Bob Lutz Sees The Future

4634 Views 11 Replies 12 Participants Last post by magnushawk, Nov 5, 2012

JamesMcQuaid

Discussion Starter · Nov 4, 2012

This is an excerpt; you will want to read the full article:

"I think those of us who are under 60 (he's 80) will live to see the day of getting into a car at your home, programming in the destination and then sitting back and the car will take you via GPS, radar sensors and vision sensors to your destination," he said.

"The car will merge into freeway traffic, it will exit the freeway at the right exit, then it will take you to your final destination. When you are at your final destination, you can actually send the car away to park itself and then you call it up again on your iPhone and it will come and pick you up."

Cars will have automatic distance control so they can be tightly spaced on the freeway, all doing 90 mph.

This can be a good thing because electronics are more reliable than people.

"The electronics in the car don't drink, they don't smoke pot, they don't go to sleep at the wheel," Lutz said. "So will there be accidents? Sure, but it is going to be vastly fewer than we have today with human drivers."

Most cars won't smell of fuel, according to the man who worked on the electric Chevrolet Volt before leaving GM at the end of 2009.

"At some point we'll have inductive rails in the freeways so that the cars can charge while they're going down the freeway," he said. "And with the next generation of lithium batteries, we will see ranges of 300 and 400 miles per charge. Once range limitation goes away, which is probably five to 10 years out, if every morning you've got 400 miles in your battery, why would you need a gas engine?"

For the same reason you need your horse, of course.

"The same thing will happen to the car as we know and love it that happened to the horse," Lutz said. "It will be banned from the streets as a form of transportation and it will migrate to automotive country clubs like the Autobahn Country Club in Joliet, Ill., or various others cropping up around the country.

"The horse today is no longer a means of transportation, it's an instrument of pleasure and that's what's going to happen with cars."

Ageless love of driving is on crash course with the 'autonomous car'

http://www.islandpacket.com/2012/11/03/2266692/ageless-love-of-driving-is-on.html

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1 - 12 of 12 Posts

Ontario Canada had photo radar on the highway for a while. It produced evenly spaced vehicles. Gone were the drivers that weaved thru traffic to gain 30 seconds of distance ahead of the pack......and that strange grouping causing dead stops vanished.
Change will not come without a lot of irrational kicking and screaming.....some people still refuse to wear their safety belts.
The Darwin principle seems to reduce those numbers.
I welcome the future. Evolution is good. Say goodbye to Dino-cars.

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solar_dave

· #3 · Nov 4, 2012

HiVOLTage said:
Ontario Canada had photo radar on the highway for a while. It produced evenly spaced vehicles. Gone were the drivers that weaved thru traffic to gain 30 seconds of distance ahead of the pack......and that strange grouping causing dead stops vanished.
Change will not come without a lot of irrational kicking and screaming.....some people still refuse to wear their safety belts.
The Darwin principle seems to reduce those numbers.
I welcome the future. Evolution is good. Say goodbye to Dino-cars.

Arizona had fixed location photo radar as well, all it did was to cause backups approaching those locations. The portable ones had to be clearly marked about 1/2 mile before you got there. While they did catch some really stupid people (one guy going 135 mph drunk, it was so extreme they were at his house waiting) it did little for traffic control.

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Henry_FL

· #4 · Nov 4, 2012

Pipe dream, it won't be a technology issue, its a cost issue. We can't even keep the roads in good repair or maintain what is out there like bridges, so George Jetson self driving cars won't ever be main stream, we don't have the resources as a society to afford it and never will.

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AgVolt

· #5 · Nov 4, 2012

Henry_FL said:
Pipe dream, it won't be a technology issue, its a cost issue. We can't even keep the roads in good repair or maintain what is out there like bridges, so George Jetson self driving cars won't ever be main stream, we don't have the resources as a society to afford it and never will.

says the person who owns a car that would have been considered a pipe dream 20 years ago.

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bonaire

· #6 · Nov 4, 2012

The people who need driverless cars tend to be those either with medical issues or age-related reaction issues to those who cannot control themselves and must drive aggressively. Many people who would benefit from driverless cars won't be able to afford them. Those who can afford driverless cars already have them. They're called limosines. Whether they have a large town-car limo or SUV to a longer, stretch limo - driverless cars are already here and have been for decades.

