During this election season, there has been an increase in the amount of media attention given to green energy and reducing greenhouse gas emissions. Although the controversy between oil, gas prices and alternative energy sources continues to rage, there has been a new push for technological solutions to these problems. One of the most interesting and exciting of these solutions is Google's self driving car. (If you haven't heard about the car that drives itself, you can read about it here.)
When the car was first introduced, it seemed to be a far-fetched idea that would take a decade to refine, however this new push might be what Google needs to make their prototype available across the country. An official in President Obama's administration has said that self-driving cars have the potential to save thousands upon thousands of lives and the head of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, David Strickland, spoke about the technology, saying that automated vehicles are the next "evolutionary step" in car technology. In an industry meeting, he went on to say that his agency has held many discussions with automakers and with Google in order to find out what needs to happen to make the car a reality.
It's important to remember that Google's car isn't just an idea on paper. They have actually created a car that is, for the most part, self driving. In fact, in a report from Forbes, their cars have recently clocked as many as 300,000 miles of actual drive time in real world situations. Self-driving cars are even legal in California.
In his presentation, Strickland mentioned that human error was to blame in about 90 percent of the 33,000 traffic deaths in 2010. By combining computer technology with safer cars, we would have the ability to save lives and change the way that the world gets around. Of course, don't think that not having to drive the car means that you get extra nap time during your commute. Drivers would still need to be sitting behind the wheel, ready to take control if things go wrong. However, the self-driving car presents possibilities for people who have physical limitations like the blind or the mobility-impared.
With teams of engineers, scientists, automakers and computer programmers working on the problem of transportation in the future, there will certainly be some exciting solutions presented. Already, Volvo is promising to make an autonomous vehicle available by 2014 - less than two years away. Although Volvo's auto-driving auto isn't as aggressive as the Google Prius, the plan is to introduce a new system called Traffic Jam Assistance that allows your car to drive by itself at speeds up to 30 MPH. This means that when you're stuck in slow moving traffic, you won't have to ride your brake.
Other car manufacturers like Audi, Volkswagen, BMW and Cadillac are planning to offer similar products over the next two years. The biggest problem the auto makers are facing is that since the U.S. allows individual states to decide what types of vehicles are able to be legally operated on their roads, they might end up producing cars that are illegal in some states.
Whether you trust the computerized car to help you reach your destination or not, this much is clear - the way that we get from point A to point B is going to have to change. The environmental impact of car exhausts and the rising cost of gasoline are making driving, at least as we know it, not such a good idea. Already, there have been changes in fuel efficiency and exhaust emissions over the past decade and they are likely to continue. Currently, engineers in London have been testing a fuel that actually scrubs carbon out of the air. It's a synthetic fuel created out of water and air, by pullin carbon molecules out of the air and recycling them.
According to the British Institution of Mechanical Engineers, they have successfully combined a synthetic fuel production technique with a new atmospheric carbon capture system. They are saying that the fuel works in all current vehicles and that it can even be mixed with traditional fuels. This breakthrough could definitely be a solution to the problem of global warming. No only would it be more environmentally friendly, it would provide a possible solution to our over-dependence on oil and the declining supply of oil.
Right now, the technology is still in the early stages. Manufacturing this fuel is very expensive and uses a great deal of resources to create. To put things into perspective, the team only produced about five liters of the fuel, at a cost of about $1 million. Of course, as the research continues the engineers are hoping to find other, more cost-effective ways to make the fuel.
What do you think about this technology? Do you think that in five years, our cars will drive themselves using recycled carbon molecules? Please share your thoughts in the comments.
Image Source: GoogleBlog
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