Electric and autonomous vehicles

[whole diary]

[Western Pathfinder]

I am not one to rave about cars, having a reasonably sensible one to get me around. But while in a car pak airside at an airport, I remarked on one I saw parked, because it looked posh and I didn't recognise the badge.
"It's my Tesla" said the man beside me. "I'll show you."
I made to walk to the car, but he took his phone from his pocket and opened an app. The car then came to us. sans chauffeur.
Useful add-on, or gimmick?

Nice touch but nothing new in a phone opperated car FTN
Q Branch were supplying the senior employees with this option back in the 1990s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=smou7nQTcis .

[Red Squirrel]

Tesla's 'summon' feature is level 3 or 4 autonomy - you ask it to come to you, and it works out how best to get there. Bond's BMW 'seven-hundred-and-fifty' is no better than level 0 - it's just a remote control system; no autonomy at all. And I think there was a bloke inside really.

BMW's iNext, however, is slated for release in 2021 and features level 3.5 autonomy. By then, Tesla hope to be at level 5.

[TonyK]

Nice touch but nothing new in a phone opperated car FTN
Q Branch were supplying the senior employees with this option back in the 1990s
https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=smou7nQTcis .

"Ah, Western Pathfinder! I've been expecting you!"

Tesla's 'summon' feature is level 3 or 4 autonomy - you ask it to come to you, and it works out how best to get there. Bond's BMW 'seven-hundred-and-fifty' is no better than level 0 - it's just a remote control system; no autonomy at all. And I think there was a bloke inside really.

BMW's iNext, however, is slated for release in 2021 and features level 3.5 autonomy. By then, Tesla hope to be at level 5.

I'm not sure I want to be around for Level 6 Autonomy, where powerful magnetic fields drag me from my seat in the Nuggets Templar into a waiting Tesla to be whizzed away to who knows where, leaving bobm, Red Squirrel and bignosemac to share my new pint and crisps, all controlled by an angry Mrs FT, N! from a sunbed in Tenerife...

[Red Squirrel]

Our local Ikeal is a mere 2km from where we live, so we seldom feel the need to avail ourselves of the Ecotricity recharging facility there. This evening, however, was an exception: Mrs Squirrel had been out to visit her ailing mum, leaving us with a mere 20km of range on the old jalopy, so it seemed reasonable to inject a couple of volts while we tucked into our veggy balls and chips.

We knew where the charging station was, having eyed it up previously. Once I'd backed into the right charging position - the leads are quite short so you need to get it right - and inspected the damaged paintwork from my first attempt where I'd inadvertently aligned myself with the AC charger - I plugged in the CHAdeMO and got my phone out. You need a smartphone because you need the app. So: poik the Ecotricity app, tell your phone to stop talking to the car's WiFi that doesn't connect to the interweb and then, after few moments - voila! Nowt. Thing is, you're in the Ikeal car park, buried deep in the bowels of the earth, so bandwidth is to say the least restricted.

Cutting a long story short, in the end it was all quite simple. All you need to do is:

1. Plug your car in;
2. Make a note of the charger station's serial number;
3. Leave the car park by the nearest exit and find somewhere with a 4G signal;
4. Log on, supply the charger station details manually;
5. Dash back to the car before the system resets itself;
6. If necessary (it was first time I tried) go back to step 2;
7. Poik the button on the charger station that says 'Yes please bloody well charge my car' (or words to that effect).
8. Go get dem veggy balls. They were yummy, actually.

Bit like public transport really - easy when you know how!

[Western Pathfinder]

So much easier just to take your HFC^▸ (Hydrogen-Fuelled Car) car to a filling station and fill the tank when you run low on fuel,also no need to mess about with a suitable length of flex !
And whilst I am in favour of low emissions ,I don't like large dirty battery packs that pollute and cost almost as much as the dam car did in the first place, and waste energy by having to drag all the extra weight around all the time .
Granted the filling stations for HFC are few and far between at the moment ,it's only a matter of time before the situation improves.

[Chris from Nailsea]

As a delivery van driver in my day job, I'm rather intrigued by this - from the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Royal Mail's new electric vans unveiled


The new vehicles will be trialled from today

Royal Mail is beginning trials in London of nine fully electric vans with ranges of up to 100 miles.

The vehicles, which come in various sizes, will distribute post from the central London depot.

They were produced by Oxfordshire-based carmaker Arrival, which recently opened a new factory in Banbury.

Another batch of 100 electric vans for Royal Mail has also been ordered from Peugeot.

