How Europe Will Lower Emissions — Self Driving Cars 317
thecarchik writes "Scientists in Europe are working closely with industry and government as part of a new initiative called SARTRE (SAfe Road TRains for the Environment), which hopes to develop self-driving technology that will allow vehicles to drive autonomously in long road trains on the highway. The team behind SARTRE has now conducted its first real world test, using a sole Volvo S60 sedan that followed a lead truck around the automaker's test facility near Gothenburg, Sweden. In the video, the driver is free to take his eyes off the road and his hands off the wheel. In fact, he uses neither his hands nor feet during the test. Subsequent phases of the work will be carried out in 2011, and early 2012 will see the concept demonstrated on a five-vehicle road train with strategies handling interaction with other road users."
how does this help? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:No. Way. (Score:5, Interesting)
Did you ever notice how car ads always take place on small roads in beautiful mountainous territory?
Driving cars on the highway through flat country is pretty boring; driving cars on a highway in traffic through the same flat country twice a day for a couple years on end is downright tedious.
I think driving is incredibly fun --- through european cities and over small roads in the countryside. I would love to be able to drive to the highway, read the newspaper for half an hour, and take control again at the exit.
Re:No. Way. (Score:4, Interesting)
I guess that the large US cities are much the same? We've not driven there, yet. Actually, we've hardly even visited the country yet (no history and no unique wildlife, and that's what we travel for).
That's not true -- the US obviously joined modern civilisation a lot later, but there are prehistoric settlements to see (I liked this place [wikipedia.org]), and on the east coast there's a little stuff from the 17th century.
I don't know so much about wildlife, but I'd not see chipmunks, raccoons or skunks before. I didn't see any bears.
Some of the national parks are excellent, for instance Yellowstone [wikipedia.org], Yosemite [wikipedia.org], Death Valley, Sequoia, ... and all the rest, probably; I've been to seven or eight, and all were worth visiting.
Glasgow is the closest to an American city for driving that I know of in Europe -- the motorways cut straight through the middle. The difference is in the US the motorway might be 5+ lanes on each side going through the city and everyone's more relaxed -- there's less overtaking and less difference in speed between any two vehicles. The metropolitan area of Glasgow has 2.5M people, the motorways are 3+3 lanes. Albuquerque has a population of less than 1M, the interstate road is 6+6. I doubt there's anywhere cheap to park in the middle of Glasgow, but there's good public transport and a park+ride service. A car is unlikely to be a necessity in any European town (though it may save time, you could manage without it). That's not possible in much of the US, they've built stuff too far apart.
Re:No. Way. (Score:4, Interesting)
Not all that energy efficient
http://www.coyoteblog.com/coyote_blog/images/2008/08/04/transenergy.png [coyoteblog.com]
My first conclusion is that we would get more efficient by pushing
small, fuel efficient vehicles instead of pushing transit, and at
a lower cost.
A full bus or trainload of people is more efficient than private cars,
sometimes quite a bit more so. But transit systems never consist
of nothing but full vehicles. They run most of their day with light
loads. The above calculations came from figures citing the
average city bus holding 9 passengers, and the average train (light
or heavy) holds 22. If that seems low, remember that every packed
train at rush hour tends to mean a near empty train returning down
the track.
Transit vehicles also tend to stop and start a lot, which eats
a lot of energy, even with regenerative braking. And most
transit vehicles are just plain heavy, and not very aerodynamic.
Indeed, you'll see tables in the DoE reports that show that over the past 30 years,
private cars have gotten 30% more efficient, while buses have
gotten 60% less efficient and trains about 25% worse. The
market and government regulations have driven efforts to make cars
more efficient, while transit vehicles have actually worsened.
In order to get people to ride transit, you must offer frequent
service, all day long. They want to know they have the freedom to leave at
different times. But that means emptier vehicles outside of
rush hour. You've all seen those huge empty vehicles go by, you just
haven't thought of how anti-green they were. It would be better
if off-hours transit was done by much smaller vehicles, but that
implies too much capital cost -- no transit agency will buy enough
equipment for peak times and then buy a second set of equipment for
light demand periods.