EN-V: Not your grandfather’s Chevy - Nightly. If you thought last week’s Spark EV announcement was a move toward urban density solutions, you would be correct, but Chevrolet has not finished downsizing its electric mobility offerings.
Also announced last week was the Chevrolet-badged second generation of the EN-V Concept. According to Chris Perry, vice president, global Chevrolet marketing and strategy, the bowtie insignia is significant for the EN-V – which is short for Electric Networked-Vehicle. “For 100 years, the Chevrolet brand has been focused on making advanced technology that improves customers’ lives accessible and affordable, and the Chevrolet EN-V will continue that tradition,” said Perry.
“By 2030, more than 60 percent of the world’s 8 billion people will live in urban areas. The Chevrolet EN-V represents a possible solution for global customers living in markets where alternative transportation solutions are needed.” 2011 Concept Chevrolet EN-V. Urban crawl The world population is presently estimated at 7 billion. Brad Ideas - Nightly. I often see the suggestion that as Robocars get better, eventually humans will be forbidden from driving, or strongly discouraged through taxes or high insurance charges.
Many people think that might happen fairly soon. It’s easy to see why, as human drivers kill 1.2 million people around the world every year, and injure many millions more. If we get a technology that does much better, would we not want to forbid the crazy risk of driving? It is one of the most dangerous things we commonly do, perhaps only second to smoking. Even if this is going to happen, it won’t happen soon. There are occasional exceptions, though usually only if they are easy to do.
While I often talk about the horrible death toll, and how bad human drivers are, the reality is that this is an aggregation over a lot of people. As such, forbidding driving would be a presumption of guilt where most are innocent, and tough call from a political standpoint. Insurance goes down, not up You will also need insurance. 2011-Concept-Chevrolet-EN-V-051. Former GM R&D Head Predicts Driverless Cars By 2020. Looking into the tea leaves – that is, citing transportation and demographic trends – a former General Motors R&D head has said that by 2020, self-driving vehicles will be available.
The 2020 vision for autonomous vehicles presented by Larry Burns at the University of Michigan Robotics Day could solve such issues as distracted driving and tailgating. It could also dovetail with calls for reliance on lighter – likely hybrid or all-electric – vehicles, and greater efficiency. A few years back, GM made the case for the Volt as a car for the future based on studies that average daily driving for three-quarters of Americans was under 40 miles per day. That, it said, was good enough to justify its “moon shot” experiment for the plug-in car. Looking ahead again, GM’s former head of R&D, according to Automotive News, told the Michigan audience about a soon-to-be world of driverless cars tracked by GPS with collision avoidance systems that are already well underway . What do you think? Google driverless car - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia - Nightly. States that allow driverless cars public road testing.
In addition, a law proposed in Texas would establish criteria for allowing autonomous motor vehicles. Toyota Prius modified to operate as a Google driverless car driving a test course.[1] The U.S. state of Nevada passed a law on June 29, 2011 permitting the operation of autonomous cars in Nevada. Google had been lobbying for robotic car laws.[5][6][7] The Nevada law went into effect on March 1, 2012, and the Nevada Department of Motor Vehicles issued the first license for an autonomous car in May 2012. Technology[edit] Google's robotic cars have about $150,000 in equipment including a $70,000 LIDAR (laser radar) system.[12] The range finder mounted on the top is a Velodyne 64-beam laser. Road testing[edit]