Having already been trialled by Royal Mail, these will enter service in December.

Arrival says the nine vehicles it has supplied come in sizes of three and a half, six and seven and a half tonnes.

[eightf48544]

Not sure if this post applies here so feel to start a new thread.

Re autonomous vehicles heard on today they are planning to trail 3 lorry convoys on motorways, with speed control from front vehicle so 2nd and 3rd  vehicles they can slipstream and save fuel. All vehicle will have drivers to steer but speed will be controlled by lead vehicle by WIFI. Convoy will be 60 m in length.

A number of points arise how are the convoys formed? Once on the motorway or do they enter and leave the motorway as a convoy,. if the latter i can think of many junctions where it would be great fun to try and get a convoy onto the motorway.

Not sure I'd like to be the 2nd or 3rd driver thundering along inches from the vehicle in front.

[Red Squirrel]

So much easier just to take your HFC^▸ (Hydrogen-Fuelled Car) car to a filling station and fill the tank when you run low on fuel,also no need to mess about with a suitable length of flex !
And whilst I am in favour of low emissions ,I don't like large dirty battery packs that pollute and cost almost as much as the dam car did in the first place, and waste energy by having to drag all the extra weight around all the time .
Granted the filling stations for HFC are few and far between at the moment ,it's only a matter of time before the situation improves.

That's the trouble with self-deprecating humour... My point was that it's a bit absurd locating a charging station that requires access to mobile internet in a basement where there is no signal. In fact (and this does rather spoil my story), when this one was installed Ecotricity had a card system which worked there.

It is vanishingly unlikely that HFC will take off as a means of powering private motor cars - battery technology is improving quickly, and the infrastructure of battery charging stations is so much easier and cheaper to roll out. BEVs^▸ (Battery electric vehicle) will ultimately dominate because they are simple and cheap. Those car owners (about half) who have a driveway will be able charge at home; for them the advantages are already there to be grasped.

I quite like HFC technology. But it ain't happening.

[TonyK]

So far as I can tell, the nearest HFC^▸ (Hydrogen-Fuelled Car) filling point is at the Honda factory in Swindon, with plans for one in Bristol at some future point in time. That doesn't make it particularly convenient. I had a LPG^▸ (Liquefied Petroleum Gas) car once, there being at the time about 3 places in Bristol where I could fill up. LPG is much more widely available these days, but I can't see hydrogen getting the point of justifying a big roll out of infrastructure.

I too have a self-defecating sense of humour, so spotted Red Squirrel's point.

[chuffed]

I too have a self-defecating sense of humour, so spotted Red Squirrel's point.

Is that in the sense of 'hitting the fan' every time ??




Edit note: Quote marks corrected, for clarity. CfN.

[patch38]

As a delivery van driver in my day job, I'm rather intrigued by this - from the BBC^» (British Broadcasting Corporation - home page):

Royal Mail's new electric vans unveiled


The new vehicles will be trialled from today

Good to see they have not wasted any money on design but rather appear to have just copied an existing, well-loved design...




 

[Red Squirrel]

For completeness, given that this is not exactly hot off the press:

Black cab turns green as all-new electric London taxi launches



The maker of the London black cab has unveiled the new, electric design of the car, which will hit the capital’s roads in November and which it hopes to sell to pollution-blighted cities worldwide.

...

Under Transport for London (TfL^» (Transport for London - about)) rules, all new black cabs from 1 January 2018 will need to be electric, or capable of producing zero emissions. Combined with an age limit for the cabs of 15 years, that means the last diesel ones should disappear from London by 2032.

...

LEVC said the private hire vehicle finance for the model would be higher than previous versions but this would be offset by lower running costs, including a claimed £100 less on weekly fuel costs. It said the cars would also need less maintenance.

...

There should be 80 charging points dedicated to black cab drivers by the start of next year, built by TfL and other groups. The number is expected to rise to 150 by the end of 2018, and to 300 by 2020.

The average driver of a black cab covers 120 miles in a day, so most of the time the car would be running without emissions, off the battery. The electric motor will also, eventually, mean an end to lines of idling black cabs belching out toxic fumes at train stations.

Source: The Guardian

[TonyK]

I too have a self-defecating sense of humour, so spotted Red Squirrel's point.

Is that in the sense of 'hitting the fan' every time ??

More in the line of Derek and Clive Live's "Laugh? We nearly sh*t!"

[Western Pathfinder]

I have not laughed so much scince grandma died of auntie Mabel caught her left buffer ! In the mangle.

[TonyK]

That one!