Electric vehicles

UKworkshop.co.uk

Help Support UKworkshop.co.uk:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
What is very clear - it is not science fiction. It will happen - the only possible debate is when.
... and how many people it will kill before it is safe.

Teslas 'self driving' has separately killed 2 motorcyclists so far as there seems to be a problem with it seeing twin rear lights on certain bikes close together and thinking it is a car in the distance. Mostly because tesla doesn't want to pay for lidar and relies on optics which just aren't good enough.
 
... and how many people it will kill before it is safe.

Teslas 'self driving' has separately killed 2 motorcyclists so far as there seems to be a problem with it seeing twin rear lights on certain bikes close together and thinking it is a car in the distance. Mostly because tesla doesn't want to pay for lidar and relies on optics which just aren't good enough.
How safe does it need to be? Safer than human drivers or way safer than that?
 
The point was that the allegro estate carried pretty much the same amount of people and cargo and weighed 700kg less.
Yes, they weigh more, but everything else is better as a result. Less fuel used, less emissions, safer, more reliable, more comfortable.

You could make it lighter, but it would either have less functionality or cost more.
 
Last edited:
... and how many people it will kill before it is safe.

Teslas 'self driving' has separately killed 2 motorcyclists so far as there seems to be a problem with it seeing twin rear lights on certain bikes close together and thinking it is a car in the distance. Mostly because tesla doesn't want to pay for lidar and relies on optics which just aren't good enough.
I don’t know much about Tesla’s offering but I have seen the driverless taxis in San Francisco. No technology will be 100% foolproof but it can easily be better given the vagaries of human drivers
 
.....As for how folks managed, you’re old enough to know that , just may have forgotten it. They walked to their local shops because they actually had them, ours have all been turned into student flats or coffee shops/charity shops. Our shops have all migrated out of town to super markets and we’re having to go further to find jobs....
Same everywhere. Every town in UK is filled to capacity with parked vehicles. Parking on public roads and spaces should not have been permitted in the first place but nobody saw the boom coming, even the 1963 Buchanan report underestimated it.
Phasing out private transport could revive centre of town/village quality of life, community and services.
 
Using a driverless pod summoned by app in rural Devon won't happen in my lifetime.
Interestingly, we had to summon an emergency ambulance to our place on Friday night, for my Mum. We live in rural Cornwall and share a postcode with about a dozen other properties spread over about a mile of road. The ambulance crew did not know the area, but came direct to our house, with no stops along the way. They were using an advanced sort of system that I don't pretend to understand, but the point is, it brought them straight to us and they were confident enough in its abilities to be getting all their kit from the wagon before I even got to the front gate. I suspect we will see that technology widely available to the public within a very few years, so yes, I do expect it to be possible to have driverless cars operating smoothly in rural areas within my lifetime, and quite possibly in yours, unless you plan on popping off soon.
 
Yes, they weigh more, but everything else is better as a result. Less fuel used, less emissions, safer, more reliable, more comfortable.
but if you dropped 100's kgs by having a 'normal' car with the same interior space as a big suv, you'd use even less fuel?!

My neighbour drives a Audi Q7. She has 3 kids. But does she need a car that weighs a min of 2195kg to drive them around? She isn't hauling a caravan or building materials. They could all quite easily fit in a focus estate that weighs almost half that. And that isn't an isolated incident either, I see more and more big cars and suv's parked at houses that would have previously had a small modest car. Finance means people now buy far bigger than they would have.
 
Interestingly, we had to summon an emergency ambulance to our place on Friday night, for my Mum. We live in rural Cornwall and share a postcode with about a dozen other properties spread over about a mile of road. The ambulance crew did not know the area, but came direct to our house, with no stops along the way. They were using an advanced sort of system that I don't pretend to understand, but the point is, it brought them straight to us and they were confident enough in its abilities to be getting all their kit from the wagon before I even got to the front gate. I suspect we will see that technology widely available to the public within a very few years, so yes, I do expect it to be possible to have driverless cars operating smoothly in rural areas within my lifetime, and quite possibly in yours, unless you plan on popping off soon.
I hope your mum is okay.
 
... and how many people it will kill before it is safe.

Teslas 'self driving' has separately killed 2 motorcyclists so far as there seems to be a problem with it seeing twin rear lights on certain bikes close together and thinking it is a car in the distance. Mostly because tesla doesn't want to pay for lidar and relies on optics which just aren't good enough.
Driverless vehicles don't get angry, drunk, tired, emotional, argue with the boss, worry about money, hormonal, etc etc etc.