Too many times, we have new technology trying to solve the wrong problem. Too many single-occupant vehicles out there really is "the problem" and not the irrational drunk or aggressive driver causing trouble randomly.

Very few species other than Ants use this type of techonlogy (ants use pheromones to mark their trails and other ants follow). The independent nature of people doesn't seem to mix with level of control they would give up using autonomous cars.

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volt11

· #7 · Nov 4, 2012

Cadillac has already said that by the end of the decade they will be selling cars with "supercruise", which will keep your speed, following distance, and your lane on designated roads. Basically hands-free cruising. It's a logical next step from lane departure warning and radar-based cruise control systems.

If we don't jump on the autonomous car bandwagon, Europe and Asia will. We have the handicap in this country of the wild west cowboy mentality, that romantic image of the independent Marlboro man. I think what millions of people are going through in the Northeast right now should pop that balloon; we are all interdependent in modern life.

So perhaps other parts of the world will lead and eventually we'll catch up. Well, maybe we'll catch up. Like if Obamacare gets repealed, we'll go back to being the only developed country in the world without a national health care system, and ride our horse off into the sunset.

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Selling Volts At Sundance

· #8 · Nov 4, 2012 (Edited)

Driving My Pipe Dream With A Giant Voltec Grin On My Face-

AgVolt said:
says the person who owns a car that would have been considered a pipe dream 20 years ago.

Hmmmm...Well put, but I had Senior Top Tier Sales Guys and Gals tell me in 2008 that the Amazing Chevy Volt EREV was EitherWare; DreamWorld Technology that would NEVER see the light of day, let alone a showroom......

A pipe dream just 4 years ago to most mainstream auto guys and gals...

And now- 9,423 miles on @AmazingChevVolt since March 12, 2012- 5 1/2 gallons of gas used plus bout a buck a day/electricity- Actually, half that...plug in at work 3-4 hours a day at work-

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/A552B4sCUAAj-VE.jpg:large

Bob Lutz- Thanks for everything!

James- Thanx for your always fine postings-

Best-

Thomas J. Thias

Sundance Chevrolet

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jfkirk

· #9 · Nov 4, 2012

A better existing solution is a train. Whats described gets close to a train but really prone to Murphy's law with catastrophic conseqences. Much simpler solution is more light rail running 100+ mph....KISS. No parking issues, no pollution, and a lot more capacity. Most other civilized places have this infrastructure and are building more.

We on the other hand have been hell bound on covering our cities with millions of square miles of oil stained concrete and broken asphalt populated with 18 wheelers doing 55 mph side by side. But then our leaders at Exxon don't want light rail any more than
EV's.

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rdunniii

· #10 · Nov 4, 2012

I don't think 10 years or maybe even 50. But he is right about the inductive pickups on interstates and other limited access highways happening. Batteries will be for local use. There really is no other choice. More for trucks than for cars. Fascinating makeover for Lutz who was part of the Luddite group that thought this was all an absurd and silly fantasy in 1975 when I graduated from college and so wanted to build diesel electric cars.

The same will happen to railroads who someday will have to electrify. It was the right answer in the 1920s and if the Rockefeller's hadn't made the price of diesel fuel absurdly low for railroads would have probably resulted in electrification rather than dieselization in the 40s and 50s.

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petefoss

· #11 · Nov 5, 2012

Personally (NOT SPEAKING FOR GM!), I think we will have self driving cars but they will be based on V2V not road infrastructure. I just don't see that happening. The hard part will be mixing with conventional vehicles. Separate lanes on the expressway maybe?

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magnushawk

· #12 · Nov 5, 2012

jfkirk said:
A better existing solution is a train. Whats described gets close to a train but really prone to Murphy's law with catastrophic conseqences. Much simpler solution is more light rail running 100+ mph....KISS. No parking issues, no pollution, and a lot more capacity. Most other civilized places have this infrastructure and are building more.

Trains are not all the answer in my opinion. They can be part of an answer but not the whole thing, not here in this country. If you had to have a train, then the only sort that would meet the requirements of a daily U.S. commuter is one that is made up of self-contained pods (let's call them cars) which can join up on major arteries at high speeds and then break off autonomously for self-drive mode on suburban roads when the proper point is reached. Add in self parking and retrieval via smartphone and it's the same idea.

It's not that wholly different from what Lutz described and simply takes up a bigger space footprint. Space is something we have lots of and it's both a benefit and part of the problem.

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