6 ms·

3 years ago was also before the diesel gate. Here in Europe, we moved from Diesel is king to the specialist press running article on why you can still consider

by gutnor 9y ago

3 years ago was also before the diesel gate. Here in Europe, we moved from Diesel is king to the specialist press running article on why you can still consider buying a Diesel car in 2017 in some condition. That triggered countries like Germany to announce plan to ban gas car sales in a decade. Regardless what Volvo CEO thought 3 years ago, the market has shifted in a clear direction and it is his job to adapt. In a similar fashion Porsche CEO said he did not believe in automated car. You don't buy a 150K Porsche sport car to let it drive itself. That's probably true, but I expect him to change his mind less than a second after it is clear that some countries will forbid non-automated car to access some public road in the near future.

laxentasken 9y ago
I wonder how Porsche and the alike will adapt to that situation. Sure it will take some years before someone will start pushing it...
- netcan 9y ago
  Douglas Adams on the internet affecting media in the 2000s: ”It's like trying to explain to the Amazon River, the Mississippi, the Congo and the Nile how the coming of the Atlantic Ocean will affect them. The first thing to understand is that river rules will no longer apply.” Wide-scale fully automated cars will change everything. First, I think fewer people will personally own cars, perhaps a small fraction. Vehicles will need to be less “general purpose,” if they’re not personally owned. One or two seaters, low speed electrics are better/cheaper if you’re getting around a congested city on your own. If we don’t own our own, we don’t always need cars that can fit a family, handle highways…
  - arethuza 9y ago
    As an aside, the Congo and the Amazon used to be the same river before the Atlantic came along... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River#Geology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River#Geology
    - knob 9y ago
      TIL! Thanks!
  - bitJericho 9y ago
    I'm going to buy a car with a bed, and wake up 1000 miles away for weekend vacations :)
- harshreality 9y ago
  I don't think they're mutually exclusive. When level 5 self-driving is available, it won't be too difficult to add a wheel back and have modes where the self-driving capability maintains safety for other drivers on the road, but allows the driver to assume some risk for their own car and personal safety. Different modes could allow the driver to accept different levels of risk to themselves and of their car, while still providing automatic protection and avoidance of other drivers on the road. Probably some more... extreme... modes could require posting a bond with the insurance company or government to cover personal injury. If someone doesn't mind risking their car (collision insurance would no longer apply in these modes), and can pay for any injuries they sustain, as long as they aren't risking other people's health and safety, the computer could let them drive how they want, within certain risk limits. I'm not so sure people will bother, though. Once car-to-car transponders are mandatory, creating an intelligent grid of vehicle awareness, what fun is it to zoom around other cars as if they're stationary if they know you're coming? I don't believe people want the actual risk associated with aggressive driving. They just want to beat other drivers. Computer games should take up most of the slack. Even really simple games like Race The Sun offer plenty of adrenaline and reflex development with no actual risk. If you want actual (substantial) risk, go rock climb above your ability, or skydive without a reserve chute.
  - gambiting 9y ago
    This here is one of the reasons why I think manual cars will never go away, or at least they won't be banned outright - new cars will have enough systems to stop you from crashing in almost every situation, while allowing you to "drive" - so why ban it?
    - saiya-jin 9y ago
      to give counterpoint to both of you on some topic (ie I think you both are wrong on it :)) why people want fully automated car? simply to do something else then stare blandly for hours ahead - sleep, reading, watching movies, playing with other passengers... basically anything you can do while seated. this will be great improvement for <= average car owner out there. and why people would want manual mode? well if you ever drove a proper car (say bmw/porsche and better - it is not so much function of just raw power rather than overall handling and responsiveness), then you know the experience on non-congested road outside of cities is not comparable with usual mundane driving. Not at all. It is pleasure, it is joy, it is fun and in some cases adrenaline. this might not be strong enough reason for 'premium' car companies to survive, or at least not all of them. but I can't imagine Lamborghini or Ferrari going out of business just because of that. there will be exceptions in one way or the other, that's for sure. Otherwise it means losing 100s of thousands of highly qualified jobs just on EU market.
