The end of any driving pleasure
That's what it sounds like to me.
Even on our crowded roads you can still get the odd moment of enjoyment from the sheer physical act of driving.
Although I do know that for many driving is simply a chore.
I get the point of driverless cars: once they actually work they're going to be great for everyone except the recreational driver, and it wouldn't be a surprise to find the technology being made mandatory for use on some of the public road network some decades down the line. But what I've not been able to grasp is why are all …
@Yugguy
Although I do know that for many driving is simply a chore.
I love driving. Cars are pretty much my main hobby. But driving can certainly be a chore - Anyone used the A1 North on a Friday afternoon? Drove into London at, well, any time on any day? Those aren't fun trips.
Even on our crowded roads you can still get the odd moment of enjoyment from the sheer physical act of driving.
For the next 100 years there will be vehicles available without computer guidance. I base this on the continued existence of classic cars. After that people will continue making their own (See Colin Chapmans book).
People won't stop driving for fun. It couldn't be effectively policed without consuming vast resources. No reg plates requires a physical stop, which requires actual traffic police, of which we have very few. And good luck with the motorbikes.
Speeding is illegal and almost everyone does that. An MOT failure rate of nearly 50% shows that people don't regard the contruction and use regs in high esteem, and that generally speaking, most drivers are comfortabe with a certain level of law breaking (ignorance being no defence).
We could elminate most road fatalities by removing the least capable drivers from the road. Automated driving will abolish any perceived barriers to having a properly hard driving test. We could even regulate manual driving to the top 1% of drivers in any given year.
As a petrolhead, I welcome automated driving for the masses: they're no good at it and have little interest in it, so they won't be a loss.
For the next 100 years there will be vehicles available without computer guidance. I base this on the continued existence of classic cars.
It's true they'll exist; whether they'll be driveable is another matter entirely. If (and I admit it's a big if), battery power becomes usable to the point of the convenience that we now have with liquid fuels of "add 600 miles of range in 90 seconds", it may be that the petrochemical companies don't make the fuels any more, since the demand won't be there.
I rather doubt self-driving cars will ever outright refuse to allow manual control. At least, not ones that lawmakers would countenance allowing on the roads; regardless of the relative safety records of automated vs manual driving, it's going to take multiple generations before anyone decides that the capacity to let the human being take control in emergencies is not required. Likewise, I'm fairly sure that even with self-driving cars, a driving test is likely to be mandated for sole occupancy in the vehicle by most governments regardless.
This will, of course, be largely ignored by anyone under the age of 30 since the chances of getting caught will be minuscule, but it'll still take 50-100 years (basically, until the last generation who remember a time before self-drive die) before anyone recognises the futility of the law and abolishes it. Planes and trains both pretty much run themselves nowadays, but the drivers and pilots are still qualified to hell and back in case of trouble - not that it often helps when they take manual control.
Planes and trains both pretty much run themselves nowadays, but the drivers and pilots are still qualified to hell and back in case of trouble - not that it often helps when they take manual control.
What is seems just based on a sense from various "disasters in the offing", is that when going to back up mode (live pilot/driver) if the meatbag has pre-computer experience the outcome has a better chance of being positive. It'll be the same way once driverless become the norm. The meatbag won't have the experience to take control in an emergency.
"If (and I admit it's a big if), battery power becomes usable to the point of the convenience that we now have with liquid fuels of "add 600 miles of range in 90 seconds""
That's never going to happen due to charging constraints - you'd need a cable that can deliver 5MW of power to achieve that kind of speed of recharge.
More importantly it's totally unnecessary to have electric vehicles attain that kind of charging performance. Get (or rent) a hybrid or take the train if you want to nail 600 miles in a single trip.
" take the train if you want to nail 600 miles in a single trip."
Speed up main line electrification and bring back Motorail. Your self driving electric car takes you to the station, drops you off at the ticket hall, pootles round to the loading bay and hops on the train itself, recharges on the journey, and is outside waiting for you at the far end.
How to deal with changing platforms in a hurry and cars that decide to go to Aberdeen when their owners were heading to Cardiff are left as an exercise for the software engineering team...
Or make the batteries hot pluggable and a standard size. Then you pull up to a service station, take yours out, pay, pick up a fully chard module, plug in and drive out
No change to the mass infrastructure, and gives the manufacturers time to develop hydrogen posibilities
I certainly won't be using any 'taxi' form of automated car over owning a car,
Taxi's smell, they are cheap, they are expensive and you have to carry everything with you...
I would however have an auto-drive setting on my car, although I would turn off any 'reporting back' functionality.
<<"If (and I admit it's a big if), battery power becomes usable to the point of the convenience that we now have with liquid fuels of "add 600 miles of range in 90 seconds""
That's never going to happen due to charging constraints - you'd need a cable that can deliver 5MW of power to achieve that kind of speed of recharge.>>
Think outside the box. You don't need to deliver 5MW of power. You can use a battery replacement system. Alternatively you could use a system that charges the car while it is still moving.
"Think outside the box. You don't need to deliver 5MW of power. You can use a battery replacement system."
