[MetroMPG]

Originally Posted by superchow

Just imagine: Special high-speed drafting lanes could emerge for vehicles with this system! Who needs high speed rail, if you can have high speed automobile trains? (And before anyone answers that last one - yes, I know trains are more efficient, bla-bla-bla - t'was more a rhetorical question...)

Not a rhetorical question to General Motors and a consortium set up in the 90's to study the issue:

The most celebrated demonstration of traffic automation took place last August on a stretch of California freeway near San Diego. The experiment was conducted by the National Automated Highway System Consortium (NAHSC), a public/private partnership authorized by Congress in the Intermodal Surface Transportation Efficiency Act (ISTEA) of 1991 to perform long-term research on automated highway systems (AHS) for approximately seven-and-a-half years. In late 1994, the U.S. Department of Transportation (DOT) awarded the contract for this work to the NAHSC, which comprised Bechtel, Delco, Caltrans, Carnegie Mellon University, General Motors, Lockheed Martin, Parsons Brinkerhoff, PATH, and Raytheon. GM's James Rillings served as the NAHSC program manager.

Furthermore, "with platoon spacing set at a half a car length, cars can draft off each other, reducing drag by half." This arrangement, Shladover added, could result in a 20-percent boost in fuel economy and similar-size cut in emissions.

20% is a conservative number of course.



Info:

Smart Cars and Automated Highways

http://www.path.berkeley.edu/nahsc/p...l_Overview.pdf

EDN Access--12.18.97 Take your hands off that car!

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