76olds

Anyone get the June 2016 Musclecar Review magazine ?
Very interesting read on page 4 , Scary indeed.

Eric

76olds

I don't know how to scan and post the page here, if someone else here purchased a copy of this months Musclecar review with the red AMC on the front of the magazine perhaps they could put it out here.
Then again many may not want to read it.
The wife and I have been talking about buying a 68-72 cutlass but not so sure after reading this.

Eric

Convertcrazed

got my issue a couple days ago...haven't read yet....but i'll ck out and post here 2maro
Eric M

joe_padavano

How about a hint as to the topic?

allyolds68

Autonomous vehicles

midrange

It's an 'Editors Note' about driver-less car technology.
How the inventors of such tech are 'predicting' that driver-less cars will be mandatory in the near future, and those of us who own 'old-tech' cars and want to continue to use them, will be relegated to 'Driving Parks', higher insurance, etc.

It also states the founder of Tesla Motors has 'predicted' that the transition to driver-less cars will begin in 2023. LOL

My opinion, which seems to be the context from which this article was written, is much ado about absolutely nothing.

The fact that this article even made it to print is making me reconsider my upcoming renewal of Musclecar Review.

joe_padavano

This line of reasoning is unfortunately not a surprise, and frankly, many other automotive magazines and forums have raised the same issue. Keep in mind that there are very few engineers in Government, and most politicians have promoted autonomous vehicles as a "life saving" technology.

How anyone who has ever used a Microsoft product can think that software is infallible remains a mystery to me...

Expect this push to continue until the first person is killed by an autonomouns vehicle. Sadly, it is more likely to happen than not, though the fact that the FAA can't agree on standards for UAVs (which arguably are easier to control, as there won't be a child running out in front of one) should tell you something. In addition, the FAA has recently announced that over reliance on autopilot has resulted in a loss of pilot skills in emergency situations.

DOH! NO ONE could have seen that coming...

As for Mr. Musk, he hasn't come close to meeting a self-imposed deadline yet. The company that hasn't built more than 70,000 cars in it's history (and still hasn't made a profit) is going to built 500,000 Model 3s in the next couple of years? Hold your breath. SpaceX hasn't flown a Falcon 9 Heavy yet, but he's going to land on Mars in 2018. Yeah, buy your tickets now. And money loosing Tesla is now going to buy Solar City, an even bigger money looser. Expect to see your tax dollars at work bailing these companies out.

Personally, I don't expect to see widespread use of autonomous vehicles in my lifetime.

TripDeuces

I have to agree with Joe here. The expense is huge and will never happen. States are bankrupt now trying to maintain their infrastructures. Federal mandated smart cars and highways will never happen in your lifetime.

Here's an example from my state. We have a stretch of highway that locals knew as the 'Experimental Highway Project'. It used to have a big sign explaining all about it and how far advanced it was and how eventually all the roads in the state would be just like it. It was made sometime in the early 70's before I even had a license and is about 2/3 of a mile long. To this day that road is basically pristine, no cracks, potholes, subsiding, buckling or anything. It is basically maintenance free except for snow removal.
Almost 50 years has passed since it was built and yet to this day there is no other road like it in the state. There is only one reason.........cost. If they can't build a simple roadway like this there is no way they are going to make some ultra sophisticated highway for smart cars. At least not in my bankrupt state.

joe_padavano

Actually, I think you're missing the point a little. Today's autonomous vehicles don't require any expensive highway infrastructure. They have the smarts onboard in the form of sensors and processing power. The issue that will prolong their introduction isn't cost of highways, it's getting the liability laws in place that protect the manufacturers and local governments and insurance companies. THAT'S what will take the time.

jaunty75

I'll take the other side on this, just for the sake of argument. I, too, have read a number of articles predicting that we'll see driverless cars commonplace by about 2030.

The entire concept of transportation will change. The average person will not own a car. When you need to go somewhere, you simply summon a car, and it will come to your house and take you to where you need to go. Right now, the average private vehicle is actually driven only about 5% of the time. Think about how much time the average person, not a car enthusiast, but just the average person, actually spends behind the wheel each day. It's not as much as you might think, and our cars spend much of their lives parked. That's a wasted asset, especially when multiplied by the number of vehicles in the country.

The total number of cars in the U.S. is something like 250 million. That is predicted to drop by about 99% to about 3 million once autonomous vehicles are fully implemented. With the average person no longer needing to own a car, the whole concept of home design, which, for the last 100 years or so has meant a place to keep the car as well, will change. Homes will no longer be designed with a garage. This will have catastrophic consequences for the auto industry as they will no longer sell 15 million vehicles in the U.S. each year but something more like a few hundred thousand. Interesting to think about.

