Posts tagged cars
The replacement of the car is probably out there. We just don’t fully recognize it yet. (via What the Steamship and the Landline Can Tell Us About the Decline of the Private Car - Emily Badger - The Atlantic Cities)
Now Hyundai has jumped on board the Google bandwagon and announced that it will include Google Maps in its vehicles sold within the US. Google Maps will supplant the current navigation system built into Hyundai’s Blue Link telematics platform. Hyundai says this new addition will make finding destinations easier for drivers. (via Hyundai adopts Google Maps, begins the Apple vs. Google in-car wars | Digital Trends)
Why Tesla is like Amazon and Elon Musk like Jeff Bezos
Right now a half a dozen Supercharger stations are sprinkled throughout California. By next year, if all goes well, Tesla drivers will be able to motor cross country from Tampa to Toronto, New York to Los Angeles and on to San Francisco and points between and beyond, snagging jolts of electricity along the way. Because he’s chairman of SolarCity, which produces these cheap and easy-to-install solar-paneled carports, Musk is creating enviable vertical integration. In essence, he’s marketing the cars at premium and giving away the gas, the opposite of HP’s much despised sell-the-printer-for-cheap-and-gouge-consumers-on-the-cartridges approach.
What’s more, these superchargers put back more energy into the grid than they take out, so Musk could be paid for producing electricity. I imagine there could be opportunities for up selling – food, coffee, sunglasses, games, electronics and tchotchkes for the kiddies at these electrical way stations. Since it takes about a half hour of charging for 150 miles of drive time – and an hour for 300 miles – drivers and passengers will have time to kill”
Gerd adds: very interesting point- this could usher in an entirely new era of ‘highway culture’ - but how will all that electricity be produced?
Less than two months after Mitt Romney called Tesla a “loser” in the first presidential debate, the Tesla Model S was named car of the year by both Motor Trend and Automobile Magazine, beating out vehicular stalwarts like BMW and Ferrari. Lost in the hubbub, as Jason Calacanis points out in his latest post for PandoDaily, is Musk’s audacious plan to populate the country with a network of supercharger stations to provide the juice to run these Teslas. (via Why Tesla is like Amazon and Elon Musk like Jeff Bezos)
Via Stowe Boyd: Autonomous Cars Might Be Three Times As Efficient
How efficient could autonomous cars be?
Devin Coldewey, Robot cars could increase highway efficiency 273 percent: Study
The paper is being presented this week at an Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) conference on vehicular technology. Its author, Columbia University’s…
Clearly our future - the end of the car as status symbol.
The Tata AirPod is a city car running on compressed air (as well as a battery-powered electric motor). The ease of converting air into an energy source using simple compressors means charging stations can be placed anywhere, and they require no provisioning — no trucks delivering gas, ethanol, or hydrogen — and they produce no emissions, just discharge of the air.
The AirPod can run 125mi (200k) at a top speed between 28 to 43mph (45 to 70kph). The car is intended for a single rider, and has a small cargo area in the back.
This is breakthrough design: it undercuts most of the negatives of the system it is designed to replace. And unlike other alternatives to traditional cars, it does not require an entire supply chain to exist before becoming practical in a single location. A city like New York could roll out a citywide fleet of AirPods Just like it is rolling out a bike sharing program (although the city’s bike share program has been delayed). It doesn’t need to build nuclear reactors, or deal with some hard-to-transport alternative fuel. In fact, New York City could simply repurpose existing gas stations or parking lots with compressors, and card readers.
Totally awesome. Here’s the future. There Just need to make them stackable, like this:
- Tata commercializing an air-powered car (reviews.cnet.com)
- Tata Brings Air Powered Car to India, Calls it AirPod (Video) (onlygizmos.com)
- Flat Tire! Mayor Bloomberg Says Citi Bike Share Program Will Not Launch Until Spring, Blames Software (observer.com)
- Are Air Cars Really An Option, Or The Next Alt-Fuel Joke? (greencarreports.com)
The contemporary automobile, after a century of engineering, is embarrassingly inefficient: Of the energy in the fuel it consumes, at least 80 percent is lost, mainly in the engine’s heat and exhaust, so that at most only 20 percent is actually used to turn the wheels. Of the resulting force, 95 percent moves the car, while only 5 percent moves the driver, in proportion to their respective weights. Five percent of 20 percent is one percent—not a gratifying result from American cars that burn their own weight in gasoline every year…
The PAL-V Flying Car, both street legal and capable of gyroscopic flight. This is the flying car that science fictions writers have been talking about for a hundred years. Oh, and there’s a competitor, too: The Terrefugia Transition.
Personally, I think the PAL-V is cooler.
- The Rise of the Content Strategist - Cheryl Lowry via Flip the Media (stoweboyd.com)
- Great book: Alan Moore: “No Straight Lines” (greenfuturist.com)
Mint data reveals America’s most gas-guzzling cities by way of monthly gas budgets
Me: ironic that SAN FRANCISCO leads the nation in gas consumption!
Ford, Google Team Up To Make Cars Smarter
Ford is joining Google to develop cars smart enough to know where you’re going, and how best to get you there so you don’t waste time in traffic.The automaker is tapping the power of Google’s remarkable Prediction API to create cars that determine where you’re going by examining where you’ve been. It’s the latest example of the auto industry calling on Silicon Valley as software takes on more tasks in our cars. It also underscores the tech sector’s growing interest in the automotive sector as Microsoft, Cisco and IBM develop new technologies and markets.A question is if the resulting car concept will have the name “Foogle” or “Goord”??
I liked:
See more-
Vint Cerf discusses an interplanetary internet.
Father of the internet, Vint Cerf, on creating the interplanetary internet
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An animated infographic series called “Smart Community” by Toshiba shows facts about countries in relation to the rest of the world.
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How Google Glass Works
By Martin Missfeldt.
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