, but still it is likely to be much easier to develop an unsafe AI than a safe one.

I don't know that this is a given. A lot of work is going into making CNNs less of black boxes.

 

[civvver]

Yes I saw the tesla announcement and the truck has auto pilot features built it, as I guess all their trucks do. Not self driving, but you can put it on a freeway and it'll drive in a lane indefinitely with it's auto pilot. I think battery is winning out simply because more companies have put more research into it.

Plus most proposals to build out a hydrogen network depending on cracking hydrogen out of water or hydrocarbons through the use of burning fossil fuels. I'm not sure on the total end-to-end efficiency relative to gasoline but it does come in well behind electric vehicles in carbon emissions. Even if you cracked the hydrogen using purely clean methods, it will still be dirtier than electric cars powered by clean energy due to the need to distribute the hydrogen with pumps and trucks.

I tend to see lithium ion battery technology as a transitional state for better battery technology instead of transitional for fuel cells.

Though I wonder how plausible it would be to have a car tank up with water and electrolize it and condense they hydrogen itself. If paired with clean energy, that would be a very clean type of car.

Yeah but it's much easier to fix the power plant than to fix everyone's individual car. Just switch to a different source, nuclear, wind, solar, hydro, whatever other green energy sources there are.