Well, here it is, the good ol’ 21st century, and I want it to start feeling like the 21th century. Specifically, I’m tired of the bad old 20th-century conception of the car that is still the reality of our transportation systems. Don’t get me wrong, the car is a wonderful thing in many ways, and has changed the world, for good or for ill, more than just about any other technology of the 20th century.
These days, though, the way our technology stands, we’re in a position to do better. In other words, almost everything that’s bad about the car is addressable through high technology. So let’s give a partial list of the things that are bad about our cars: environmental degradation (which hardly begins at the tailpipe); traffic accidents; traffic jams; traffic tickets; drunk driving; getting lost; potholes; finding a parking space; car insurance; gas stations…
So let me sketch out some elements of a car of the future:
Guidance: If an airplane can fly itself on autopilot, why can’t a car do the same? There should be a massive electronic brain that guides all cars to their destinations, maintaining safe distances between cars and routing traffic efficiently.
Propulsion: There has to be something better than the internal combustion engine, for reasons of cost, efficiency, and environmental protection. To me it makes more sense to have the propulsion mechanism as part of the road. Maglev, maybe? Meter cars by miles traveled, and bill electronically.
Roads: Roads are one of the weakest links in our current transportation system. They’re vulnerable to weather, to degradation, to obstruction. They carve up habitat, and cause massive environmental damage. I think a better arrangement is a kind of tube, incorporating some form of propulsion. Road sections can be modular, assembled in the factory. They would be quick to install, and quick to swap out for repair. They could be introduced into the landscape in a way that is much less destructive than roads currently are.
So that’s the brief sketch. I don’t even think we need a technological revolution to make any of this happen. It would use mostly off-the-shelf technology, with some wrinkles. It’s expensive as hell, of course. But then think how much we spend today on our cars, and much of it is waste – the time and gas we spend sitting in traffic jams or looking for a parking spot, the death and destruction caused by accidents, the huge judicial framework we have around enforcing traffic laws. There’s money there, it’s just a matter of choices.
I think a lot of the things the OP is talking about are ALREADY in development by various private companies. What more needs to be done? Is the OP proposing that the Government drive through the programs? I’d definitely be against that.
Its much more difficult than it seems…and the analogy between flight control guidance and landing and driving a car from one place to another doesn’t really hold. One has but to look at the DARPA challenge to see that this problem is much more difficult to solve than autopiloted flight and landing.
However, its something that IS being worked on, both by private industry AND the government (especially the military).
Again, this is something that several private companies (and even a few foreign governments) are looking into. There are various alternatives…hydrogen/methane fuel cells, battery powered, Mr. Fusion lash up on the back of the Delorian, etc.
I’d say the powered grid idea, while sounding cool, would be too cost prohibative for a country like the US…there just is no way we are going to replace our existing road infrastructure with something new like that…and a phased approach would mean that the new technology would be a very niche item (you’d only be able to use it on a few roads initially, and it would cost a LOT because there wouldn’t be wide acceptance or economies of scale for years and years).
Thats all true, and maybe future roads could be made in a similar manner to what you are saying here…but they would be replacement roads as our current roads wear out, or perhaps new roads built as needs expand. It would be a long slow process to replace the current infrastructure…decades if not centuries. I don’t know about where you live, but there are still roadways around my neck of the woods built before WWII that are still in use. Oh, they have been patched and fixed, no doubt, but they are still essentially the same roads they were way back then.
While I think all of your suggestions have merit, I’m more of a market drives innovation type guy…instead of a force changes from the government via fiat type. I think the internal combustion engine will most likely be replaced in my lifetime by something (hopefully) better, but that this will be driven by the market as much as by government regulation. As for roads…I’d be shocked to see a radical change in our current infrastructure in my lifetime…I think essentially we’ll be driving on these same blacktops (with some electronic or other modifications…evolutionary as opposed to revolutionary if you will) for generations to come. I’d also be surprised if we had the controlled auto-driving grid like you seem to be envisioning in my lifetime…though I’ve seen the commercial about the car that auto-parallel parks itself, so maybe I’m being overly pessimistic there.
Bad idea. I want a vehicle that can, if necessary, take me off the beaten path, so to speak. People will want to go off-roading, or even just drive around their own property. I say we bite the damn bullet and invent a flying car. Or at least a hovering one.
I, too, despise roads. But I hate infrastructure in general, so tubes are out in my world. Flying cars will fix that problem. And when we have free or very cheap energy flying cars will become feasible. So, lets just get that cheap fusion up and running and we’ll be all set. Where’s Doc Brown’s Mr. Fusion machine when you need it? Or maybe we could figure out how to make use of all that energy the sun just pours out into empty space. I don’t know.
Energy being the price it is, I don’t see anything being substantially better than what we currently have or are currently planning for, e.g., electric, solar, whatever.
Many of the OP’s ideas are completely off the wall or impractical. Replace simple asphalt and concrete roads with some kind of complex network of powered maglev tubes? PREPOSTEROUS!! OUTRAGEOUS!! Someone’s been watching too much Minority Report. FLYING cars? People can barely drive in TWO dimensions!
