Presenters from Absolute Radio – Andy Bush, Richie Firth, Dave Berry and Matt Dyson – lined-up for The Great British Sinclair C5 Seafront Race in Margate on Tuesday 5 February.
The Isle of Thanet News reported that the legendary 1980s three wheelers were supplied by C5 Alive, a local enthusiasts’ club run by Eddie Green and Neil Brooks, who have restored more than 30 C5s to full working order.
The C5 is a single-seater battery-assisted pedal cycle with a top speed of 20mph, described by inventor Sir Clive Sinclair as “a vehicle, not a car”.
Of 14,000 made, only 5,000 were sold before Sinclair Vehicles went into receivership. The planned follow-ups, the C10 and C15, never made it off the drawing board.
Recycling company First Mile has released this striking image of how London’s Oxford Street could look if we fail to tackle air pollution.
Two technologies being championed to avoid such a dystopian fate are electric powertrains and route optimisation programmes – both popular concepts in connected and autonomous vehicle (CAV) design.
However, new research by Adam Millard-Ball, associate professor of environmental studies at the University of California, suggests that, rather than solving the issue of congestion in city centres, self-driving cars could exacerbate the problem, creating gridlock.
“Parking prices are what get people out of their cars and on to public transit, but autonomous vehicles have no need to park at all,” he said. “They can get around paying for parking by cruising. They will have every incentive to create havoc.”
Telematics combined with smart congestion charging could conceivably negate this undesirable impact, but the study is grist to the mill for those advising stricter regulation of driverless cars.
We profiled various “other driverless vehicles” in our recent bikes, trucks, bots and planes article, well here’s another one… and it has a great name: the roboat.
So far, only small prototypes have been deployed but a bigger model with a 6x13ft hull is in development, featuring GPS, water quality testers, cameras and LIDAR.
The robotic boat is the result of a five-year research project – a collaboration between the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) and the Amsterdam Institute for Advanced Metropolitan Solutions (AMS).
Carlo Ratti, of MIT’s senseable city lab, envisages a new kind of on-demand infrastructure – autonomous platforms joining together to form floating bridges or stages, as well as individual roboats being able to deliver goods, transport people or collect waste.
This 1min 43sec video gives an overview of the project to date:
Looking ahead, the team will concentrate on finding ways to account for waves, currents, more passengers and heavier cargos.
Addressing the vital question of what driverless cars should do in no-win crash situations, an AA survey of 21,000 UK drivers found that 59% would rather put themselves in harm’s way than risk more lives.
That seems highly magnanimous, but other results were far from clear-cut. 40% of respondents “preferred not to say” when faced with unpalatable options like running over children or the elderly.
AA president, Edmund King, said: “Of those who could make a choice, a clear majority decided to put themselves in danger, perhaps indicating they accept the risks and potential fallibilities of the technology.
“The driverless dilemma is a common question for programmers of autonomous vehicles, but the number of people who avoided giving a definitive answer shows this is a difficult ‘live or let die’ dilemma.”
1) Humans should be saved over animals. 2) The lives of many should outweigh the few. 3) The young should have priority over the old.
But it isn’t that simple. The waters get murky when people are asked if they would rather purchase a car programmed to protect them.
Azim Shariff, of the University of Oregon, asks: “Would you really want to be among the minority shouldering the duties of safety, when everyone else is free-riding, so to speak, on your equitability?”
Will all manufacturers apply the same default settings? Should owners be able to change them?
Being able to have a beverage and leave the car in charge of the journey home is often cited (mainly by people in the pub) as one of the key benefits of driverless tech.
The reason? Being drunk in charge of a vehicle, even if not driving, is an offence. There’s also a concern about override functions.
The system will compare the driver’s expressions, gestures and speech with archive footage, as well as checking for suspicious items such as open bottles.
Opinion will presumably be divided as to whether this is a clever safety innovation or an unnecessary invasion of privacy.
In another alcohol-related development, Makr Shakr – the company famous for using robotic arms to make cocktails – has combined this concept with an autonomous driving pod.
Digital Trends describes the result as a self-driving robot bartender, basically a mobile bar which you could summon via a smartphone app. Mojitos all round!
Here at Cars of the Future we focus mainly on, er, cars… but when predicting how mobility might look by mid-century there are other driverless vehicles to consider.
Driverless bikes
Sky News reported last year on what it billed as the first self-driving motorbike, developed by British engineer Torquil Ross-Martin of AutoRd.
“A computer can do a better job than a human can because it is always concentrating,” he said. “When commuting you’re not necessarily completely focussed on what you are doing. You’re thinking about what you are going to do when you get to the office or whether you’re running late. That’s where the bike will improve the safety for commuters.”
