Future of the car
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In order to limit deaths, there has been a push for self-driving
automobiles. There have been many notable efforts funded by the
NHTSA, including the many efforts by the NavLab group at Carnegie
Mellon University. Recent efforts include the highly publicized
DARPA Grand Challenge race.
A current invention is ESP by Bosch that is claimed to reduce deaths
by about 30% and is recommended by many lawmakers and carmakers to
be a standard feature in all cars sold in the EU. ESP recognizes
dangerous situations and corrects the drivers input for a short
moment to stabilize the car. |
The biggest threat to automobiles is the declining supply of oil,
which does not completely stop car usage but makes it significantly
more expensive. Beginning of 2006 1 liter of gas costs approx. 1.6
US$ in Germany and other European countries. If no cheap solution
can be found in the relatively near future individual mobility might
suffer a major setback. Nevertheless, individual mobility is highly
prized in modern societies so the demand for automobiles is
inelastic. Alternative individual modes of transport, such as
Personal rapid transit, could make the automobile obsolete if they
prove to be cheaper and more energy efficient.
Hydrogen cars, driven either by a combination of fuel cells and an
electric motor, or alternatively, a conventional combustion engine,
are thought to replace fossil fuel powered cars in a few decades.
The biggest obstacle for a mass market of hydrogen cars is the cost
of hydrogen production by electrolysis, which is inefficient and
requires a comparatively expensive source of electrical energy.
However Hydrogen produces 5 times as much energy than 93 octane
gasoline and promises to be cheaper with mass production and none
CO2, but steam H2O emissions as result of the combustion. BMW's
engineering team promises a high horsepower hydrogen fuel engine in
it's 7-series sedan before the next generation of the car makes it's
debut.
The electric car in general appears to be a way forward in
principle; electric motors are far more efficient than internal
combustion engines and have a much greater power to weight ratio.
They also operate efficiently across the full speed range of the
vehicle and develop a lot of torque at zero speed, so are ideal for
cars. A complex drivetrain and transmission would not be needed.
However, despite this the electric car is held back by battery
technology - so far a cell with comparable energy density to a tank
of liquid fuel is a long way off, and there is no infrastructure in
place to support it. A more practical approach may be to use a
smaller internal combustion engine to drive a generator- this
approach can be much more efficient since the IC engine can be run
at a single speed, use cheaper fuel such as diesel, and drop the
heavy, power wasting drivetrain. Such an approach has worked very
well for railway locomotives, but so far has not been scaled down
for car use.
Recently the automobile industry has determined that the biggest
potential growth market (in terms of both revenue and profit), is
software. Cars are now equipped with a stunning array of software;
from voice recognition and vehicle navigation systems to in-vehicle
distributed entertainment systems (DVD/Games), to telematics systems
such as GMs Onstar not to mention the control subsystems. Software
now accounts for 35% of a cars value, and this percentage is only
going to get larger. The theory behind this is that the mechanical
systems of automobiles are now essentially a commodity, and the real
product differentiation occurs in the software systems. Many cars
are equipped with full blown 32bit real-time memory protected
operating systems such as QNX. |
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