Other ideas are already in the production or development stage - auto-navigation, systems that “platoon” cars in tightly packed groups, hybrid cars, alternative energy powered cars, GPS navigation systems, real-time traffic information, self-parking cars, night vision, etc.
[DrCube]
I say we bite the damn bullet and invent a flying car. Or at least a hovering one.
Xtisme, these are good points. I’m firmly in the camp that the government should be the prime mover here, especially since we’re talking one integrated system. I agree that getting started is hard. I think you begin by building a nucleus and work outward from there. I see this above all as a money problem, hence a political one, rather than an engineering one.
One of the things that I would stress is that global warming needs to be taken seriously, and while the need to so imposes huge liabilities, it offers equally huge opportunities to do things differently and better. The car of the future could be a big, big piece of this. I also think waiting for the market to get there on its own is a luxury we can’t afford.
I posted this in another thread about cars, but would like to mention it again. I would like to see a simple LED display on the back of every car window that shows the speed of the car. I think it would be way more efficient than trying to guage the speed of the car ahead of you by sight alone; if I am going 80 and the car ahead of me is going 50, that would be a good thing to know. Also, if you see the numbers on the car ahead of you decrease rapidly, you would know the guy ahead of you is breaking hard and not just tapping them.
Q: why don’t we dith the 120-year old 4 wheel car? FORD had an interesting prototype (in 1962) of a two wheel car-it was kept upright by an internal gyroscope stabilizer. Sorry, don’t have a pic-it was ubercool! Not only was it more efficient, but it had a shorter turning radius, no need for s differential gear, and no complicated steering gear. it was also very space efficient. How come all the neat concept cars by detroit NEVER get built?? :o
I’ve seen several of them on various Discovery Channel or TLC shows and they certainly look cool. Problem is they are very niche oriented. You aren’t going to get Joe American family man to pony up for something like that to take his wife and 2.5 kids for a ride to the mall. Space efficiency takes a very distance back seat to stuffing your kids and groceries in the car…and safety as well.
The thing is…why do you suppose it was never built? Or those other cool concept cars? Conspiricy? Or perhaps because the manufacturers realized they couldn’t make a profit on it? I know where I come down on that question…
I’m not saying three dimensional travel doesn’t offer its share of difficulties. Just ask helicopter pilots. But you never hear of two helicopters colliding head-on in broad daylight. Besides, that way we would have an excuse to actually make sure drivers are trained and competent before we give them a license.
Helicopters don’t tend to crash into each other because there are only a few flying around. Take a look at the freeways during a commute and imagine a helicopter for each car on the freeway and you’ll see a hell of a lot more helicopter-helicopter crashes.
And besides that, what’s dangerous about a helicopter is not crashing into another helicopter, it’s crashing into the freaking GROUND. A helicopter is an incredibly dangerous toy and only a constant effort by skilled mechanics and highly trained pilots keep them in the air.
Flying cars are a pipedream. Commuting by helicopter is a pipedream. Commuting by ultralight is a pipedream.
What we really need is a hybrid of the car and the train…where cars can be driven independently on surface streets but are piloted automatically on freeways.
Roads are one of the strongest links in our current transportation system. They’re durable against weather and degradation, lasting for years between maintenence cycles, and due to their lack of specialized technology or parts, continue to be usable even after degrading significantly. I think an appallingly worse arrangement is a kind of tube, incorporating some form of propulsion. Such tubes would be insanely expensive as compared to roads, and require constant maintence due to failure of the fragile technological components invovled. Breakdowns would be catastrophic; likely fatal to commuters, and even if not would strand dozens, hundreds, or thousands of drivers in a matter of minutes -for any failure. Road sections that were modular and assembled in the factory would be impossible to put into place, weighing many tons and being larger than any efficient form of shipment (since they are de-facto too big to be shipped via the tube roads). Even if they were broken down into small parts for delivery, delivery and assembly would be orders of magnitude more complicated and expensive than asphalt or concrete. Repairs that could not be done in place would require the massive, heavy replacement sections to be shipped from the factory at great expense, to be swapped out for repair, after which the broken road sections would have to be dumped or recycled at additional cost. They would carve up habitat, and cause massive environmental damage, being by necessity as destructive as roads since they couldn’t possibly be suspended above the ground for any significant distance. And we haven’t even yet mentioned the backbreaking cost of powering this system.
You can mix some iron filings or something into the striping paint to make it visible to automated car sensors if you want (not that that would benefit you anything), but other that you stay away from our road system. Any fancy-schmancy changes you want to make, you can make to the cars.
They don’t have to ride “on” flatcars, they could just clip together and use the car’s existing wheels and motors. When operated independently the cars would operate on battery power, when joined they run off central power like a subway train.
Switching in and out of the train is handled automatically. You punch in your exit, pull into the on-ramp/station, and lean your seat back and take a nap until your exit.
Seems like I’d have to depend upon how well someone else maintained his car, and use my battery current to move him. It would be easier to drive off a flatcar than to unhook and rehook at each stop.
