Age of Robocars about to be unleashed

[jamesqf]

Originally Posted by Xist

Have I mentioned hitting an elk and driving that Accord 100 miles to the junkyard?

Why did you drive it to the junkyard? I got hit by* a deer maybe 5 years ago. Hammered out the dents, replaced a the radiator & headlight, and still drive the car.

*Yes, hit by. SUV coming the other direction hit the deer, tossed it into the air, and it came down on my hood.

[Xist]

It broke by bumper, grill, hood, windshield, roof, and probably did bad things to the systems in the engine compartment.

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by redpoint5

The end of the bus age is neigh. When Uber-like service is cheaper than mass transit, people won't put up with a service that takes you from where you don't live, to not quite where you need to be.

I agree. I often see fancy busses driving around with a load of passengers that would fit in a 15 passenger or even a minivan. If they used minivans they could get much better pickup and drop off locations as well as more specific time schedules. You could have 30 minivans for the price of one bus. The cost problem would be with 30 drivers vs 1 but if you needed 0 drivers for 30 vans, problem solved.

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by Xist

It broke by bumper, grill, hood, windshield, roof, and probably did bad things to the systems in the engine compartment.

I hit an elk in a Chevy Corsica at 65 mpg and it collapsed the roof. They actually still fixed it for $11,000 as it had only 3000 miles on it. It didn't even deploy the airbag as it undercut the legs and slammed it into the windshield. Big bull too, luckily those antlers didn't impale me or the passenger.

[Xist]

I am glad neither elk impaled anyone.

Mom had a Corsica. We called it the "Piece of Chevy." Hersbird, did you like yours?

That was a 1990 Accord. Honda did not offer airbags in the U.S. that year, but a body shop said it would cost $4,000 to fix, and my car had only been worth about half that.

[Rosieuk]

Originally Posted by Xist

It broke by bumper, grill, hood, windshield, roof, and probably did bad things to the systems in the engine compartment.

And this is why I'm happy that our biggest road crossing animal is a deer the size of a small Labrador..

I have hit a fox once, at high speed (flat out) on a dual carriageway - saw it just in time to hit it in the centre line of the car - an enormous bang, a screech that could weld steel from the (up until that point) sleeping girlfriend and a very ginger limp to her parents place - it split the bumper like there was a zipper up the middle but amazingly zero other damage. Didn't even bend the front crossmember. I suspect it was just low enough to only clip the bumper.

God alone knows what would happen if I hit an Elk or something like that in a Renault 5 at the same speed.. although it might just fit between the legs of one, it's quite narrow - but probably time to duck (think James Bond and that Renault 11..). I saw one R5 argue with 3 artics at 70mph once in France, the car was wiped out but the idiot boy driving it didn't have a mark on him (at least until the 3 hgv drivers got a hold of him anyway), blocked that autoroute for 6 hours apparently.

[Hersbird]

Originally Posted by Xist

I am glad neither elk impaled anyone.

Mom had a Corsica. We called it the "Piece of Chevy." Hersbird, did you like yours?

That was a 1990 Accord. Honda did not offer airbags in the U.S. that year, but a body shop said it would cost $4,000 to fix, and my car had only been worth about half that.

It was a GSA government car, I hated it. It got replaced with a Jeep Cherokee 4.0 4x4 which meant we could go fishing all over Humboldt and Del Norte county while "working". We were the local navy recruiters there, the elk one of the Roosevelt herd at Redwood National Park. I did have a similar year Chevy Beretta GTZ that was my own car and the first car we ever bought new. That was pretty sweet with the HO Quad 4 And a 5 speed along with probavly the best sorted FWD handling of its day. (1990). Then again it crapped a head gasket under warranty thank God because they put a whole new engine in bit off the assembly line.

[Xist]

What was different between the Beretta and the Corsica?

I remember reading the latter was a fourteen-second car.

0-60.

[Frank Lee]

Back in the day a bunch of us engineers were at lunch and we joked about developing an eating machine to spare humanity from all that repetitious lifting of the utensils to the mouth and arduous mastication. It would basically have been a robotic arm and hydraulic jaw assist.

It was in jest but I see now that human laziness is limitless... so I better get busy on a prototype.

[cRiPpLe_rOoStEr]

Considering the cost of tyres, brake liners and suspension components throughout the operational life of vehicles, I still have my doubts about any individual robocar to become effectively cheaper than some sort of autonomous mass transport. Sure it needs to be scaled according to the demand.