petre 9y ago
Diesel engines can be ran on DME (dimethyl ether) with a redesigned fuel system. DME is clean and its's storage requirements are nearly the same as for LPG: pressurized containers at 0.5 MPa (roadbike tyre pressure). Volvo Trucks has partnered with Oberon Fuels and converted several trucks to run on DME. http://www.volvotrucks.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/VTC/Corporate/News%20and%20Media/publications/Volvo%20BioDME.pdf http://www.volvotrucks.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/VTC/Corpo... Also Mack Trucks is looking into DME as an alternative truck fuel. https://www.macktrucks.com/community/mack-news/2013/dme-trucks-in-2015/ https://www.macktrucks.com/community/mack-news/2013/dme-truc... Petrol engines can also be ran on an 70/30 LPG/DME mix.
- _ph_ 9y ago
  And where would the DME come from? It would still produce CO2 when burnt, even if there are less toxic byproducts. If created from atmosphere CO2 it most likely would use way more electricity than a battery powered car.
  - petre 9y ago
    What are the feedstocks for DME? There are so many: food waste, dairy manure, landfill gas, natural gas and methanol.
gambiting 9y ago
>>that some countries will forbid non-automated car to access some public road in the near future. I am sorry, but I don't believe that will happen in anything that could be described as near future. I don't see any actual bans to be introduced any sooner than 30-50 years from now, and even then only if: 1) the technology gets really good, not just "kind of good but only when the conditions are optimal" 2) the technology gets cheap enough that you can put it on a kind of car that nowadays is sold new without A/C and electric windows and don't impact the price of the car too much.
- gutnor 9y ago
  That's my point actually. You can't predict that, like you could predict the sudden demise of Diesel only 3 years ago. 3 years ago you could probably have done exactly the same reasoning with electric cars (eg: London 0-emission goal are for 2050). And I mean, if my country decided to go full electric in 10 years, I have no idea how I could own a car, unless charging speed, or street infrastructure, or millage vastly improved. Nothing of that has a clear 10 years roadmap. Yet here we are.
- xoa 9y ago
  Beyond gutnor's reply, cars are just fundamentally ripe for disruption. The benefits of personalized arbitrary-point-to-point mechanized transport are so compelling that society has been willing to put up with an enormous price for it, but that doesn't mean the current situation isn't still terrible and ready for a real tipping point effect the instant it becomes feasible. The only reason we've had manual driving at all was because humanity's development of mechanical tech greatly outstripped its development of information capture and processing tech, but that was always a temporary situation. Think about the incredible pressures on the current system: - Well over a million deaths a year worldwide, if we're talking America then 30k-40k+ here alone. Tens of millions disabled/injured, at ruinous expense. Even more accidents that "merely" cause significant damage, again at major expense. - The huge insurance and societal costs necessary to sustain the above. - People who cannot drive in a society where that's immensely limiting. This sandwiches both sides of demographics. Particularly in the First World, demographic trends are resulting in an ever increasing number of elderly who cannot drive any longer. And it's always been a hassle and disruption for parents to need to shuttle around children, or arrange for the same, or just do without. - A fear, justified or not, that terrorists will make increasing use of the fact that cars are an excellent way to deliver a tremendous amount of energy into a set of targets even without any sort of purpose-made weapons onboard and are not something that can be done without. - The immense waste in incredibly valuable land resources needed for overbuilding parking, wide lanes, and other support infrastructure needed for human driven vehicles. - The immense waste in human time and stress due to traffic and other conditions that could be ameliorated or even eliminated by automatic control. Etc etc etc. The principle problem with both your arguments 1 & 2 is that you make them in a vacuum outside of the massive negatives that we live with right now. As with many disruptive new technologies, self-driving cars don't have to live up to any particular ideal, they merely need to be better then what we've got. And frankly that's just not a very high bar. It's not just economics it's politics, if you look through the above list you should be able to easily identify some of the most powerful interest groups and societal motivators in existence, touching almost all of society in general. Once the avalanche gets going feedbacks are going to reinforce pretty rapidly.
Pica_soO 9y ago
Also, new core-tech, new game - especially for those car manufacturers beaten at the market by the great three, this is a chance to recover lost ground.

