Couldn't resist...

ICE will die.. and very quickly.. I see people moaning on places like the Facebook TopGear about France banning it by 2040.. but the simple reality is petrol/diesel will very quickly become unsustainable.. as EVs (battery, hydrogen, other) get even 10% market penetration petrol stations will suddenly start becoming less profitable and more will close.. this will result in more people considering EVs as getting petrol becomes more awkward further exacerbating the issue for petrol stations.. and so it goes on.

As for self driving.. I’m hoping for a complete change in culture about car ownership.. as we move towards AI drivers I want to see us end up just subscribing to a particular car company or leasing company.. and whenever you need a car one from that company appears within X mins.. when your done it just goes away and assists someone else.. nobody owns a car.. it’s result in many less on our roads cluttering up the place. Pipe dream perhaps..


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I would recommend you to watch this https://youtu.be/2b3ttqYDwF0

Really interesting and he shows with numbers why there will be level 5 ev in a few years and why the ICE will die

Exactly. Great video. Pretty much what is reality. I wish i could go into much more detail about what I know; but for now let me just say..."what he said." . Autonomous electric vehicles are already a fact of life. I have the guts of one right here on my desk and in my computer...it's beautiful.

ICE will die.. and very quickly.. I see people moaning on places like the Facebook TopGear about France banning it by 2040.. but the simple reality is petrol/diesel will very quickly become unsustainable.. as EVs (battery, hydrogen, other) get even 10% market penetration petrol stations will suddenly start becoming less profitable and more will close.. this will result in more people considering EVs as getting petrol becomes more awkward further exacerbating the issue for petrol stations.. and so it goes on.

As for self driving.. I’m hoping for a complete change in culture about car ownership.. as we move towards AI drivers I want to see us end up just subscribing to a particular car company or leasing company.. and whenever you need a car one from that company appears within X mins.. when your done it just goes away and assists someone else.. nobody owns a car.. it’s result in many less on our roads cluttering up the place. Pipe dream perhaps..


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I'm one to hate flying and love driving. I'm a driving fool, anyplace I've never been.

So....i asked this question years ago, but now, in this context, how about a Mobile Indigo Touch for automation of your private vehicle, from auto to RV, from boat to airplane. Would be nice to have a Mobile Indigo Touch for mobile platforms.

ICE will die.. and very quickly.. I see people moaning on places like the Facebook TopGear about France banning it by 2040.. but the simple reality is petrol/diesel will very quickly become unsustainable.. as EVs (battery, hydrogen, other) get even 10% market penetration petrol stations will suddenly start becoming less profitable and more will close.. this will result in more people considering EVs as getting petrol becomes more awkward further exacerbating the issue for petrol stations.. and so it goes on.

As for self driving.. I’m hoping for a complete change in culture about car ownership.. as we move towards AI drivers I want to see us end up just subscribing to a particular car company or leasing company.. and whenever you need a car one from that company appears within X mins.. when your done it just goes away and assists someone else.. nobody owns a car.. it’s result in many less on our roads cluttering up the place. Pipe dream perhaps..


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Battery supercap electric, yes I see as a nearly (and getting closer every day) viable alternative once super high amperage charging stations and fast charge batteries/supercaps make the next capacity jump. So the ICEs could easily be on the way out... But hydrogen is a mega scarey alternative that I figure is going to die on the vine once it has been demonstrated on a large scale for a few years; given Murphie's law, once there are millions of them out there it's not if the safeties are going to fail but when one does and Fukishimas a parking garage under a skyscraper (no radiation, but the building collapse would be bad enough to panic everybody).

As far as everybody using personal public transportation, that's fine for the folks that never carry anything more than themselves and an occasional bag of grocieries, but I've got a toolbox and my emergency rescue gear (member of a civilian first res ponder auxiliary) at all times, and I frequently have to haul a dozen bags of horse feed or hay bales to the critters at my ranch.

Yeah I’m fairly sure hydrogen is going to flop. Too many down sides. Then again VHS prevailed when beta was superior in almost every way so who knows...

And yeah the luggage situation is something I was wondering about. Hehe perhaps we’ll have little crates that just follow us around all the time and can be summoned at a Whim!


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Yeah I’m fairly sure hydrogen is going to flop. Too many down sides. Then again VHS prevailed when beta was superior in almost every way so who knows...

And yeah the luggage situation is something I was wondering about. Hehe perhaps we’ll have little crates that just follow us around all the time and can be summoned at a Whim!


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And when the car has been gone for a couple of hours before you remember that in addition to the 4 bags of groceries that you got out of the front seat, you also had your kid sleeping in a car seat in back? THAT's already happening, often with tragic consequences... at least those won't be as dire unless the car is done for the day and headed back to the barn.

I would recommend you to watch this https://youtu.be/2b3ttqYDwF0

Really interesting and he shows with numbers why there will be level 5 ev in a few years and why the ICE will die

Exactly. Great video. Pretty much what is reality. I wish i could go into much more detail about what I know; but for now let me just say..."what he said." . Autonomous electric vehicles are already a fact of life. I have the guts of one right here on my desk and in my computer...it's beautiful.

