how long will cars be here for and how will they advance?

CorkMan

I was reading about the great boxer Joe Louis, and a fair bit of his biography revolved around his life in Detroit. About Henry Ford producing the Model T and the landmark of over a million of them being made. I also saw some picture of Cork back in the 1890's and how all the horse cars were there.

Basically it has been in the past 100 years have cars start being rolled out, even a fair bit less in Ireland. On the flip side Rail transport has been around since the 1700's and that still is prevalent worldwide. But do ye think the roads will be different in 30/40 years time?

YbFocus

CorkMan wrote: »

I was reading about the great boxer Joe Louis, and a fair bit of his biography revolved around his life in Detroit. About Henry Ford producing the Model T and the landmark of over a million of them being made. I also saw some picture of Cork back in the 1890's and how all the horse cars were there.

Basically it has been in the past 100 years have cars start being rolled out, even a fair bit less in Ireland. On the flip side Rail transport has been around since the 1700's and that still is prevalent worldwide. But do ye think the roads will be different in 30/40 years time?

Yes roads will be totally different imo, cars from now on will begin to get more and more economical with the introduction of turbo petrol cars in small capacities and running alongside their diesel counterparts.
I can see hydrogen making an appearance as a fuel in the next ten years, not as a prototype as we have seen but as proper road going cars.
If you look at the styling for cars through the ages it changes vastly and that will obviously keep going at the same pace, looking in the future I would think for more streamlined effects to enhance sufficiency.
I think other ways of generating energy on-board the cars will also appear, I don't know what but things like Toyota's energy recovery from the Prius's brakes and stuff like that will surely move forward!!

Sorry I'm rambling :rolleyes:

sean1141

CorkMan wrote: »

But do ye think the roads will be different in 30/40 years time?

na they will still be full of potholes, bumps, dips etc

Anan1

I'd be amazed if cars couldn't drive themselves in 40 years time. Automated cars communicating with each other could make the idea of people driving cars to get around look quite ridiculous.

Daniel S

Anan1 wrote: »

I'd be amazed if cars couldn't drive themselves in 40 years time. Automated cars communicating with each other could make the idea of people driving cars to get around look quite ridiculous.

I wouldn't be. I'd still want to drive my car.

Anan1

mtb_kng wrote: »

I wouldn't be. I'd still want to drive my car.

I'm sure you still could, at trackdays.

For Forks Sake

Roads? Where we're going, we don't need roads.




of course we were promised this by 2015. Stupid movies.

Atlantic Dawn

I would say in the next 40 years there will be automated car only lanes where only cars automated will be allowed to drive, this will allow for much faster journeys and a better management of traffic. Electric cars have a limited future unless we get Nuclear power doubled or maybe trippled across the world to generate enough power required to charge them all.

mb1725

There'll probably be a few Octavias still knockin around!!

unkel

Anan1 wrote: »

I'd be amazed if cars couldn't drive themselves in 40 years time.

There's already a few cars around that drive themselves on the public road (run by Google in the US)

Anan1 wrote: »

Automated cars communicating with each other could make the idea of people driving cars to get around look quite ridiculous.

I doubt that in 40 years time all cars in the world will be automated

I doubt all cars in this country (or any other country) will be automated and nobody is driving themselves any more. Maybe in 100 years time?

Automated airplanes have been around for a couple of decades and have proved themselves safer than when operated by highly skilled and experienced humans (pilots). Yet commercial flights rarely if ever perform a complete flight (including take-off and landing) on full autopilot. Why? I guess we're just not ready to let go?

justsomebloke

Given that there is apparently on 40 years worth of oil left, there will have to be major shifts in car culture to cars run on different energy sources

copeyhagen

thats a very very big supposedly, considering SA has pumped around 8 million barrels of oil a day for twenty years, but its proven oil reserves have gone up rather than down.

no source from there is credible

Mar4ix

green energy... - back to horses

Mr Benevolent

unkel wrote: »

Automated airplanes have been around for a couple of decades and have proved themselves safer than when operated by highly skilled and experienced humans (pilots). Yet commercial flights rarely if ever perform a complete flight (including take-off and landing) on full autopilot. Why? I guess we're just not ready to let go?

