Carnections

Get your motor runnin’
Head out on the highway
Lookin’ for adventure
And whatever comes our way

These are the words of “Born to be Wild” performed by Steppenwolf which perfectly describe how many Americans view their cars. Head out on the highway looking for adventure. With the open road ahead of you, wind in your hair, and your women in the seat next to you. There are at least a hundred other songs about cruisin’ and driving nowhere in particular as well as finding “whatever comes our way.”

Americans have loved their cars since the creation of the internal combustion engine was created. It heightened in the 60s when American car makers started to design more powerful engines and striking designs that told everyone what car you were driving. From the GTO to the Mustang many gearheads loved to drive. Then came the aftermarket parts to increase horsepower, stopping distance, and throttle response. Just having a fast car was not enough. You now had to have the fastest of that model of car. This feeling has not just transcended decades, but generations. Even today people are trying to have the fastest car on the road. Many times it is for those joy rides, but much of the time it is to make their daily commute more interesting.

With Google recently testing a fleet of Priuses that have clocked over 200,000 miles on public roads in California the self-driving car is less than a decade away(Thrun). Many vehicle enthusiasts feel that this will be the final nail that will make their cars less connected to the road. First it was the automatic transmission, then it was power steering and anti-lock brakes, now it is traction control and hybrid cars. It seems that every few years the car is becoming less and less a car and more an appliance.  The great thing about the Google cars is that there is a manual mode. If you feel that you want to drive you can just take control of the steering wheel and the computer lets you know that you are in manual mode then you are on your own. Just as today you can still get a manual transmission you will still be able to take control of your car whenever you want.

I know that people love their cars and want to make sure they are spotless. This is hard when there are idiots on the road texting, eating, and talking on their cell phones. In 2003, the US General Accounting Office did a land mark study on factors that contribute to vehicle accidents. They found that humans were definite causes of crashes 60% of the time and probable up to 90% of the time (Traffic Crash Causation). Many people see driving as an inconvenience. They are the people that will be using the autonomous mode. This is a good thing for car lovers because it means less chance of getting hit and damaging your ride. Another great side effect is that cars will park themselves. I can see it now; you step out of the car right at the Smith’s and tell the car to park itself. It goes and parks. As soon as you are done shopping you tell the car to pick you up at the door. This may sound lazy, but it eliminates the bane of every car owner’s existence, door dings. Kids getting out of the car next to you, bam, nice new dent right on your door. This will be a thing of the past when cars park themselves. No more having to parking on the far end of the parking lot to stop it.

Many people cite that one of the reasons why they fear flying is because they are not in control of the airplane, even though the pilot has far more training than nearly all drivers on the road and more miles behind the controls. People do not feel safe when they do not have control. Put the control into a soulless robot and things get even worse. Computer users constantly complain that their devices are always crashing. In my experience I would say that computers have only got better of the past decade. They still crash, but it is not nearly as common as it was just ten years ago. Many people don’t realize that computers have been mandatory in all vehicles for over 30 years. The electronic control unit is all vehicles controls things such as air/fuel ratio, timing, idle speed, and many other engine controls. This has taken many of the work out of the tuners hands and made it simpler. It can now change settings on the fly for better performance, better gas mileage, and lower emissions. This is a net increase for everyone whether you are looking for performance, paying less at the pump, or cleaner air.

Even though many people say that they would never let a car drive for them, I believe that once they get over the initial hesitation they will rarely want to drive themselves. It seems that there are never enough hours in the day. There are always things that we have to that we just cannot make time for. In 2007, a Gallup poll reported that the average commute was 46 minutes in a typical day (Carrol). That is nearly 4 hours a week that are idle because we must keep our attention on the road. Imagine being able to eat your bagel and drink your coffee on the way to work and let the car do what it does. You can calmly eat and not have to rush eating because you are running late, or worse eating while you drive. If you are the type of person that wants to get a jump on the day’s work you can get started early, or if you are a student you can do your homework. The increase in productivity across so many people will allow us to get more done in the day.