There's much more that can be said, but this doesn't sound that farfetched to me. The worst mistake people make in predicting the future is underestimating the impact of advancements in technology.

The argument that autonomous cars will have accidents is not a compelling one against the concept. How many people die today on American roads in cars that are controlled by human drivers? Quite a few. But we don't ban cars. We choose to live with that statistic because, in exchange for a few deaths, we have the freedom and the mobility of private vehicle ownership. My guess is that the rate (in something like number of deaths per mile driven by autonomous cars) of fatalities would decrease, perhaps substantially, if humans, with all of their foibles (drinking, drugs, fatigue, distractions from cell phones, eating, you name it), are eliminated from the equation.

I'm not ruling anything out when it comes to the future.

76olds

I think its going to happen quicker than most think. I wouldn't want to be told that I could only drive my old cutlass in permitted zones, and you must trailer the vehicle to these zones.
I believe the town I'm living in has already started with the painted marking of bicycles on the streets. I'm sure these streets will not allow vehicles down them very soon

QMaster

I will agree with Joe that the largest impediment will be the legal hurdles. However, I do believe that some of these changes will occur. I do believe that we will see some autonomous vehicles as they will allow people that cannot drive to have personal transportation. There will also be those that see driving as a chore that will view autonomous vehicles as a benefit. We will probably see a mix of autonomous and manned vehicles for many years, once they are truly available. On the other hand, I do not see car sharing taking off quite so quickly. Sure there will be those that have no problem using someone else's car, but I do not want to use other people's cars.

RetroRanger

Iirc in the 70s it was widely thought we would all be flying our cars like on the jetsons by the year 2000!

That said just the other day I suggested my wife would be an excellent candidate for a self driving automobile no joke there.

I think the reality is somewhere in the middle larger population centers will be first to adopt driverless vehicles while less urban areas will continue to rely on our skills for a much longer time.

Edit friggen auto incorrect forces me to write this reply three times to get it right and MS is gonna be making driverless cars ha

jaunty75

I agree, but I wouldn't be surprised to see it. The whole concept of an old car hobby will slowly disappear when individuals no longer own cars and the cars that are built are generic in appearance and only serve to move people around.

Also, with far fewer vehicles on the road and those that are being owned by autonomous car companies, whatever they'll be called, there will be no more need for gas stations nor auto repair shops nor auto parts stores nor auto dealerships, etc. When you think about how much of our economy is structured around the manufacture, sale, and service of automobiles, when the number of them drops by 90+ percent, the impact on our economy, our job situation, our way of life, will be unimaginable.

Look at how much upheaval we've seen in many industries with the advent of the internet and of digital technology. Retailing is hurting with the advent of online sales. The entire newspaper industry is on the ropes because no one buys newspapers anymore because we all read our news online. Eastman Kodak went from a high-flying technology company 20 years ago that made its money selling film and film processing to a near basket-case with the advent of digital photography. When's the last time you saw a travel agent? Everyone does their travel planning and purchasing online now. The list goes on.

There is no reason that the future needs to look anything like the present or the past.

jaunty75

It's not going to be someone else's car. It'll be generic cars owned by the government or by a private company under contract to the government to provide the autonomous car service. It'll be like climbing into a taxi cab now. It's not someone else's car. It's the cab company's car.

Perhaps it will work the way it does now with, say, cable television service. The company contracts with the local city to provide the service to that particular city. I can get Comcast in my town, but I can't get Time-Warner or any other cable service.

oldcutlass

joe_padavano

That was the 1950s... just look at the cover of any Popular Mechanics from that time.

joe_padavano

Which, naturally, brings to mind this old joke:

oldcutlass

I'm personally reminded of all the predictions of the 1964 Worlds Fair.

Koda

There will not be autonomous cars replacing privately owned vehicles as a "taxi on demand" service in our lifetimes for quite a few reasons.

As said above, there is a liability issue. There are many "assists" out there that can and do drive the car themselves, but the person is still responsible. Cruise control, lane following, smart cruise, and pre-braking make for a car that will drive itself down the interstate, but, if you hit someone, it's still on you. Even if car companies were to make a "chauffeur mode" "hey, I'm drunk, take me home" mode, you would still be responsible for your car, just like you are now. This is why you see TECH companies, like google and microsoft, and hybrid incubators like Tesla, and not real car manufacturers making these things. Ultimately, the driver will have to be responsible, which means no public owned robo taxis.

