I still have a ton of questions that I guess will be eventually addressed. The old multi-part article that talked about the future of self-driving cars brought up a lot more of them, I wish I could find the link to it.
Some big ones:
Legally, who is at fault if it causes an accident?
How will insurance even work when the majority of cars eventually shift to self-driving?
If the, “safety driver,” is drunk, is that DUI territory or no? If yes, what about drunk people in the back of a self-driving cab/uber/lyft?
I would assume the manufacturer. Just like any other hardware caused fault. Like the Toyota stuck pedals, or the Chevy engine killing issue.
There are so many self driving car issues that will come up, but it is definitely the way to a safer future in driving.
That is really an interesting thought about the “safety driver” being impaired too. I don’t know. The car should work without a driver, but if there were an issue, it would be trouble. I think that as the technology gets better, there will be less and less of a need of someone physically behind the wheel. More of a growing pain of the new technology.
I had that as a takeaway from a very early article about self-driving cars. Law enforcement groups were saying that a driver in the vehicle should still be charged because, “they could take over at any time.” I mean, why? What if we just sat in the back of the car?
It would seem, from a systems point of view, that the only way to make self-driving cars really work is for all cars to be autonomous. Having a mix of human operators and automated drivers on the same roads, which is probably what will have to happen initially, seems far more dangerous than a purely automated system.
Not many posts in this thread for awhile. @Mark_Asher do you still have your Leaf? I’m considering a Nissan Leaf or equivalent as a second car in our household, maybe mid next year. The number of public chargers seems to be going up, plus my province still offers an impressive incentive program for both the car and the home charger. My work has chargers, plus a client of mine has free charging stations including free DC fast charge.
Hey Scott, I do have my Leaf, I have over 15,000 miles on it. I use public chargers so I’ve never charged at home. So far I’ve spent a grand total of $37 on it for using a fee-based charger a few times. I really enjoy it. It has a smooth ride because there’s no engine vibration and it accelerates well.
The downside is the range. It really only works for us as a second car, my commute car to work and driving around town a bit. I get 80-90 miles on a full charge.
The new Leafs coming out will have either a 107 or 150 range, I believe, based on battery size. I think in 2019 or so they are due to have a Leaf with a 230 mile range.
I expect to see more and more charging stations as EVs start to sell, which I think they will with the new, cheaper Teslas and the expanded range on upcoming EVs. Since you have chargers at work you should probably be driving with a full charge most of the time. That’s an ideal setup.
We just had a great deal going in the St. Louis area. There’s still the Federal rebate of $7500 available for an EV purchase and Ameren, our power company, was doing an additional $7500 rebate for a limited time. People were getting new EVs for $15,000 or so. The Ameren deal is either over or ending at the end of the month.
Thanks for the reply. Here in Toronto, draft regulations about to be implemented will require 20% of parking to have chargers (in new developments), and 100% of parking to have rough-in electrical work. That said, the majority of current EV spaces sit empty, which is also good for early adopters.
My wife’s commute is about 25km or 12 miles, with no charger at work. With errands she would probably not be comfortable with 80 miles (plus we get hot and cold days where we need strong a/c or heat), but 150 would be fine. For me, there is a charger at work as I mentioned. So we just need to plan it out a bit.
The EVs are a bit tricky with mileage. When it tells you that you have 42 miles left, it’s an estimate. Turn on the AC and it will drop to 37 or something like that immediately. Get on the highway and it drops faster. You get better range with city driving than with highway driving as far as I can tell, as long as you avoid a lot of stops and starts. It takes more energy to get the car to 70 MPH than it does to get it to 30 MPH.
That’s progressive. I wish we could get the US to implement something like that.
Ever wondered about the guts of a Tesla Model 3? You aren’t the only one.
Bunch of links in there to videos and such with all kinds of details. I’m not enough of a gearhead to grok all the details, but the summaries are interesting.
I’ve seen some articles on tuning/hot-rodding electric cars, and while it’s in its infancy, as more electrics hit the road you can be sure the tuning crowd won’t be far behind. It’s just a bit different, with the added joy of the possibility of massive electrocution risk.
Hell, when I had a motorcycle people would try to drag race me while they were driving regular cars. So it doesn’t surprise me the same bozos would try to drag an electric.
I think the mythical new Tesla roadster will actually beat most all the motorcycles. Although, I’d expect some really fast electric bikes by the time that roadster hits the street.
Yeah, as soon as you take the same tech and put it on two wheels with that much less weight–assuming it scales similarly to ICE–bikes will be so fast they’ll probably have speedos incremented in relativistic scales.
