Tag Archives: bmw

Driverless Cars – Taking YOU out of Driving

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driverless car

The driverless car - would you drive one?

We’re inherently lazy things, and ever since ol’ Karl Benz invented the car we’ve been trying to think up ways to get the things to drive for us. Airplanes can do it for goodness sake!

The most serious attempts to build a driverless car began back in the 1970s with a group of, funnily enough, Japanese enthusiasts. They failed. But mankind pushed on and eventually America got involved, or rather the American Army got involved. The Defence Advanced Research Program Agency (DARPA) kicked off its Grand Challenge in 2004. Enter Google, which recently lost a court case in the States to allow its driverless cars (a driver does sit behind the wheel, but the car does all the work unless it’s an emergency) to cruise the highways and byways.

Fast forward to now and BMW has announced it has built and tested a driverless car that’s almost ready to take on the Autobahn. According to the press pack (and this really is like reading the Total Recall script about the Johnny Cabs), ‘researchers have equipped a BMW 5 Series with intelligent software as well as vision assistance and environment detection systems. The advanced automated assistance function for motorway journeys can be activated with the push of a button. From this point on, the prototype system can autonomously control acceleration and braking, and it can safely pass slower vehicles.

‘One of the greatest challenges early in the project involved reacting to vehicles merging on to the motorway at exit and access points – but even this problem could be solved with a cooperative approach. The prototype system reacts to the situation by allowing the merging vehicles to join the traffic flow, and it can even change lanes giving the merging vehicles adequate space to enter traffic safely. This is possible up to a speed of 130km/h, but in compliance with current traffic regulations regarding speed limits and such things as prohibited passing zones.’

BMW admits it isn’t ready just yet to roll out its ‘auto pilot’ and that the next stage in its development is to ‘teach’ the prototype how to deal with road construction sites and motorway junctions.

How comfortable would you be with a car that, on the freeway at least, was able to do the driving for you?

Your fuel alternatives

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In his column in the June edition of the Open Road e-zine, NRMA President Alan Evans discusses the need for real fuel alternatives so Australian motorists do not have to rely so heavily on petrol.

“The time has come for Australia to reduce its dependence on the petroleum industry once and for all,” Mr Evans says.

Australian motorists are enduring one of the most dramatic jumps in petrol pricing ever seen, with petrol reaching record highs. And, with petrol prices predicted to hit 170 cents per litre within weeks, things are only going to get worse.

Most manufacturers are developing vehicles run on hybrids and, to a lesser extent, alternative fuels in response to rising oil prices and pressure to go ‘green’. Last month, the world’s first mass-produced petrol-electric hybrid, the Toyota Prius, reached a million worldwide sales. Toyota has also announced it will begin production on a hybrid Camry sedan here in Australia in 2010. BMW is busy developing engines that run on alternative fuels, recently unveiling a hydrogen-powered 7-series sedan at the 2008 SAE World Congress.

But is the matter being addressed with the urgency it deserves? Real fuel alternatives are still in the developmental stages, meaning we’ll have to endure ever-increasing petrol prices for a few more years at least.

What fuel alternatives would you like to see? Will you be catching public transport more than you used to or do you have your own way of minimising your dependence on petrol?