The increase in productivity does not stop at daily commuters or student, the people that the self-driving car would help the most will be the disabled and elderly. Many of whom are stuck at home because they need someone to take them everywhere they need to go. A blind person can now take a solo trip to the store. An elderly person can go visit the grandchildren at the park. This will open many doors for disabled people who might have not been able to get a job because of transportation issues. This will be a very liberating experience for this group. People that were once homebound are now free to do what they want.

Google recently released a video of Steve Mahan. Steve has lost about 95% of his vision so it is difficult for him to go places that average people can. The Google car took him to get something to eat through a drive through. It also took him to the dry cleaners to pick up his clothes. “[The self-driving car] will give me the independence and flexibility to go places I both want to go and need to go.” This vehicle will help Mr. Mahan make his everyday life much easier and faster than without it (Larrabee).

Many people also bring up the issue that an autonomous car will destroy jobs. This may be true. Think about the taxi drivers, long haul truckers, delivery drivers, bus drivers that will lose their jobs. This might be true that there will be fewer jobs in the driving business. This might actually be a good thing rather than something negative. Think about how much time these workers spend doing essentially nonproductive jobs. They are not creating anything new they are simply moving things from one place to another. They would be far more productive creating new things or new services. I look at farm jobs. In the 1850’s farm jobs number almost 60% of the labor force (Hughes 170). These were back breaking jobs. Hard jobs that where outside in the 100+ degree weather. Now because of new farming techniques such as machines, genetic engineering, pesticides, and transportation less than 2% of the population works in farming (Extension). Where did all of these jobs go? Do we currently have 58%+ unemployment because there are fewer farmers? The answer is no because those farmers found other jobs. Many of us now work indoors behind a desk and working more with our minds than with our backs. I would say that is an improvement that has led to greater advancements because now we are able to have the machines do the hard labor while we work on bigger problems than pulling beets out of the ground.

As a whole I believe that the autonomous car will be a huge increase to our economy in many ways. First is by less vehicle accidents which will save money in human injuries and death, vehicle repairs, loss of work, and insurance costs. Second in assisting elderly and disabled people live better lives and be more productive as well as independent. Third is in making us more productive or have more leisure time because our commutes will now allow us to take our focus off of the road and to what we want to do. Lastly it will relieve many jobs that are nonproductive and time consuming thereby decreasing costs on shipped goods, buses, and taxis. This will give everyone more money to spend on other goods. All of this combined will make our lives more enjoyable while still having the same utility that vehicles provide us today.

Works Cited

Carrol, Joseph. “Workers’ Average Commute Round-Trip Is 46 Minutes in a Typical Day.” Gallup News Service, 24 Aug. 2007. Web. 13 Mar. 2012.

Hughes, Jonathan, and Cain Luis P. American Economic History 7^th ed. New York: Pearson Education Inc., 2007. Print.

Larrabee, Alex. “Google’s self-driving car takes blind man for a spin.” KSL.com. KSL-TV,      29 Mar 2012. Web. 15 March 2012.

Thrun, Sebastian. “Leave the Driving to the Car, and Reap Benefits in Safety and Mobility.” NYTimes.com. New York Times, 5 December 2011 Web. 15 April 2012

United States Dept. of Agriculture. Natl. Institute of Food and Agriculture. Extension. Natl. Institute of Food and Agriculture, 19 April 2011. Web. 15 April 2012

United States General Accounting Office. Traffic Crash Causation. United State General Accounting Office, March 2003. Print.

The Challenges and Solutions of the Autonomous Car

Everyone remembers Johnny Cab from Total Recall starring Arnold Schwarzenegger. Arnold is being chased, and like most chase scenes he hops into the cab and tells the cab driver to “Drive!” Johnny, who is a computer doesn’t know a destination so asks for one. Eventually Arnold, out of frustration, rips out Johnny from his seat and takes control of the vehicle so he can escape.

