Renewables are critical to the future of efficient, clean transportation. For road vehicles, storing those renewables, and then using them only when necessary, is still a major obstacle to commercial success. In Sweden, the government is partnering with the private sector to deploy new technology that could allow electric vehicles to travel on roads indefinitely, without having to worry about lengthy recharging or massive battery packs. Is it fusion power? Dark matter? Black magic? Nope: overhead wiring.
Germany’s Daimler will lift the curtain on its much-anticipated long-distance electric car at the Paris Motor Show in October, as the automaker gears up to compete with Tesla Motors’ Model X sport-utility vehicle (SUV).
The company will display a prototype of an electric-powered Mercedes car with a 500-kilometre (310 miles) range, Chief Development Officer Thomas Weber said this week in Stuttgart at an event for journalists.
“The structure is ready, the teams are working and the initial results from road tests are coming in quick succession,” he said.
Weber did not specify how soon the car would hit the road but said it would be sometime this decade.
The buzz surrounding auto tech has motivated investors and established automakers alike to make private company deals with newfound speed. Large, public tech companies like Google and Tesla dominated autonomous driving headlines in years past, but startups are edging their way into the conversation.
It’s 2034. A drunken man walking along a sidewalk at night trips and falls directly in front of a driverless car, which strikes him square on, killing him instantly. Had a human been at the wheel, the death would have been considered an accident because the pedestrian was clearly at fault and no reasonable person could have swerved in time. But the “reasonable person” legal standard for driver negligence disappeared back in the 2020s, when the proliferation of driverless cars reduced crash rates by 90 percent. Now the standard is that of the reasonable robot.
Autonomous driving is expected to generate annual sales worth several billion euros in value-added services over the next decade. In collaboration with management consultants Horváth & Partners, the Fraunhofer IAO surveyed 1500 motorists as part of the "Value of Time" study regarding their willingness to pay for in-car value-added services.
Ottomotto, a newly unveiled startup formed by veterans of the Google car project, is planning to provide self-driving technology to today’s long-haul trucks.
It’s a logical first application. Semitrailers spend most of their time on highways, and highway driving is by far the easiest sort of driving to automate. So close is the industry to that goal that companies like Tesla and Daimler already feel the need to use buzzers and other tricks to prod drivers away from their daydreams when their hands are off the steering wheel for more than a few seconds.
Google has no plans to expand its partnership with Fiat Chrysler to create a self-driving car, the program chief at the Alphabet unit said on Thursday, affirming that the technology company was still in talks with other potential partners.
Earlier this month, Google and Fiat Chrysler agreed to work together to build a fleet of 100 self-driving minivans in the most advanced collaboration to date between Silicon Valley and a traditional carmaker. Google said it was not sharing proprietary self-driving vehicle technology with Fiat Chrysler, and that the vehicles would not be offered for sale.
The trucking industry is facing several challenges that can potentially be addressed by automated trucks: hours-of-service, safety, driver shortage, and operating costs. While the industry made gradual improvements on some of the individual issues disconnected in the past, automated trucks have the potential to simultaneously impact a wide range of issues.
La inversión de US$1.000 millones que Apple Inc. ha hecho en la empresa china Didi Chuxing Technology Co. refleja la intensificación de la batalla por el futuro de la industria automotriz y pone de relieve las nuevas alianzas entre fabricantes de automóviles, empresas tecnológicas y compañías de reserva de taxis.
General Motors and Lyft will test a self-driving taxi service in an undisclosed city within a year, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal yesterday.
It’s not clear what steps the mystery city will take to align its rules of the road with the robotaxi service. Customers who get cold feet at the sight of an empty space where the driver normally sits will be able to opt out of the robotaxi service and get a human-driven Lyft car instead.