It’s be better out on the road

I’m extremely excited about autonomous EVs. Rumour has it the new Leaf will have some form of self driving capability when it’s revealed later this year.. if it does it’ll be top of my list when my Renault Zoe’s PCP contract ends. Also it looks like it’ll be attractive.. unlike the frog features of the current model.


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Yeah I’m fairly sure hydrogen is going to flop. Too many down sides. Then again VHS prevailed when beta was superior in almost every way so who knows...

And yeah the luggage situation is something I was wondering about. Hehe perhaps we’ll have little crates that just follow us around all the time and can be summoned at a Whim!


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And when the car has been gone for a couple of hours before you remember that in addition to the 4 bags of groceries that you got out of the front seat, you also had your kid sleeping in a car seat in back? THAT's already happening, often with tragic consequences... at least those won't be as dire unless the car is done for the day and headed back to the barn.

Indeed.. I can just imagine the looks on people’s faces as their ride turns up.. with someone’s firstborn strapped in the back!

But i suppose a solution to that would be some form of scanner to detect if there’s any foreign objects left in the car before it departs.


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Yeah I’m fairly sure hydrogen is going to flop. Too many down sides. Then again VHS prevailed when beta was superior in almost every way so who knows...

Steve Ballmer thought the iPhone would flop. "A $600 phone? bWAAA-HA!Ha1HA!!!"

Lol we could say the same thing about a $150K EV.... but tie it to a transportation contract who knows? NoWith Lithium batteries and solar, I doubt hydrogen could compete......but not because of down sides. Because electric is better.

[jay (support)]

And when the car has been gone for a couple of hours before you remember that in addition to the 4 bags of groceries that you got out of the front seat, you also had your kid sleeping in a car seat in back? THAT's already happening, often with tragic consequences... at least those won't be as dire unless the car is done for the day and headed back to the barn.

This is an easier problem to solve than the whole autonomous driving thing...

Steve Ballmer got a lot wrong.. he always seemed to me to be the real life star quarter back (is that right?) you see in American movies.. particularly liked his portrayal in Pirates of Silicon Valley.. I think they captured his ‘used car salesman’ personal so well!


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I read an interesting bit regarding autonomous driving cars a while back regarding the situation of software and "community responsibility". Their scenario was intriguing... if a self-driving car comes upon a situation where it is heading, at speed, towards a crowd in the roadway (assume this is around a curve or some other situation wherein it did not have time to react "reasonably") and cannot stop in time. What does it do? Now say there are sound barriers or other obstructions on the side of the road and so the only two options are to sacrifice itself, and its occupant, by ramming into the barrier at lethal speed OR head into the crowd, braking of course, but knowing it WILL hit others.

Sure, there are some plenty of variables in there and such, but it brought up an interesting scenario. Their question was more along the lines of "will consumers accept a self driving car if they know that it is programmed for the 'community good' in that case." The article didn't seem to be knocking on self-driving cars or questioning what should be done, it was just pointing out that there are many unknowns ahead for everyone involved.

There have been some advances in the hydrogen space -- storage that can even take a gunshot without combustion. However, I think the electrics have too large of a lead for a serious push by hydrogen technologies. No hard data there, just guessing since, for better or worse, marketing and first-to-market wins over technology at times.

Of course, living in the Southern United States, I can assure you that there will be a low adoption rate of electric or alternative fuel vehicles until you can match the power output of light and medium duty trucks and SUVs (F-150/250, Silverado, RAM, etc.)

I think the general consensus of the above scenario is an ethics setting. You can choose it to your personal preference.. ultimately do you believe you’re more important than someone else.. but then if it happened you’d have to live with that choice.


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It's an interesting question--and surely smarter people than me have worked it out--but I can't make the math work.

If there were to be a self-driving mandate it would seem to me to be oppressively expensive. Governments would need to recoup taxes and fees on tags, stickers, inspections, and fuel (and whatnot). Most people probably wouldn't be able to afford their own self-driving cars, so that would, out of necessity, lead to be pools. Pools means that you would need fewer vehicles per capita. Fewer vehicles means fewer mechanics, and car washes and parking lots and other infrastructure to support them. Add mandatory EV on top of that and you lose the infrastructure to support ICE (collection, refinery, distribution and sales). Add to that: delivery of goods--are we to have electric trucks and freight trains? Snow plows? Bulldozers? What do you do with the billion non self-driving vehicles on the road now? You'd need to supplement the electric grid to support it all. What about all the people put out of work? The whole thing seems to collapse in on itself on the economics alone. If it's to work, I think it needs to happen organically over time.

Don't get me wrong, I don't worship at the altar of ICE (okay, maybe I do a little bit) and EV in many respects is vastly superior. I just don't see a mandate happening in the U.S. until we're about to run out of dinosaurs. Otherwise, I think the economy would implode.