The self-driving car was the kind of thing you only saw in sci-fi movies, but they are coming to a road near you sooner than many believe. Over the past couple of years Google has operated a fleet of self-driving Priuses (or is it Prii?) that have clocked over 200,000 miles of autonomous driving. They have tested them in different driving conditions that closely resemble what a normal vehicle would have to navigate such as congested city driving, rush hour highway traffic, and curving mountain driving.

These vehicles have the potential to change most of our lives as we know it, from decreasing fuel consumption to increased road capacity to access to easier travel for handicapped or elderly citizens. There are very legitimate arguments when it comes to automating vehicles. Many people are worried about losing control of something they have done most of their life. Others are concerned with legal issues of who is at fault when an autonomous vehicle is in a wreck. These sentiments need to be addressed before autonomous vehicles start coming off the assembly line at Ford, Toyota, or even Google.

People started dreaming of the day when vehicles could drive themselves soon after the internal combustion powered vehicle was created. At the 1939 New York World’s Fair, General Motors designed the Futurama exhibit. They proclaimed “… a thought provoking exhibit of the developments ahead of us.” The exhibit promised that soon we would have automobiles that were designed to steer and propel themselves, leaving the public free to enjoy a fast and relaxing ride (Wetmore 3). It wasn’t until 1953 that GM in partnership with RCA developed a scale model of an automated highway system. This allowed them to begin work on electronics that could be used to steer and maintain proper following distance (Wetmore 6). Over the past 15 years or so, more and more autonomous type improvements have been making their way into our vehicles. If you think that when you hit the brake pedal in your car, that it tells the vehicle to brake, you would be wrong. You are simply suggesting to the car’s computer system that it should brake. The computer takes this into account and makes sure that the car is not slipping when you are braking. This is called the anti-lock braking system (ABS). Other systems include traction control systems and electronic stability control. Some would argue that automatic transmissions and electronic fuel injection are automated functions. Toyota currently has cars that can park themselves both for parallel and reverse.

In 2009 there were over 33,000 fatalities on American roads because of traffic collisions, and nearly 2.7 million people injured (Traffic Safety Facts, 2009 Data 1). This is the cost of having humans control a piece of heavy machinery. Computers can have a much higher reaction speed than any human. They also have a 360 view of the world while we humans can only see what is in front of us. Once the technology is developed to the point that the vehicles are near perfect in their driving it is possible to get the number of deaths to virtually none. There will always be mechanical failures that cannot be programmed. With this decrease in loss of human life, injury, and property damage the cost to insure a vehicle should substantially decrease. The only reason why car insurance companies exist is because of human error. Maybe one day soon we can all live in a world where there are no geckos, cavemen, or talking ducks.

What about those mechanical failures I simply glazed over? What happens if a vehicle carrying passengers simply stops driving by itself and hits another vehicle or a pedestrian? Those are lives that could be lost, not by human error, but by computer glitches. Not a day goes by that I don’t hear someone complaining about their computer not working right. If they can’t even keep a smartphone from freezing, how are they going to make sure that the automobiles computer doesn’t freeze and kill someone? Recently the chief counsel of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, O. Kevin Vincent said:

We think it’s a scary concept for the public. If you have two tons of steel going down the highway at 60 miles an hour a few feet away from two tons of steel going in the exact opposite direction at 60 miles an hour, the public is fully aware of what happens when those two hunks of metal collide and they’re inside one of those hunks of metal. They ought to be petrified of that concept (Markoff).

This brings up the biggest concern with the autonomous vehicle, legal liability. Who is held legally liable if a self-driving vehicle loses control and causes damage or even injury? Is it the person sitting behind the wheel, the hardware manufacturer, or the software maker? What if the vehicle is driverless? This is the largest hurdle that Google has in testing its prototypes. With lobbying from Google, in June 2011 Nevada became the first district anywhere in the world where driverless cars would be legal. This issue is still evolving and will need to be studied extensively before a production driverless vehicle can hit the public pavement.

The Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE) regulations were started in the US in 1975 in the wake of the 1973 Arab Oil Embargo. These regulations sought to increase the miles per gallon that US vehicles must meet. This has previously been achieved with enhanced engine technologies to decrease fuel consumption and reuse unburned fuel. Vehicle manufactures also used lighter parts, improved aerodynamics, and smaller displacement engines. If future vehicles will be able to make all adjustments to the accelerator they would be able to find the most efficient engine speed and transmission ratio. Other improvements include being able to “draft” other vehicles on the freeway creating an air pocket so that there would be less drag on the vehicle. They would also be able to predict when a traffic light would change to red or green so that they can start coasting to the light thereby using forward momentum to turn the engine, effectively using zero gasoline. People already use these techniques manually. It is called hypermiling and they claim improvements of over 15% with some people even doubling the EPA MPG ratings for their vehicles. If using these methods, we were able to increase the mileage on all vehicles on the road by 15% we should be able to reduce our gas consumption by an equal amount.

Since automated vehicles will be able to react faster and possibly even wirelessly interact with the other vehicle on the road they will be able to follow closer to the leading car. According to the Utah DMV handbook, humans should “use the ‘two second rule’ which means it should take your car at least two seconds to reach the spot that the car ahead of you just passed.”(Utah Driver Handbook 14). At 65 MPH that would be nearly 200 ft. If an automated vehicle could cut the reaction time to one second or less we would be able to fit twice as many cars on our existing roads. With this increase in road capacity commuters travel times could be reduced significantly. In 2007, a Gallup poll reported that the average commute was 46 minutes in a typical day (Carrol). Not only would the average commuter reduce travel time to less than 46 minutes a day, but they would have that time to work, relax, or eat. This would increase the productivity of millions of people.

As the car becomes more automated the potential for miscreant behavior will increase. Hackers enjoy making the news about their exploits. If someone could cause passenger vehicles to crash or even be driven remotely, many people would hesitate to get into an autonomous vehicle. In order for the public to trust this 3,000 lb. machine they would have to trust that it could never be hacked. In 2010 at the computer hacker convention, DEFCON 18, Mike Metzger presented his findings about the tire pressure monitoring system (TPMS) that is in every vehicle manufactured after 2007. He was able to wirelessly connect to the system and fake a low or flat tire warning to the vehicle’s computer system. This is relatively harmless because it simply turns on a warning light to notify the driver of the problem. It can possibly open access to further into the system to control everything the engine control unit (ECU) does. This would allow access to operations such as air/fuel ratio, ignition timing, and the idle speed. This could allow a hacker to give a wide open throttle command burning up the engine, or cutting the fuel flow stalling the engine. This is the most serious concern when you make a system that is completely automated (Metzger).

The emergence of the self-driving car brings both problems and solutions to everyday life. In addition to the ones I have mentioned, we have to worry about the cost of adding these expensive systems to our cars; as well as the jobs that would be lost from taxi, delivery, and truck drivers. At the same time, when we don’t have to spend time running these machines manually we could spend more time on solving other problems or creating new things. Similar to how things like wishing machines and microwave ovens have freed up lot’s time for many people. This is a topic a lot larger than I had originally thought, and will need to be researched much further into its impact on everything from the economy, safety, and energy independence on everyone in the nation. I am sure this issue will start to pop up in the media within the next few years as technology improves at its current rate.

Carrol, Joseph. “Workers’ Average Commute Round-Trip Is 46 Minutes in a Typical Day.” Gallup News Service, 24 Aug. 2007. Web. 13 Mar. 2012.

Markoff, John. “Collision in the Making Between Self-Driving Cars and How the World Works.” New York Times 24 January 2012, New York ed.: B6. Print.

United States. Dept. of Transportation. Natl. Highway Traffic Safety Administration. Traffic Safety Facts, 2009 Data. Natl. Highway Traffic Safety Administration, Sep. 2011. Web.