by gutnor 9y ago

laxentasken 9y ago

I wonder how Porsche and the alike will adapt to that situation. Sure it will take some years before someone will start pushing it...

netcan 9y ago
Douglas Adams on the internet affecting media in the 2000s: ”It's like trying to explain to the Amazon River, the Mississippi, the Congo and the Nile how the coming of the Atlantic Ocean will affect them. The first thing to understand is that river rules will no longer apply.” Wide-scale fully automated cars will change everything. First, I think fewer people will personally own cars, perhaps a small fraction. Vehicles will need to be less “general purpose,” if they’re not personally owned. One or two seaters, low speed electrics are better/cheaper if you’re getting around a congested city on your own. If we don’t own our own, we don’t always need cars that can fit a family, handle highways…
- arethuza 9y ago
  As an aside, the Congo and the Amazon used to be the same river before the Atlantic came along... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River#Geology https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_River#Geology
  - knob 9y ago
    TIL! Thanks!
- bitJericho 9y ago
  I'm going to buy a car with a bed, and wake up 1000 miles away for weekend vacations :)
harshreality 9y ago
I don't think they're mutually exclusive. When level 5 self-driving is available, it won't be too difficult to add a wheel back and have modes where the self-driving capability maintains safety for other drivers on the road, but allows the driver to assume some risk for their own car and personal safety. Different modes could allow the driver to accept different levels of risk to themselves and of their car, while still providing automatic protection and avoidance of other drivers on the road. Probably some more... extreme... modes could require posting a bond with the insurance company or government to cover personal injury. If someone doesn't mind risking their car (collision insurance would no longer apply in these modes), and can pay for any injuries they sustain, as long as they aren't risking other people's health and safety, the computer could let them drive how they want, within certain risk limits. I'm not so sure people will bother, though. Once car-to-car transponders are mandatory, creating an intelligent grid of vehicle awareness, what fun is it to zoom around other cars as if they're stationary if they know you're coming? I don't believe people want the actual risk associated with aggressive driving. They just want to beat other drivers. Computer games should take up most of the slack. Even really simple games like Race The Sun offer plenty of adrenaline and reflex development with no actual risk. If you want actual (substantial) risk, go rock climb above your ability, or skydive without a reserve chute.
- gambiting 9y ago
  This here is one of the reasons why I think manual cars will never go away, or at least they won't be banned outright - new cars will have enough systems to stop you from crashing in almost every situation, while allowing you to "drive" - so why ban it?
  - saiya-jin 9y ago
    to give counterpoint to both of you on some topic (ie I think you both are wrong on it :)) why people want fully automated car? simply to do something else then stare blandly for hours ahead - sleep, reading, watching movies, playing with other passengers... basically anything you can do while seated. this will be great improvement for <= average car owner out there. and why people would want manual mode? well if you ever drove a proper car (say bmw/porsche and better - it is not so much function of just raw power rather than overall handling and responsiveness), then you know the experience on non-congested road outside of cities is not comparable with usual mundane driving. Not at all. It is pleasure, it is joy, it is fun and in some cases adrenaline. this might not be strong enough reason for 'premium' car companies to survive, or at least not all of them. but I can't imagine Lamborghini or Ferrari going out of business just because of that. there will be exceptions in one way or the other, that's for sure. Otherwise it means losing 100s of thousands of highly qualified jobs just on EU market.

petre 9y ago

Diesel engines can be ran on DME (dimethyl ether) with a redesigned fuel system. DME is clean and its's storage requirements are nearly the same as for LPG: pressurized containers at 0.5 MPa (roadbike tyre pressure). Volvo Trucks has partnered with Oberon Fuels and converted several trucks to run on DME. http://www.volvotrucks.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/VTC/Corporate/News%20and%20Media/publications/Volvo%20BioDME.pdf http://www.volvotrucks.com/SiteCollectionDocuments/VTC/Corpo... Also Mack Trucks is looking into DME as an alternative truck fuel. https://www.macktrucks.com/community/mack-news/2013/dme-trucks-in-2015/ https://www.macktrucks.com/community/mack-news/2013/dme-truc... Petrol engines can also be ran on an 70/30 LPG/DME mix.