Then, at CES 2019, Tech 360 posted this incredible video of BMW’s self-driving R1200GS:
“Safety is one of the main things that stops people riding motorcycles. If we look at the last 20 years, deaths in cars have gone down by 73%, while deaths on bikes only gone down by 38%. Cars now can intervene before something dangerous happens and we need to learn more about motorcycles to help riders avoid getting in a critical situation.”
So, self-driving bikes are getting there, but many still tip the commercial vehicle (CV) sector to lead the way in driverless motoring.
Driverless trucks
For example, Daimler Trucks North America (DTNA) recently introduced the new Freightliner Cascadia with level 2 automation.
“Automating acceleration, deceleration, and steering reduces the chance for human error, mitigates collisions, and can potentially save lives,” said a Daimler statement.
Driverless delivery bots
Perhaps surprisingly, given the attention lavished on driverless cars and platooning trucks, they could all get beaten to the punch by self-driving delivery robots.
These are already pootling about in the real-world. For instance, in collaboration with Robby Technologies, PepsiCo’s Hello Goodness ‘snackbots’ serve hungry college students in Stockton, California.
Amazon is also getting in on the act, using a compact self-driving vehicle called the Scout to make deliveries in Washington’s Snohomish County. The retail giant created this video to show its new walking-pace ‘delivery solution’ in action:
Driverless planes
With the ground getting crowded it might be quicker to take to the sky, so Boeing is working on an on-demand autonomous flying taxi.
Its test plane recently completed a controlled takeoff, hover and landing in Manassas, Virginia.
“In one year, we have progressed from a conceptual design to a flying prototype,” said Boeing’s chief technology officer, Greg Hyslop.
Self-driving tech company, Pronto.ai, has posted a timelapse video of what is believed to be the longest journey yet for a driverless car, set to poetry by Charles Bukowski.
The vehicle in question, a Toyota Prius kitted out with digital maps and cameras, travelled 3,099 miles from the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco to George Washington Bridge in New York in October 2018.
According to The News Wheel, Pronto’s Anthony Levandowski – formerly an engineer for Waymo – was in the driver’s seat for the whole trip, but didn’t use the pedals or steering wheel except to stop for fuel and rest.
While navigation tech and crash ethics grab a lot of future car column inches, the implications for interiors deserve more attention.
As Marek Reichman, Aston Martin’s chief creative officer, noted at the launch of the Lagonda Vision Concept last year: “The electrification revolution means there is no longer any need for ‘horse and carriage’ design. The batteries occupy the floor of the car. Everything above that line belongs to us.”
Combine that with driverless and the options become mindboggling. From self-driving emergency clinics to mobile restaurants or red light districts on wheels, solutions will doubtless be designed for a wide range of activities.
Beyond the ‘real’ world, of course, there are further possibilities. Two former Audi employees, Nils Wollny and Marcus Kühne, set up Holoride to “develop the future of in-vehicle media”.
One innovation involves using live vehicle data (e.g. on acceleration or steering) to prompt real-time feedback in a virtual reality environment. They say this provides a more immersive experience and can also help to reduce motion sickness.
“Whether it is SVO (JLR’s performance arm) recreating classics to modern standards or creating track-day specials, I think it will grow as autonomous driving becomes a regular part of lives,” he said.
The suggestion seems to be that driving will live on largely as a leisure pursuit, similarly to the way people enjoy horse riding.
The more exhilarating end of this pastime will be motorsport, but driverless vehicles are already edging into even this hallowed territory.
The radio controlled car racing scene has had a loyal following for years and esports – video game competitions – are huge these days. It isn’t the same the purists will scream. Maybe not, but it is getting closer.
Just a few days ago, 23-year-old Enzo Bonito set the internet alight by beating Formula E champion (and ex-Formula 1 driver) Lucas di Grassi on a winding track in Mexico.
What made this performance exceptional is that Bonito is a professional gamer. He trained on racing simulators but successfully transferred those skills to tarmac to beat a big-name star.
Coincidentally, di Grassi is also CEO of the Roborace autonomous racing series, which is due to run alongside some Formula E races this season.
Is this an early example of passionate drivers and driverless cars living in harmony?
In the week when 97-year-old Prince Philip did his best to put road safety back on the front pages – first by smashing his Land Rover into a blue Kia, then being spotted back behind the wheel but not wearing a seatbelt – the British Safety Council reminded us of the pioneering work of controversial founder, James Tye.
Tye (pictured) campaigned tirelessly for 25 years until wearing a seatbelt become a legal requirement in 1983, producing one of the first reports on the subject back in 1959. The Department for Transport estimates the humble harness now saves around 2,000 lives in the UK every year.
Matthew Holder, head of campaigns at the British Safety Council, said: “The times when critics of the seatbelt regulations accused the government of operating a nanny state and limiting their personal freedom and comfort are long gone.”
With multiple studies showing that 90% of accidents are caused by human error, how will we look back on reasons to fear driverless cars 50 years from now?
