It’s definitely the case that not all batteries are created equal, though I think the only case I can think of where battery failure was pretty common was the Nissan Leaf and honestly an ICE Nissan also has a pretty common failure point (the CVT) so the moral of the story is maybe hold off on a Nissan.

Here we go again.

Not really. The batteries in EVs are not at all the same as the batteries in a power tool. The fact is that the batteries in these cars are babied to death. What do batteries hate? Heat. So these batteries are cooled with refrigerated liquid. Furthermore, they are never fully charged or discharged. They operate in a…

There was a fascinating NOVA episode devoted to full self-driving companies and it was really interesting to see some of the “real world” problems they had to account for.

I’ll be surprised if self-driving cars aren’t the norm by about 2050. But I also don’t expect them to exist any sooner than 2040. 

So billy bob who has absolutely 0 experience, either technical or business, in the field can say with such certainty that it won’t work. Shut’r down boys!

That would be “sheer nonsense”, unless you’re cutting the nonsense with a sharp tool.

What you write certainly is a possibility!

Regarding why one should want an “auto-pilot” feature: You really have to take it out on the highway to see/feel.

It’s an interesting point. It seems to me that the low bar for autonomous driving is higher than the low bar for us humans. That is, they have to be perfect. There are plenty of driving challenges out there that humans have had a hard time figuring out. How can we teach a machine to do it?

I agree with you, personally, though to play Devil’s Advocate: This is still true of a lot of human drivers as well. How many people can you think of who suffer from target fixation? To use the deer example, how many people will have multiple lanes worth of space available, but will stare at the deer and end up…

Solutions to this scenario

Unlike a regular trucker, it probably stops in time. ;)

You have a remote operator that handles corner case scenarios for a several trucks. Or you have a lead driver managing the convoy that will negotiate this. Or you limit the usage to interstates...

There are already autonomous rail systems and have been for decades at airports like Orlando.

A vehicle using a dedicated path that is inaccessible to non-autonomous vehicles is relying on heavy intervention from outside engineering to eliminate real world conditions. That isn’t driving.

“But every little thing that humans have learned how to handle over years of figuring out crawling, walking, running, and not eating things that are on fire?”

Let me somewhat disagree with you:

As an Englishman, the American penchant for pickups has always mystified me. They’re big, have a large, exposed load bay in the rear, and the interiors range from “grim” to “grim with shiny bits on.” As far as something to use as a car, they appear to offer the worst of two worlds: illogical family car,…

May I introduce you to rural_unit275