_ph_ 9y ago
And where would the DME come from? It would still produce CO2 when burnt, even if there are less toxic byproducts. If created from atmosphere CO2 it most likely would use way more electricity than a battery powered car.
- petre 9y ago
  What are the feedstocks for DME? There are so many: food waste, dairy manure, landfill gas, natural gas and methanol.

gambiting 9y ago

>>that some countries will forbid non-automated car to access some public road in the near future. I am sorry, but I don't believe that will happen in anything that could be described as near future. I don't see any actual bans to be introduced any sooner than 30-50 years from now, and even then only if: 1) the technology gets really good, not just "kind of good but only when the conditions are optimal" 2) the technology gets cheap enough that you can put it on a kind of car that nowadays is sold new without A/C and electric windows and don't impact the price of the car too much.

gutnor 9y ago
That's my point actually. You can't predict that, like you could predict the sudden demise of Diesel only 3 years ago. 3 years ago you could probably have done exactly the same reasoning with electric cars (eg: London 0-emission goal are for 2050). And I mean, if my country decided to go full electric in 10 years, I have no idea how I could own a car, unless charging speed, or street infrastructure, or millage vastly improved. Nothing of that has a clear 10 years roadmap. Yet here we are.
xoa 9y ago
Beyond gutnor's reply, cars are just fundamentally ripe for disruption. The benefits of personalized arbitrary-point-to-point mechanized transport are so compelling that society has been willing to put up with an enormous price for it, but that doesn't mean the current situation isn't still terrible and ready for a real tipping point effect the instant it becomes feasible. The only reason we've had manual driving at all was because humanity's development of mechanical tech greatly outstripped its development of information capture and processing tech, but that was always a temporary situation. Think about the incredible pressures on the current system: - Well over a million deaths a year worldwide, if we're talking America then 30k-40k+ here alone. Tens of millions disabled/injured, at ruinous expense. Even more accidents that "merely" cause significant damage, again at major expense. - The huge insurance and societal costs necessary to sustain the above. - People who cannot drive in a society where that's immensely limiting. This sandwiches both sides of demographics. Particularly in the First World, demographic trends are resulting in an ever increasing number of elderly who cannot drive any longer. And it's always been a hassle and disruption for parents to need to shuttle around children, or arrange for the same, or just do without. - A fear, justified or not, that terrorists will make increasing use of the fact that cars are an excellent way to deliver a tremendous amount of energy into a set of targets even without any sort of purpose-made weapons onboard and are not something that can be done without. - The immense waste in incredibly valuable land resources needed for overbuilding parking, wide lanes, and other support infrastructure needed for human driven vehicles. - The immense waste in human time and stress due to traffic and other conditions that could be ameliorated or even eliminated by automatic control. Etc etc etc. The principle problem with both your arguments 1 & 2 is that you make them in a vacuum outside of the massive negatives that we live with right now. As with many disruptive new technologies, self-driving cars don't have to live up to any particular ideal, they merely need to be better then what we've got. And frankly that's just not a very high bar. It's not just economics it's politics, if you look through the above list you should be able to easily identify some of the most powerful interest groups and societal motivators in existence, touching almost all of society in general. Once the avalanche gets going feedbacks are going to reinforce pretty rapidly.

Pica_soO 9y ago

Also, new core-tech, new game - especially for those car manufacturers beaten at the market by the great three, this is a chance to recover lost ground.