When Will the Automotive Internet Arrive?

DeviceGuru writes "European researchers are developing a cooperative traffic system, known CVIS (Cooperative Vehicle-Infrastructure Systems), comprised of vehicle-, roadside-, and central infrastructure-based communications hardware and software, including vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) wireless. Among other capabilities, cars communicate with each other and with 'smart traffic signals' to smooth the flow of traffic and avoid accidents, or with 'smart traffic signs' to avoid dangerous driving conditions. The CVIS project is in the midst of undergoing field trials in Europe, and Audi has recently deployed 15 test vehicles in a similar project. The ambitious vision of intelligent transportation systems (ITS) includes goals such as reduced traffic congestion and fuel consumption, enhanced safety, and improved driver and passenger comfort. Ultimately, the developers envision a sort of Automotive Internet."

Don't need to have every car! Brilliant

[wealthychef]

I'd always assumed everyone would have to be plugged into an automated system, but actually, maybe it only takes a relative few cars. In fact, if you just drove a line of cars side by side along the freeway at the speed limit so that nobody could pass them, and just kept such barriers every 10 or 20 or 30 miles, then I think it would help to eliminate the incentive for everyone to act so crazy to gain 30 seconds' advantage, thereby causing congestion. I've always thought it was the lange changes and sudden maneuvers that cause the most problems in traffic.

iPhone

[Beer_Smurf]

Or just the small bit of programming that lets my iPhone know when it is in my car?
Then it can give me all that data and I don't have to buy the expensive, soon obsolete hardware in the car.

It isn't roads, or lanes. It's parking spaces

[Colin Smith]

No really it is.

Thought experiment. You have a road. You can safely put a car along the road every 2 seconds. What is the capacity of the road? 1800 cars per hour.

You put a parking garage at the end of the road. it takes 15 seconds to get a ticket and enter the garage. What is the capacity of the road now? 240 cars per hour. You just cut road capacity to 13% of nominal and created a huge traffic jam. Welcome to reality.

Our traffic problems are created because we don't get cars off the roads fast enough when they get to their destination. What're need are lots of high bandwidth parking garages. Traffic lights and junctions also don't help at all.

Re:I can't wait.

[wizardforce]

Then you should also be worried about fighter aircraft which have been using fly by wire systems for quite some time now. As for using old cars, your sense of risk is skewed; you are concerned about the drive by wire systems more than the fact older cars tend to be built to older (read out-dated) safety standards. Even then, you are much more likely to be killed in a car accident of your own making than by a hardware failure; by at least an order of magnitude.

But seriously... Big Brothermobile?

[Jane Q. Public]

If something like this were to be implemented, your location would always be known. If not to the public, at least to the "authorities".

I just do not see a practical way to keep the Big Brother aspects out of it, unless they were to build some kind of filter so that "the authorities" could not see personal information without a warrant or something. Heck, they could even set up a totally automated system to mail out speeding tickets. No police cars required.

I'll pass, thanks very much.

Re:Hopefully Never

[Sporkinum]

2 interesting observations. I just got back from vacation in Colorado driving a 10 year old 4 cyl manual Saturn L series. When driving on the interstate highway, I was driving between 75-80 MPH. I got around 30 MPG at that speed. When I was driving at high altitude(2400 to 3600 meters) with lots of climbing, I got 36 mpg on one tank, and 40 mpg on the other. The car had weak power though (non-turbo).

The other observation, was that with the lack of power, going up a steep climb, I got passed by a Prius. I am guessing the electric motor adds to the gas engine's power and allows it to not degrade as much as a normally aspirated gasoline engine does.

Re:Cost effective?

[Zironic]

That's sorta funny considering that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm [wikipedia.org] is about that size with one of the best transit systems in the world http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stockholm_Metro [wikipedia.org]