Second is tech. The Google car already wrecked. Sure, you can make a car capable of driving, and seeing, and navigating, but, as any good machine designer knows, a machine operates best in a closed environment. The open road is not a closed environment, and there will always be unpredicted situations.

Third is expense.This will cost probably at least double than a normal car. Unless it's government mandated, very few will buy them. People will not put up with the gov boondoggling on these expenses, either.

Fourth is freedom. People want freedom. Autonomous cars may not do what you want. They won't speed, not even if you're late. They will report on where they go to their owners. "Sally, you were supposed to be home at midnight, and the car says it's at the park, which is closed, and it's receiving rhythmic rocking and hearing animal noises."

Fifth is style. No man wants to be a bitch and be driven around. This is why stick shifts still exist.

jaunty75

There will not be a "you" as it won't be your car. Just like it's now not your bus if the city bus you're riding on hits something or it's not your taxi cab if the cab you're riding in hits something.

What driver? There IS NO DRIVER! That's the whole point. The cars are self-driving.

Again, you're underestimating future technology.

Irrelevant. So few will be sold that cost will only matter as a second order concern. They will be sold to governments or large companies that contract to the government. These companies may even be the manufacturers of the cars as well. We already have experience with this as cities buy fleets of buses, fleets of police cars, and things like that. I don't think this will be an issue as we as a society already know how to handle public purchase of motor vehicles. No individuals will buy cars.

This may turn out to be the case, but the fraction of people who define freedom this way may not be as many as we might think. Many people who live in larger cities don't own cars now. I doubt that they feel they have less freedom.

Koda

I think you may want to read my post again. Maybe a little slower?

joe_padavano

Actually, states are changing the laws on this issue. Stay tuned, it's not clear how it will ultimately turn out yet (other than the guarantee that it WILL, eventually, end up in court...).

joe_padavano

The ambulance-chasing lawyers WILL go after the entity with the deepest pockets.

Professur

I'm a computer tech. Guess what I do for a living. Guess what the average lifespan of a high powered computer is. Cars today with wireless links are already being hacked ... guess how long it took.

Driverless cars, I honestly would look forward to when you consider the idiots on the road today. But unless they're coming up with a lot better computers in the very near future, it ain't gonna happen.

joe_padavano

I deal with safety-critical software in the aerospace world. The DoD and NASA spend WAAAAAAY more on software V&V than any automaker ever would. Once the software is properly tested and proven, the configuration is locked until a well-vetted revision is issued. Given how difficult and expensive it is to properly test and certify and configuration control safety-critical software for applications like commercial jetliners, fighter planes, and the space shuttle, I can't imagine that same level of rigor in automotive applications. And once users start hacking the autonomous software for more performance, the way they do for emissions-control software now, just wait. Keep in mind that you can't even change tire size without requiring a software update for some of these algorithms.

And what happens when sensors fail or you get the intermittent wiring problem? What happens when snow covers the lines on the road? What happens if there's fresh pavement that doesn't have lines yet.

The test cars are only beginning to scratch the surface of possible failure modes. In the aerospace world, this analysis is called a failure modes and effects analysis. It isn't easy to do correctly, and many mission failures have been caused by poorly done FMEAs. Do you really want these on the road also?

Destructor

Where is the money for the infrastructure going to come from. The corrupt government is more interested in spending the money on vote buying schemes. Not that I want the money spent on dummy car technology but they won't even keep the roads maintained as is.

Diego

You would let your sub lapse because you didn't agree with the editor's attempt to get you to think big?

Gosh, what a boring world it would be if we all agreed with each other!

Lots of good info has been posted, but one thing that seems to have slipped from the radar is that there is more out there than North America - there are other countries like China that will be faced with an ever increasing need for transportation solutions. The future is closer than we ever imagined, and you can't stop progress, hiccups and all.

Bfg

I think we should all go back to the horse and buggy!

TripDeuces

Another aspect that hasn't been brought up yet is the bandwidth that would be required for an autonomous vehicle. Even using the previously mentioned reduction to 99 million vehicles just think of that amount of information being routed around. There's no way it would or could be a self-contained unit within the vehicle because you would need some form of infrastructure to support it. Radio, satellite, in pavement, etc. The cost is staggering and prohibitive.
In 2014 there were almost 90 traffic deaths a day in the US for a total of 32,675 that year. We're good at killing ourselves without government help or the costs that go along with it.
I think the best you can hope for is some type of collision avoidance system and even those aren't foolproof.

joe_padavano

Sorry, but you are incorrect. Autonomous vehicles today are totally self-contained, other than receiving GPS signals. They use GPS, radar, lidar, and other sensors that are on the vehicle, with a boatload of onboard processing power. Some systems, like the one Volvo is working on, use periodic downloads to update info on things like highway construction sites or closed roads, but this is not a real-time update.

