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The smart car blurb is prescient. Not so much on how Sports Utility vehicles work, but about a sonar shield (proximity braking) and computer system optimizatio
by codezero 14y ago
The smart car blurb is prescient.
Not so much on how Sports Utility vehicles work, but about a sonar shield (proximity braking) and computer system optimizations, as well as the diverse range of car types to fit niche needs. Pretty awesome. Obviously this makes some sense since the people they interviewed were working on the bleeding edge of car development at the time, but still, most of this stuff didn't manifest heavily even in the 90s.
- InclinedPlane 14y agoI don't think it's as prescient as it seems. Imagine someone making the same claim that there would be a diverse range of car types to fit niche needs from the perspective of 1963 to 1988. They'd be just as right. In 1988 people drove sedans, and compact cars, and 2 door sport-coupes, and luxury cars, and pick-up trucks, and vans, and mini-vans, and 4-wheel drive vehicles, and muscle cars, and station wagons, and so forth. The diversity of cars today is hardly greater than it was in 1988. Also, things like automatic braking and computer optimization of cars were old hat by 1988. Electronic fuel injection was introduced in mass market cars in the '70s and commonplace by the late '80s. And radar based automatic collision avoidance systems were patented back in the mid '70s.