Author: Charles (Page 3 of 11)

You have now comprehensive knowledge on when Automobiles first became a practical alternative to the horse (And buggy) and have some idea of how an automobile is powered as we discussed a few different power sources and which type of engine uses what (for instance an internal combustion engine uses gasoline as its primary power source and an electric vehicle uses electricity to power its lithium ion battery). After reading the majority of this essay it should also become apparent on how much the world (In particular the United States of America) relies heavily on the automobile both for it’s use to commute or deliver products and the industry that provides many jobs manufacturing our country’s millions of automobiles and to maintain them. We have discussed how the automobile has brought newfound freedoms and independence as well as comfort and convenience to us humans as it is definitely preferable to take a warm car ride then to trudge in the snow and get frostbitten on a winter day, or to avoid dripping in sweat in the summer (Air conditioning was implemented in automobiles in as early as 1940 almost 80 years ago) not to mention the amount of time saved being that automobiles are an extremely fast mode of transportation when compared to walking or riding a horse. However in addition to all the good things automobiles provide (fast comfortable transportation) there are some concerns which we have also addressed, pollution being one of the larger concerns. The creation of the EPA and the issue of smog were brought up as well as the amount of emissions reduced over the years so with that issue tackled we then moved onto to car safety over the years which I think is a bigger issue (And which subsequently became a large vocal part of the essay asking if driving would ever become illegal). The biggest safety issue in automobiles lies within the driver and not the automobile as the design has been nearly perfected over the past century, more recently the IIHS has come out with crash test ratings of almost every vehicle in the market so buyers can see firsthand how their vehicle stacks up against other vehicles in it’s class. On to the driver being the issue, automobile manufactures have had to limit certain features of the car due to the drivers becoming distracted. Texting and driving has become the leading cause of automobile accidents by an enormous margin greatly surpassing driving under the influence of alcohol or drugs and remains one the biggest issues so much so that Joe Rogan brought up on his podcast the following slightly provoking question, Will driving ever become illegal? Which led us to discuss how far we have come in A.I., driving assists and self driving technology. Auto manufactures have already been given deadlines by the state of California which stated that by a certain year only vehicles that produce zero emissions from the tailpipe will be allowed to be sold there. In addition to these deadlines for Zero emission vehicles the shortcoming of the power grid and the need for a large clean energy source were discussed as I the writer after conducting my research determined(along with a few of the articles I came across) that we need a power source as clean as solar but more powerful in order to charge millions of EV’s, so what do you think of all of this? Will you buy an EV? Do you think driving might become illegal?

(Sources The Joe Rogan Experience podcast, https://ihs.org and personal theorizing)

Will driving ever become illegal due to artificial intelligence becoming more advanced and more safe then human operators resulting in fully autonomous vehicles?Cars and crash’s go hand in hand there is not one person who drives that has never passed by an accident or been involved in one, in fact just yesterday I was rear ended on the highway while with my friend in stop and go traffic. The insurance institute for highway safety (IIHS) is an independent, non profit organization dedicated to reducing fatality’s and injuries in auto accidents. The IIHS was founded in 1959 they work on making vehicle design safer and making the public aware on how to avoid drivers error such as fatigued driving. Through the IIHS’s work in nearly perfecting car design by conducting research such as crash tests cars have become much safer but their still is a problem, user error.

Pitch the idea of outlawing driving 60-70 years ago and you would have gotten lynched, Seat belts were not even mandated until 1968 let alone my car model didn’t even get frontal airbags until 1994 and my 2002 model does not have side impact airbags, so cars have certainly become safer by leaps and bounds. However consider these statistics one might say, in 2016 10,500 people died from drunk driving and texting and driving leads to 1.6 MILLION crash’s every year and nearly 390,000 injuries a year, so what would happen when self driving becomes so good we can fully rely on it and stop all these crash’s would driving then become illegal? Now I am personally of the opinion that i hope this never happens because I enjoy driving but you cannot deny that this seems like a plausible possibility. Considering 50 years ago when their was no concept of a cellphone drinking and driving was most likely the leading cause of car accidents but now texting and driving is the leading cause of car fatalities and has greatly suprassed drinking and driving, and become a major problem, such a big problem that car manufacturers had to disable certain features while the car is in motion to prevent drivers become distracted. considering so many hundreds of thousands of drivers in America are so distracted and can’t help themselves from texting can’t you see in 15-20 years from now driving becoming illegal? There are numerous risks to take into account if that become a law however as your car can be hacked and a hacker can simply drive you off a cliff or drive you to a location where they can kidnap you and hold you for ransom (this is all theoretical) so the government will have to review these major issues if they want to avoid a riot and insure a seemless transition to a fully autonomous Electric green powered self driving vehicle of the future. what do you think?

Will cars become all electric or Hybrids? Will we no longer have gasoline powered sports cars? Is an all electric car market even feasible? Can the power grid handle charging all these cars? (sources Research Gate forum and https://www.iedconline.org/clientuploads/Downloads/edrp/IEDC_Electric_Vehicle_Industry.pdf)

Like any transformative new technology, Electric vehicles create a variety of challenges and opportunities. While the EV market is still at an extremely early stage of development it has come extremely far in a short period of time. Twenty years ago electric cars could not even dream of challenging the performance of a gasoline powered automobile but now car manufacturers such as Tesla have begone what might be considered in fifty or so years as the beginning of the end of the gasoline powered automobile with features such as self driving, incredibly fast initial acceleration (due to the fact that an electric car has no need for gears and has a one speed transmission there is very little power loss because of this) and of course, a climate change activist might gush over the fact that there are no emissions coming from the car. So what is stopping this takeover? well there are a few answers, Good electric vehicles are still incredibly expensive when compared to gasoline powered counterparts ( initial costs at least). Now while that may be a big issue there are still many conceivably small but it actuality for the buyer major issues such as a owner not having a driveway or garage due to living in the city and thus no place to charge their vehicle. Or perhaps a buyer is simply older and prefers something that they are used to. Given these concerns the government gives subsides to those buying EV’s to encourage those to do so which begs the question, can the power grid handle charging so many vehicles? Due to the fact that electric vehicles have never really been popular us Americans have never even given a thought to this topic, This summer in California the state which basically created the EPA which we talked about earlier, there was a power shortage due to the large amounts of power required to charge EV’s and hybrids and it being the summer so residents having an air conditioner on the entire day certainly didn’t help, so without a doubt our power grid needs some work. Which raises yet another question? how do we get all our power, surely it can’t all be from solar energy, wind farms and hydro electric plants (“clean Green” sources of energy) and yes that is true we will need to find a rather large renewable clean energy source to power this massive shift of the need for power if we are to eliminate the classic gasoline powered automobile and not produce the same amount of emission acquiring the power for the EV. No doubt these seem like a whole host of issues but I am sure the car industry will make the shift regardless eventually.

(stay tuned for next source in which I will be talking about sports cars, car safety throughout the years and if driving will ever be outlawed)