Basically its what i call "design trends", car companies usually follow each other. its the same as products like Video games.
I'm not afraid of electric cars or even the death of the manual killing off car culture. Over the years, cars have changed, and car guys have changed along with them, and these will just be more of those changes. The only thing I am scared of is self-driving cars. Yes, it could remove traffic jams and accidents altogether, but people will never be able to appreciate the fun that can be found in driving. Hurtling down country lanes on the edge of what's possible is one of the best feelings in the entire world, and with self-driving cars, I'm afraid we'll lose that feeling.
I can assure you that self driving cars will not work like people expect. There are so many side roads, and many country roads that it would impossible to make cars automatically know where to go. Also technology is not at the point where cars can think for themselves and avoid accidents like humans can.
That will not prevent accidents though, cars will blindly run into eachother if something glitches, or an internet outage occurs.
Because a vanman crashed into it. Official account of the crash, by the Las Vegas govt: "The autonomous shuttle was testing today when it was grazed by a delivery truck downtown. The shuttle did what it was supposed to do, in that it’s sensors registered the truck and the shuttle stopped to avoid the accident. Unfortunately the delivery truck did not stop and grazed the front fender of the shuttle." https://www.theverge.com/2017/11/8/16626224/las-vegas-self-driving-shuttle-crash-accident-first-day In other words, the story is rather an argument against human drivers.
Former GM chairman say it not going to be long into it's all over https://qz.com/1122534/former-gm-chairman-bob-lutz-says-the-end-of-the-car-industry-is-near/
The accident was the truck driver's fault, of course. But a good human driver would have avoided it. The truck is slow and heavy- it can't pull out in front of you in an instant. The story about the shuttle stopping in time and the truck hitting it sounds fishy. First, the vehicles were clearly moved from their original position before the video was filmed. Second, both vehicles lack damage that is visible in the video. Due to that, it is hard to understand how exactly did the accident happen. According to the article, the truck hit the shuttle when it was stationary. How could it be possible for the truck to graze the shuttle if the truck was moving away from the shuttle when making a turn, not towards it? (That is only true, of course, if the vehicles' position on the video is similar to the one directly after the crash). With that information present, I conclude that the shuttle did fail to stop and slightly tapped the truck.
Could have been that the truck grazed the shuttle while turning away from it. Also, it's a heavy truck with big bumpers, so it's not going to be scratched up. Plus, the damage of the shuttle is on the left-hand-side, while it was filmed from the right-hand-side.
The quote “You will call for it, it will arrive at your location, you’ll get in, input your destination and go to the freeway.” alone makes it sound so boring...
Yeah but the best thing about the taxi is there's an alternative, which is my own vehicle. If my own vehicle becomes a taxi, then I may as well start walking everywhere (which is probably what they want us to do, but ugh. It still sucks...)
Here's something I thought about today. I got to thinking about what will vehicles run on when we run out of petrol, and then I thought about a solar/electric hybrid. I think it's something that could potentially work, as the solar panels could provide an alternative method of charging the car, though the solar aspect would probably only work at its best when it's day time with little to no cloud cover. When it comes to the solar panels, I believe that the roof would probably be the best placement option, as reflections from the panels could be a distraction to the passengers inside the vehicle and the surrounding traffic if they were on the hood or trunk. I'd like to hear what you guys think.
