The above photograph is of a fatal RTA (one person killed) on the M40 in February 2015. Given the passage of time the grieving process should have passed for any relatives or friends seeing this and knowing the identity of the fatality.
Self drive motor cars (as opposed to chauffeur driven) were one of the great liberators and emancipators of the 20th Century. For the first half of the century (1900 – 1950) “horseless carriages” later, “auto-mobiles” and later “cars”, started as a niche product for the very wealthy gradually becoming more mainstream for the upper and upper middle classes. For the second half of the century (1951 – 2000) car ownership increased progressively in both numbers and across the social spectrum culminating at the end of the century with even poor working class people owning cars.
In the 21st Century we have seen this progress put into reverse. One of the significant developments has been the development of “EVs (electric cars) which should really be called “BVs” (battery vehicles) or BEVs (battery electric vehicles). These vehicles have and are proving to be dangerous (due to the lithium ion chemistry which is a fire risk), expensive (due to the cost of the batteries) impractical (due to their great weight and vulnerability to damage and difficulty in having roadside repairs performed on them) and polluting (due to their greater tyre and brake wear than ICE cars).
In addition to these problems there is inadequate charging infrastructure and there is no indication that this lack of charging infrastructure is going to be adequately addressed for a significant number of EV’s on the road. In other words, based on current projections it seems that self driving cars on UK roads are going to go back to the 1950s or worse the 1930s!
The result of this of course will be to deprive the mass of what Labour politicians like Ed Miliband like to call, “ordinary working people” who constitute the “hard working families”.
Mr Miliband of course is fully aware that “ordinary working people” in “hard working families” will be forced to use public transport – whilst he and his colleagues will be able to have the roads freed up of the plebeians. How very socialist of him!
Mr Miliband’s reason for forcing this sacrifice upon these “ordinary working people” in “hard working families” is the need to reduce CO2 and other so-called “green house” gases! Which of course is complete bullshit!
Does that mean that the billions of US $ spent developing this advanced technology has been entirely wasted?
NO!
This innovative and advanced technology could AND SHOULD be used to create a whole new generation of vehicles.
Electric traction using batteries has it’s place on British roads! It is just that we have to define which roads! These roads are urban roads in built up areas with 30 mph speed limits! Of course the big problem of EVs is range! This because the EV is supposed to be capable of long distance driving at motorway speeds. This is impractical on a mass scale!
What IS practical on a mass scale is short distance urban driving at 30 mph or less!
What I propose is this:
That in future cars should have dual propulsion. The technology is straightforward:
One has a conventional petrol or diesel engine that is connected to an electric generator. This generator provides electric power to an electric traction motor that is connected to one of the axles of the vehicle. In addition there is a battery pack that can be much smaller and lighter than a pack designed to provide long distance travel.
The car will not be a hybrid in ten conventional sense. It will have manual selection for battery or ICE use. The driver will select battery for urban use and ICE for non urban (long distance) use.
One of the greatest advances in technology – which is still under development – is full self driving (“self” being the car and not the driver).
I am a great enthusiast for full self driving for it promises to reduce RTAs dramatically.
I look forward to the day when I can still behind the wheel of a car, key in the post code of my destination and let the car do all the driving!
What I will have to do is to fill up and pay for the petrol/diesel fuel and charge up the battery!
Herewith below some links:
GOTO: https://www.carmagazine.co.uk/autonomous/tesla-self-driving/
GOTO: https://cleantechnica.com/2024/01/06/an-e-bike-battery-that-cant-catch-fire-even-when-shot/
GOTO: https://think.ing.com/articles/can-sodium-ion-batteries-replace-lithium-ion-batteries/