This is true but you're going to need an awful lot of batteries and a thumping great big grid connection to service peak times when you could have hundreds of vehicles arriving every hour.
"Alternatively you could use a system that charges the car while it is still moving."
AKA a hybrid which is the obvious solution to driving long distances in an electric vehicle.
"AKA a hybrid which is the obvious solution to driving long distances in an electric vehicle."
There's more than one way to skin an onion...
England to test charge-as-you-drive 'electric motorways'
You could also have a charging train which cars couple to, it pulls them along for a 50 mile stretch next to a major motorway while charging the car, for instance.
A road that uses induction to charge your car as you drive? Yeah, no... you'd be driving on a giant eddy current brake. Whatever charge you could pick up would be negated by the increased energy required to overcome the electromagnetic field holding you back.
"A road that uses induction to charge your car as you drive? Yeah, no..."
Really? So the fact that they have already done a feasibility study and the fact that it is already used on a 12Km road in South Korea does not influence you to think that you may not understand how it works?
"Get (or rent) a hybrid or take the train if you want to nail 600 miles in a single trip."
Let me guess. You live on a bus route near a train station. You don't make journeys that require multiple changes of bus or train train. When you make journeys in your locality you restrict yourself to walking distance of home or places near bus routes.
This post has been deleted by its author
One of the huge benefits of automated vehicles is that we can rip up and pave over the ridiculously inefficient railways.
Their use of capacity compared to a road is tiny and cost per passenger mile is huge. Convenience (lack) is a joke - drive to station, park car, walk in rain to platform, wait for train (late), arrive destination, wait in rain for taxi etc etc. We can use the capacity in addition to the existing roadways.
I also would like to see a change in ownership models. Out family currently have 2 cars that spend 95% (or more) of the time idle. Either parked in the train station or by the house. I assume that automated vehicles will turn every trip into a taxi ride. Everyday commute: small single passenger unit. Family holiday to wales: bigger unit etc.
In which case, if people are not buying cars who will the big manufactures be selling to?
They also don't need to carry anything more than a single small bag. Someone recently observed that a personal car is more than a means of travel - it is also a base of operations. Being able to just throw stuff into the boot, and not give a shit about trying to minimise weight or squeeze everything into one bag is so much less hassle compared to travelling by other forms of transport. You can then decide whether you need a heavy jacket when you've reached your destination, rather than having to try and predict the weather (possibly days) in advance.
Although they don't seem to have caught on, the battery swop systems that have been proposed would deliver KWh to the car very fast.
It's my guess that what has really good wrong here is the failure of any big auto company to adopt anyone else's idea to the extent of building compatible batteries to fit a common slot in the car and use a common delivery mechanism.
@Electron Shepherd
it may be that the petrochemical companies don't make the fuels any more, since the demand won't be there
Demand hasn't been there for a while for leaded fuel, but alternatives remain available.
Small scale biodiesel plants are affordable and small enough to be kept at home, and can be powered with cooking oil. Ok, that may mean most survivors run on the devils fuel, but there will always be something to run an engine on.
Small scale biodiesel plants are affordable and small enough to be kept at home, and can be powered with cooking oil. Ok, that may mean most survivors run on the devils fuel, but there will always be something to run an engine on.
It's easy to convert gasoline engines to propane, and that ain't going away any time soon.
However 90% of drivers think they are in the top 1%.
I agree. So retest everyone to IAM First plus ROSPA Gold standard. Can't pass that test and you get a JohnnyCab from now forward. I'm insanely relaxed about that because I'm "talking my book" as it were.
Thoughtful and insightful post however 1 small issue.
" I base this on the continued existence of classic cars. "
no chance mate!
quality cars in days of yore were built as well as they could be.
quality cars these days are built so you need to buy a new one in a few of years.
> I base this on the continued existence of classic cars
The pre-ECU cars you are talking about will continue to exist (mostly in museums), but none of the current generation of vehicles will be driveable in 40 years time. At some point one of the many irreplaceable, unrepairable and undocumented blackbox control units will fail and that will be the end of it.
Even if you manged to find a replacement unit in a scrapyard, you would then need the dealer software to pair it with the other modules on the car, the license dongle for the software, an operating system that would run the software, an elderly laptop with the right kind of serial port. etc.
> I base this on the continued existence of classic cars
"The pre-ECU cars you are talking about will continue to exist (mostly in museums), but none of the current generation of vehicles will be driveable in 40 years time. At some point one of the many irreplaceable, unrepairable and undocumented blackbox control units will fail and that will be the end of it."
I was just going to write a similar post, when I read yours.
I bought a non turbo Berlingo diesel for just this reason.
With a std. 1.9 peugeot diesel, it will keep running.
When a turbo fails, it's just not viable to repair.
Later, highly monitored petrol engines are even worse.
Normally aspirated motorbikes will be the way to go
The pre-ECU cars you are talking about will continue to exist (mostly in museums), but none of the current generation of vehicles will be driveable in 40 years time. At some point one of the many irreplaceable, unrepairable and undocumented blackbox control units will fail and that will be the end of it.