Pilots are not ready to give up takeoffs. Auto takeoffs were demonstrated years ago though. Landing can be done with far more precision than a human can, in fact it usually is on long haul flights. Autopilots are usually turned on at 400 feet after takeoff and don't get turned off until the aircraft stops moving.

R.O.R

unkel wrote: »

There's already a few cars around that drive themselves on the public road (run by Google in the US)

I drove a fully loaded new A6 in the UK which would be quite capable of driving by itself for long motorway stretches. Radar Cruise Control will slow the vehicle right down to a stop if required, and accelerate by itself back to the pre-set speed. Lane Departure Assist keeps it between the lines on the road, so technically,you could get on the motorway, set the systems and only take control back once you need to exit the motorway. If you try this at the moment, the systems shut down so you have to take manual control back.

Tying those types of systems (which are appearing on more and more cars - options on the new Focus) in to Sat Nav can't be too far down the line.

gbee

As long as we allow stock brokers and commodity merchants to rule the world, the car in it basic form won't change, there is just such a vast fortune to be squeezed from the general public that nothing will be allowed to intervene until the very last car stops from lack of physical fuel.

Then we need sensible legislation, on one hand governments want low emission cars yet want NCAP rating in the hundreds forcing the average run-around to be like a tank and the size of a limo.

I think the plans from the 1950/60s will probably pan out as the public need a modicum of personal transport and the city living and other requirements rule out public transport and personal ownership so the idea of semi-robotic vehicles on demand that will file a drive plan and be modular for expandability.

I envisage them as simple bubble cars bristling with control features and mass speed control and so on, capable of fully automatic function but with manual override on a semi-auto basis.

We have all the rudimentary elements since the 70s, we have them even better today and some of the old ideas are introduced in part in all parts of the world.

We probably need to design and built new cities to accommodate this rather than trying to retrofit a city that grew from a farmyard.

ShadowHearth

Atlantic Dawn wrote: »

I would say in the next 40 years there will be automated car only lanes where only cars automated will be allowed to drive, this will allow for much faster journeys and a better management of traffic. Electric cars have a limited future unless we get Nuclear power doubled or maybe trippled across the world to generate enough power required to charge them all.

James may and top gear had a few good points about those automated cars:

Automated cars already exist, they are called taxis.

Planes can go off, fly and land, with no assistance of the pilot, but would you fly with a plane that has no pilot?

Automated cars is just bull**** which does not makeuch sence.

gbee

ShadowHearth wrote: »

Automated cars is just bull**** which does not makeuch sence.

They are the key factor if the open ownership concept is to flourish. All schemes suffer from returning the used vehicle to a new pick-up point, Taxiis as fine but they won't fill the demand and the driver and owner will want to be paid making it uneconomical.

The first concept for automatic car is, IMO not for the driver not to still drive, but for the car to automatically go on to the next family who want to go shopping or whatever.

A concept is like this, I want to bring my family for the weekly groceries and get a happy meal and catch a film. I order it up and the vehicle arrives and off we go.

We can have had our usually weekly already ordered and our shopping trolley is simply loaded into the vehicle and we just drive away home after our movie.

We unload our shopping and reload the cart and the vehicle and cart go back to the shop, or pick up someone nearby to go to the shops and they have a trolley already and can just drive up to the door and remove the cart and the vehicle goes off and either parks and waits or brings someone else home.

unkel

Joe the Santa wrote: »

Given that there is apparently on 40 years worth of oil left

That's what they said 40 years ago

And we have more oil left now than we had 40 years ago

R.O.R wrote: »

Tying those types of systems (which are appearing on more and more cars - options on the new Focus) in to Sat Nav can't be too far down the line.

It's already been done! Google has several Toyota Prius that run without the driver touching any controls! On the public road. Legally.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Atmk07Otu9U

wittymoniker

Confab wrote: »

Pilots are not ready to give up takeoffs. Auto takeoffs were demonstrated years ago though. Landing can be done with far more precision than a human can, in fact it usually is on long haul flights. Autopilots are usually turned on at 400 feet after takeoff and don't get turned off until the aircraft stops moving.

Untrue, commercial airliners cannot take off automatically and the vast majority of landings are performed manually.

Mr Benevolent

wittymoniker wrote: »

Untrue, commercial airliners cannot take off automatically

I never said they could. It has been demonstrated though.