The "connected vehicle" concept is different and not required for autonomous nav. That's yet another layer of outside control.

TripDeuces

My point is no matter how you make the vehicle or how technologically sophisticated it is autonomous vehicles just won't be feasible in the real world any time soon.

During the past two decades you saw the heightened emergence of the hybrid/electric vehicle, HEV. At there height in 2013 they had a market share of 3.19% of all vehicles produced. Today that number is closer to 2%. Autonomous vehicles would be a much smaller share of the market. HEV's are expensive and I'd venture to say Autonomous Vehicles (AV) are a lot more.
Before you think any country, state or municipality is going to make it mandatory to have an AV in the future think of this. Although you may see your car as a convenience and maybe even a necessity your local government sees it as income in the form of taxes. Property taxes, sales taxes, fuel taxes, registration fees, traffic violation fines, road taxes, safety inspection fees, etc. People will not be forced to buy something they don't want or can't afford. Nannyism only goes so far with Americans. Politicians will not rock that cash cow.
Everything you do in life has to do with mathematics and money.

joe_padavano

And yet, people are being forced to buy cars and truck with smaller, more sophisticated (read: expensive) engines due to CAFE laws. This will get worse as relatively low gas prices entice people to buy more and more monster SUVs. CAFE for all new vehicles sold must exceed 40 MPG by 2021 and unless changed, over 50 MPG by 2025. If buyers continue to purchase huge vehicles with crappy gas mileage, the automakers start paying penalties. Guess who those get passed onto in the form of higher prices?

Diego

No one is being forced to buy a new car.

joe_padavano

OK, PURCHACERS of new cars are being forced...

How's that. You KNOW what I meant. I agree that people are far to willing to take on massive debt to get that new car smell, but the reality is that most people don't have the skills or desire to keep an old car running.

Diego

I'm simply not a fire and brimstone-kind of guy. Bellyaching never comes to fruition in retrospect. I wait and see what technology brings us with open arms, and there's nothing that says I have to accept one way or the highway.

For all the talk about jobs going overseas, this is a very good opportunity to exploit American ingenuity - the world needs solutions to basic problems, and we might as well be on the forefront.

Indy_68_S

Eliminating (or significantly reducing) private car ownership/operation in the next 10-15 years ?

Like RetroRanger said:
Growing up in the '60s-'70s we were promised flying cars, futuristic floating saucer shaped homes, vacations at luxurious moon colonies, and .....Jet Packs!

Caution - Language

Instead, 40 years later, we have Camccords, Chrysler 200s, SmartCars, vinyl villages, WalMarts, & 50 different craptacular fast food chains.

As slow as the wheels of progress turn, I'm not too worried 'them' prohibiting me from driving my car any time soon.

joe_padavano

As I said above, I'm not worried about personal car ownership going away in my lifetime (the next 25-35 years), but how quickly did we get the interwebs, ubiquitous worldwide communication, social media, and the instantaneous spread of incorrect information using all of those?

We all scoffed in the 1950s and 60s when magazines talked about a computer in every home. Now there's at least one in every pocket.

m371961

I don't expect it to be forced upon us in my lifetime, which is now shorter then most. I see a problem with driving becoming more idiot proofed allowing more stupid people to live and reproduce. Even power steering and anti-lock power brakes have created problems with idiots not being able to steer or brake when their engine fails, claiming they could not steer or stop in time to avoid an accident and blaming their car. Or their self parking function failed. The safety features forced on vehicles raising the cost upsets me. I would even avoid airbags if they were a option, and as they only protect me or those that chose to ride with me, the choice should be mine.(think helmet laws)
That said, there are times I would like to be chauffeured, sitting in the back seat, cold drink in hand, isolated from the road. Be nice for a straight through auto trip across many miles and hours.

Indy_68_S

I didn't scoff. I naively believed the forecasts. I expected it...wide eyed and full of hope with the promise of bright shiny future !

My point was - Look how long it took. Those 50-60s articles predicted it soon. Like 10 years; by the 1970s. Widespread home computers weren't until 15+ years later (~1990) and 'pocket' computers (i.e. smart phones) weren't until 10+ years after that. And these examples are just consumer electronics which benefited from Moore's Law.

Public/private transportation doesn't have that 'Moore's Law' advantage and will be very slow to change. Other than some efficiency and safety gains, our infrastructure and vehicles are basically the same as 50 years ago.