Whipping out the EFI and retrofitting carbs is a well worn path for most vehicles - absent a blower it can be the cheaper route to bigger power gains. Alternatives are home brew ECUs like MegaSquirt / MegaJolt or another aftermarket ECU.
Under all the advanced electronics, live the same greasy bits of the old carburettor based vehicles, and for the most part it can be torn out. The car may suffer somewhat in terms of performance, and things like a GTR will flat out die, but taking inspiration from Cuba, petrolheads have been a fairly resourceful bunch in the past. I have faith in us.
"The pre-ECU cars you are talking about will continue to exist (mostly in museums), but none of the current generation of vehicles will be driveable in 40 years time. At some point one of the many irreplaceable, unrepairable and undocumented blackbox control units will fail and that will be the end of it."
I have no idea why people say such silly things. In thirty years there'll be a little box with multiple plugs and sockets which you can connect in place of any ECU (or whatever) and simply choose the correct programme for it to run. As long as someone else still has a working one it'll be possible to interrogate it for its specs. Although presumably the manufacturers will be happy to make the specs available by then anyway.
In any case, what makes you think the ECUs won't be made anymore? Manufacturers often make parts for cars that are decades old.
@Flossy
Apologies for the confusion - that will be my fault. I realise I'd written Chapman, but what I meant to write was Champion. Ron Champion. The brain fart on my part is due to the book describing how to build what amounts to a Lotus 7, created of course, by Colin Chapman.
ISBN-10: 1859606369
Chris Gibbs updated the book to reflect better chassis technology.
ISBN-10: 1844253910
>> "For the next 100 years there will be vehicles available without computer guidance"
I find that to be incredibly unlikely. What I find more likely are groups like Mothers Against Drunk Drivers (MADD) and many others like them doing everything they can to push for laws to make it illegal to drive your own vehicle. Of course, the car manufacturers themselves will be helping fund such groups. At least initially they'll want to make sure everyone has to buy a new vehicle. Later, they'll be able to really change the market.
For example, I think the big auto companies will change their sales strategies such that they no longer sell vehicles to regular people but rather just charge a monthly use fee for "on demand" access. Imagine if Ford stopped selling cars and instead just sold usage. You tell them that you need to be at work monday through friday at 8am and the car just picks you up each morning and takes you there. Of course, there would be different levels from "Carpool" on up to "Just Me" with associated monthly pricing. Want to go to the grocery store? Just pull up the Ford app on your phone and a car will be right over to pick you up.
Uber is actually helping pave the way for this idea. Each successful entry into a new city, where they decimate the local taxi laws, means that it is that much easier for another company to come in behind them and clean up. Uber's biggest issue seems to be vetting drivers. A driverless car doesn't have that issue.
100 years from now? yeah, I think the world is going to be a far far different place than you imagine.
In addition to what you said, unless/until self driving is made illegal, those who bother to drive manually will _have_ to be treated as a hazard by the other AIs so will be able to go out of turn at a junction etc. and the other cars will dutifully stop without causing a crash. The only problem will be whether the whole system becomes a supergrass network. My guess is that it won't, because governments are rubbish at large scale data.
@LucreLout - "No reg plates requires a physical stop, which requires actual traffic police, of which we have very few."
But every driverless car around you is checking the registration of other cars (for purely safety reasons - "that's an early Ford controller, known for sudden braking on left-hand turns...") and reporting back tp the System. Then, like a dreadful, mechanised ballet, every car around your manual, unregistered car bunches up and gently forces you to stop outside the nearest police station, speeding away about their business once you're cuffed. No need for traffic police to stray from their donuts.
I love driving
I find driving terribly boring, but I'm not looking forward to automated cars. At least when I'm driving I can decide, on the spur of the moment, which route to take, when to stop, etc. When I want to leave those decisions in someone else's hands, there are taxis and livery cars and public transportation.
"At least when I'm driving I can decide, on the spur of the moment, which route to take, when to stop, etc."
Maybe that only matters when you are actually driving and therefore looking out the window? If the car' is driving itself, the route might be less important to you if, for example, you are catching 40 winks, reading a book or watching TV. (or even doing some work!)
Driving for pleasure has a great future as there will be great demand for track days driving hired muscle cars and there will still be sections of the South Downs where you can take your 4x4 off road.
The combustion engine did not write-off horse riding or cycling for pleasure, it simply made essential* journeys faster and more comfortable.
* - TBH quite a few non-essential journeys too, but lets not be po-faced about it.
That will be something that you do for a special reason, what I mean is the times you get a bit of enjoyment during your everyday commute - the shove in back from a powerful diesel turbo, or the little scream of revs as your variable valve n/a petrol zips to the redline.
It's already vanishing quickly. For instance you don't get sweet V6 engines in ordinary cars anymore. 15 years back I had a company Vectra Sri, a Vectra B with a 2.6V6. The car itself wasn't bad, wasn't good, wasn't anything. BUT the engine was SWEET, gutsy, great sound, decent turn of speed. It made driving that car enjoyable.