Utah Department of Public Safety. Driver License Division. Utah Driver Handbook, 2011 Version. Utah Department of Public Safety, Jul, 2011. Print.

Wetmore, Jameson. “’Driving the Dream’: The History and Motivations Behind 60 Years of Automated Highway Systems in America.” Automotive History Review, Summer 2003. The Society of Automotive Historians Inc. Gales Ferry, CT: The Society, 2003. 4-19. Print.

Wu, Changxu, Guozhen Zhao, and Bo Ou. “A fuel economy optimization system with applications in vehicles with human drivers and autonomous vehicles.” Transportation Research Part D16 (2011): 515-524. Print.

Metzger, Mike. “Letting the Air Out of Tire Pressure Monitoring Systems.” DEFCON 18. Riviera Hotel and Casino, Las Vegas, NV. 30 Jul 2010. Keynote Address.

Vert-A-Pac Rail Car and Chevy Vegas

Today I learned about a novel transporting method used in the 70s. The Chevrolet Vega was produced by the Chevrolet division of General Motors from 1970 to 1977. And it was no ordinary car. The Vega was specially designed to be shipped vertically with the front-end facing down. Southern Pacific and General Motors designed railroad cars to hold 30 Vegas each. These railroad cars were dubbed “Vert-A-Pacs”. Normal railroad auto carriers have three horizontal levels and can only hold around 18 vehicles.

Normal vehicles can only be shipped horizontally and so the Vega came equipped with special features that allowed it to be shipped vertically. To protect the engine and transmission mounts, it was secured with four removable cast-steel sockets on its underside and had plastic spacers, which were removed at after transport. Surprisingly, the Vega was shipped topped with fluids and ready to drive to dealerships upon delivery. The engine was baffled to prevent oil from entering the first cylinder and a tube drained fuel from the carburetor to a vapor canister. The battery filler caps were placed high on the rear edge of the casing to prevent acid spills and the windshield washer bottle stood at a 45 degree angle. Additionally, the Vert-A-Pac railroad cars underwent vibration and crash tests to ensure the cars would not incur damage during shipment.

Unfortunately, the Vert-A-Pacs are no more. The last Vega was the 1977 model and to my knowledge, no other vehicles since have been designed to be shipped vertically.

RESOURCES:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chevrolet_Vega

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autorack

The Toyota iQ has been selling in Japan since late in 2008. Toyota has finally announced that it will be coming to America, but will be branded by Scion. They will start selling in California in October.

Scion has a no-haggle pricing scheme and will price the iQ at $15,995 before destination charges. The iQ comes in a 1.3 liter 4-cylinder engine with a Super CVT-i transmission which will pump out 94 HP and 89 ft-lbs of torque. There is no manual transmission planned for the United States. The iQ comes standard with four wheel ABS, Bluetooth, and 11 airbags. The EPA has rated the subcompact a 37 MPG combined in fuel efficiency. This puts it slightly higher than is competitor Mini, who gets an average of 36 MPG combined. Also the new iQ

The new iQ at a 78.7-inch wheel base makes it a foot sorter than the Fiat 500, which was introduced earlier this year. It is also almost two feet shorter in total length. The iQ will have some more competition later this year when Chevrolet releases their subcompact model, the Sonic. Pricing for the Sonic will come in at $1500 less than the iQ, at $14,495 for the sedan.

According to this article
Nissan is working on recharging the Leaf battery with solar power. This would make the Nissan Leaf an ultra green car. Currently the only viable method of recharging the leaf battery is by electricity generated by coal, which pollutes the air. With solar powered leafs, it would be a truly zero-emissions vehicle.

Also, the Leaf’s battery could be reused to power homes and businesses. After a Leaf has reached the end of its life, the battery is likely to have 80% of its capacity still left. Using these batteries to store electricity generated by solar panels is an exciting possibility. Nissan plans to start selling this storage setup in April 2012.

Hello, my name is Chris Johnson and I am one of the co-founders of Carnections.com. On this blog we will discuss anything and everything related to automobiles and auto transport.