Here is more of an argument of against self driving cars. I agree that the self driving cars are not ready for the world in 10-15 years.
It's sad that some day kids will say it's old fashioned to drive the car yourself; as if it's like getting up to change the TV channel.
Except far far worse, with an Auto all it controls is the transmission and its quite simple for it to know when to shift, more of a convince than taking control away from the driver self driving cars on the other hand will do NOTHING BUT take control from the drivers and rather than making the drive more relaxing it makes you more paranoid if an automatic transmission fails than worst case scenario your car is no longer able to put down power and it will need to be replaced, if there is a problem in a self driving car then you are probably going to crash and there is nothing you can do about it. If power steering fails then it just becomes harder to turn the wheel, if your throttle is stuck wide open you can shift into neutral. even in the most extreme failures you could imagine in a normal car there is at least something you can do about it. if your brakes completely fail you can still slow down by downshifting or just slow down gradually. If somehow the steering rack just broke you still have brakes, if your suspension just breaks out of nowhere while you are driving you will still slow down gradually and the brakes will still work fine. but in a self driving car you would have NO control of anything except possibly a kill switch, would you want to be strapped into something like that traveling at 70 mph down the highway?
my kids are driving cars whether they like it or not. end of story. --- Post updated --- that's what manual-shift override is for. *the transmission failure*
That's not really true, at least outside of america. Over here and pretty much anywhere else in Europe its hard to find an automatic car, hell my neighbours freind had to pay like £2000 extra compared to a normal manual car when she was finally able to find a diesel, automatic, 4 door and she wasn't even searching for a specific brand.
A future where owning a gasoline V8 powered vehicle will be terrorism, treason and a crime against humanity, punishable by a life term of public shaming evisceration handed down by the cyborg world citizen.
I think many of you are taking Hyperbole to the next level. On topic of autonomous cars I think cars without steering wheels will likely become a thing and that's fine. However there will still be a market for people who want a car they can drive. The likely result is self driving cars that have steering wheels so you can choose whether or not you want to drive them. As for what governments choose to do in terms of laws regarding manual driving on public roads I honestly have no idea, it could go either way as far as I can tell. One thing that I can see being an issue is personal car ownership. My hope is that the Uber style system will be adopted by manufacturers for people who want that system, however I also hope that buying a car manufacturers will continue to sell cars. The ethics side of things is not too complex either. My thoughts on it are that car crashes will become much less frequent and as such when one does occur better investigations will be able to be carried out, the issue will then hopefully be identified and pushed as a software update to all of the manufacturer in faults cars. I would expect there to be fines for each crash with manufacturers allocating some of their yearly budget for payouts, alternatively have an insurance company cover that. Maybe over time the systems will improve to the point where a car crash is as significant as a plane crash is today. Countries that are currently war torn or don't have any infrastructure will likely not see autonomous cars until those situations are sorted. On topic of combustion engines The move to electric vehicles in many European countries (mostly cities) is to improve air quality, in many cities health issues such as lung disease and asthma are more common, there is a strong correlation to suggest that this is in a large part due to combustion engines. Since the density of people is so high with so many more cars the pollution is far higher per sq meter, add into that days where there is no wind and you start to get more major problems. Even if you were to power all of the electric cars with coal power stations, that moves all the fumes out of the city and hopefully to somewhere where people are not as effected by it. Take Paris for example, in 2014 they had a major smog issue. They had to tell people not to drive and had to make all public transport free in order to try to keep things under control due to a lack of wind. While I personally love cars it is quite easy to see why this is a bad situation. (I can't vouch for the colour grading of this comparison since I wasn't there, so I also can't vouch for how accurately it depicts that situation since it may or may not have been exadurated, search "Paris smog" for other pictures if you are interested) This is the reason why many major cities are banning older diesel cars and plan to ban diesels entirely in the future. Its not about being environmentally friendly (cause replacing functioning cars is not particularly green), its about being able to breath without needing to wear a breathing mask. At the end of the day, between being able to breath or driving fossil fuelled cars I know which I would prefer. Its also worth noting that those regulations about diesel cars do not exist outside of cities (yet) since 20 combustion powered cars in a 10 sq km area is not going to cause significant problems for anyone within that area. However as I alluded to I would expect such regulations to become country wise at some point to make the laws simpler and allow someone to gain "green cred". There is also noise pollution too. Personally I think moving away from fossil fuelled cars is a necessary step, however I hope that they don't try to push it to quickly in areas where it isn't yet needed. As for self driving cars, while I love driving it would be nice to do something else on many journeys. So for me autonomous driving with a manual mode would be pretty nice. TLDR TLDR on autonomous cars: Wait and see what happens, then pick your fights based upon that. Until we know what is going to happen there is only limited use in debating it. TLDR on combustion engines: Breathing is nice, moving combustion engines out of dense areas means people can keep breathing without oxygen tanks. Myself and most people would rather breath than drive a fossil fuelled car especially when alternatives exist.
Most people here (In france) Are not for electric cars, why? -They cost 2 times more than a normal car -You need to rent batteries, because they have really short life period -The autonomy is too low -You can not recycle the batteries. The government is the only to like electrics cars it seems like. And they give us lesson, as they use big german sport cars and jet-engine planes for going to the beside city. The same government that said the diesel was the best thing in the world 30 years ago, and we should all get rid of our diesel for buying cars that consume 2 to 3 times more fuel and the prices of the petrol wont go down. It's easy to say "Buy electric cars, it's good for the environment" ... It's not only in 2014 that we have problems with paris, it's still today. So they decided to put in place "alternate" driving. One day, pair plates cars can drive, and the other it's to the impair one. And because it does not work they have decided to lower the speed limit. The actual speed limit in Paris is 20 km / h, yup 20 km / h (12 mph / h)
Yeah, I had heard about the number plate thing too. It certainly sucks, but it is one of those things where there isn't really many other options outside of moving the pollution generation elsewhere or reducing it. Outside of creating a city wide air circulation network, but that is even less practical. You are certainly correct about some of the drawbacks of electric cars as of right now. However those factors will likely improve over time, but of course that is not so useful as of right now. Also the batteries can be recycled, the older Lead Acid ones can be recycled like any other car battery, the newer lithium ion ones can be recycled in the same way that phone batteries are currently recycled (Assuming people don't trash them ofc). Tesla already recycle the batteries that have been replaced, however consumer recycling centres are not common yet. I would also like to mention that you could make a Petrol or Diesel car just as autonomous as an electric one. The only difference is what you connect the output of the computer to. However those systems are not yet as advanced as they could be, once again something that will improve in time. Investing so heavily in diesel vehicles was a mistake on behalf of the government. I am sure it made sense at the time but that has blown up a little bit in their face now that diesel vehicles are known to be such a big problem in areas such as Paris. While I will give the government a pass on jet's, they should be forced by law to drive Citroen's, Peugeot's and Renault's xD Preferably Renault Zoe's & Twizy's
