I wonder how this companies sales have done over the past year...I would expect they have gone up a bit.

http://www.scangauge.com

I'm going on a long car trip in June, maybe I'll pick one up. I'm not sure if I could save that much gas on a long highway trip but it might come in handy afterwards.

I saw this episode on Top Gear (which is an awesome show BTW) wherein they raced a Bugatti Veyron against a Euro-fighter.  The fighter jet had to go 1 mile vertical and back and the Bugatti had to go 1 mile horizontal and back. 

Well here is a home video of the event.

Pretty cool.

Oh alright, here's the original:

Are you a fan of James Bond? 

Yeah me too.

Do you dig the scene "The Spy Who Loved Me", where bond and lovely agent "triple-x" take their lotus and drive it right off the dock into the water and it becomes a submersible? 

Yeah me too. (even when dubbed in Italian)

Well Rinspeed has made a concept car submersible out of a Lotus Elise.

Nothing really new here but it is interesting that the mainstream press is picking up on this now.

In the Future, Smart People Will Let Cars Take Control

Stanford computer scientist Sebasian Thrun makes this prediction:

In five years he expects a car that could take over simple chores like breezing along an expressway, inching along in stop-and-go traffic, or parking in the lot at a mall or airport after dropping off the driver. In 20 years, Dr. Thrun figures half of new cars sold will offer drivers the option of turning over these chores to a computer

techRivet had a similar article earlier: Autonomous Cars will change urban living

Follow along with my thinking here.

If autonomous cars become a viable technology, which I believe they will.

Then you can expect to be able to have the car "drive" you to work with little or no supervision.

Why then would you need your car to stay downtown or at your work after it drops you off?

You could send it home.

If a car is expected to provide door to door service and then return to its starting point, couldn't it then provide someone else with ridership service, doesn't that imply a few things about our urban centers.

Would we need as many parking lots?  Would we need ANY parking lots?

Do the new autonomous cars replace buses?  bikes? 

Routine Maintenance:
Think about this.  Your car needs routine maintenance.  It messages you on your handheld at work.  Providing suggestions for service locations automatically researched for price and quality.  You choose one and away your car goes. 

You come out after work and you car drives up, beeps its cute little horn, all happy like, you hop in and away you go.

No more School Bus:
You've got a group of families, several kids.  Who needs a school bus.  Hop in the car kids, it'll drop you off at school.  It wouldn't allow them to open the door until they were there.  It'd be safer than YOU driving them to school.

Change:
It becomes a tool, an extension of our reach, an appendage.  It CHANGES the relationship between a person and a car.

When?  I don't know but it is remarkable how far the scientists and researchers and engineers have come in just a few short years.

DARPA held the first Grand Challenge in 2004.  An off-road course to challenge a fully autonomous robotic car.  Not one car finished.  Most failed within the first few miles.

DARPA ran the same challenge a year later.  5 cars finished and most of the rest of the field improved on previous results.

This year DARPA ran a new challenge, the Urban challenge.  Designed to replicate an Urban experience.  It was won by the team from Carnegie Mellon University.

Tether said Tartan's vehicle averaged about 14 miles per hour throughout the course, which covered about 55 miles. Stanford averaged about 13 miles per hour, and Virginia Tech averaged a bit less than that. In response to a question from the press, Tether said that MIT came in fourth place.

Remarkable. Carnegie Takes First in DARPA's Urban Challenge.

I had read about efforts to automate car driving years ago.  Typically it involved very expensive retrofits to our existing roads to provide the guidance to the cars.  That was before the computational power we have now was available and before GPS was so widespread.

The computing power now takes up the entire back of a Passat station wagon.  The sensors are ungainly attachments bolted on the roof.  This will change, this will shrink.  It will become ubiquitous and invisible and accepted and expected.

You will be able to get in your car, type in your location to Google Maps.  turn your seat around and surf the web or perhaps chat with a co-passenger.  Because there won't be a driver anymore.  Why would you want to drive a car?  That's so 2007?

Great graphic showing the interdependency of partnerships and ownerships in the global automotive industry.  I wonder how convoluted the web of ownership/partnership/investment would be if we did it for the online world.

Here's the link to the eBay auction: [linky]

1994 Peterbilt 379 (top end model) Caterpillar engine (best) 400hp.  And tricked out to the nines.

Awesome!

Accessories include:

• Voice activated alarm, with the voice of Optimus Prime on lock and unlock mode.
• Dual Chrome 7 inch stacks.
• Custom interior with two tone (blue/red) flames
• and much more...

Current Bid Price is: $55,200.  That is a screaming deal!  There is 50k in chrome on that truck.

At the same height and Length of a Mini Cooper (but classified as a motorcycle), the VentureOne is a fully enclosed vehicle that is surrounded by a steel “safety cell” and other safety features typically found only in cars—things like side impact beams, driver airbag, rear bumper and engine shield.

The passenger compartment and the front wheel tilt when cornering; however, the forces are aligned with the vertical axis of the driver’s body, resulting in the driver being pressed into the seat rather than pushed across it.