They have other potential flaws - inadequately tested software, faulty sensors, poor quality control.

Autonomous vehicles do not need to be perfect - merely better than their flesh and blood alternative.

They are very close!!!
 
I hope your mum is okay.
Ta! She is, 93 and stubborn - if she'd listened to me earlier in the day, she would have had a quick visit from the local GP and we wouldn't have had to waste the time of an ambulance crew, but she wouldn't give in until too late in the day. Lesson learned: next time I'll override her!
 
Using a driverless pod summoned by app in rural Devon won't happen in my lifetime.
Approximately 84% of the UK population live in urban areas. Rural Devon may be amongst the last to adopt the technology. Plymouth and Exeter will likely be first - quickly followed by Torquay, Paignton, Exmouth etc.
 
They were using an advanced sort of system that I don't pretend to understand,.... I suspect we will see that technology widely available to the public within a very few years, so yes, I do expect it to be possible to have driverless cars operating smoothly in rural areas within my lifetime, and quite possibly in yours, unless you plan on popping off soon.
Probably just a GPS sat nav with the exact location determined by your phone call.
It's not just route finding that's the problem in rural areas, it's how autonomous vehicles can handle narrow roads and obstructions (herd of cows being moved, minor flooding etc).
 
If you want to be transparent here, you should call EV’s ‘remote combustion vehicles’ as the pollution generated by burning fossil fuels, happens remotely.
Not to mention the increased pollution from the heavier vehicle and its battery pack.
1725281963661.png

That's a work in progress. No idea how the imports are generated but assuming all from fossil fuel 1.2 + 12.3 + 28.5 = 42% bit of CO2 associated from the others but not as bad as most people seem to think.

Bring on small EVs
 
Driverless vehicles don't get angry, drunk, tired, emotional, argue with the boss, worry about money, hormonal, etc etc etc.

They have other potential flaws - inadequately tested software, faulty sensors, poor quality control.

Autonomous vehicles do not need to be perfect - merely better than their flesh and blood alternative.

They are very close!!!
I can agree to a certain extent. To be honest I'm amazed at how well our roads work considering we can be passing at 60mph with only a white line to separate us.

But I don't believe self driving cars are as good as most humans and won't be for a long time, if at all. Our 'processing' power is just much better. Adding assists to compliment drivers makes more sense to me.

We haven't even removed the drivers on trains yet and they go forward or backwards along a pre-determined route.
 
Adding assists to compliment drivers makes more sense to me.
Whilst ABS, EBA, traction control and parking sensors do their job well, other bits of 'assistance' are pretty grim and have been introduced far too soon; Lane assistance can get things wrong far too often and I've yet to see anyone actually relying on an auto parking function.

As you rightly point our trains still always have a driver or similar on them, lots of people will hate the idea of autonomous cars on their roads.
 
Most car travel does not involve children. Most journeys are urban and average ~8 miles.

With driverless vehicles summoned via an app I would expect a range of vehicles would be available at different costs. Most journeys - commuting, school run, shopping, local social would be in cheap "pods" with a max speed of 40/50 mph.

Need a child seat - order a large pod - or one with child seat already fitted.

Rubbish to the tip - order a flat bed truck. Possibly pay a premium for the recycling centre to empty the truck on arrival so you don't even have to travel.

Taking the family on a 200 miles motorway trip - order a vehicle with 4/5 seats + luggage capacity.

I can agree to a certain extent. To be honest I'm amazed at how well our roads work considering we can be passing at 60mph with only a white line to separate us.

But I don't believe self driving cars are as good as most humans and won't be for a long time, if at all. Our 'processing' power is just much better. Adding assists to compliment drivers makes more sense to me.

We haven't even removed the drivers on trains yet and they go forward or backwards along a pre-determined route.
We haven't replaced train drivers as there is very little benefit when one driver is transporting hundreds of people, the technology has existed for years. This is a different argument but we need to think carefully about replacing human jobs with technology, people need work or our society needs to be radically different.
 
This is a different argument but we need to think carefully about replacing human jobs with technology, people need work or our society needs to be radically different.
This is really about whether people will ever give up their own personal transport and be prepared to use a supplied autonomous product(s).
I think the obstacles to that are FAR greater than the glassy eyed optimists think. Both technologically and societally.
 
......

How is a wind turbine going to weaken our national security vs reliance on imported oil and gas.

......
Because the last time we were discussing at work about Pen tests, cyber-security (or lack of) and windfarms, the conclusion was a disaster waiting to happen.
 
Back
Top