Autonomous Cars
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Give the Tesla Roadster Some Space
There has always been an inherent connection between taming space and adventuring on the wide open road. These two domains moved closer as Tesla unveiled a new Roadster fitted with winged rocket thrusters and the Japanese launched a lunar mission with “Idefix” on board. Once the spacecraft lands on a Martian moon, Idefix, the rover,…
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EV Drivers: Don’t Look in the Rearview Mirror
If you want to discern where electric vehicles are headed, don’t use the rear-view mirror. EV technology is advancing quickly. Yet public perceptions and media are anchored in earlier views. The rhetoric about charging speeds, cold-weather charging, and battery warranties continue to have a half-life even though their era has passed. Research publications and supply/demand…
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From Carburetors to Code: Is the Car Show Dying, or Just Rebooting?
The Car Show was born in an era when making a vehicle fast, loud, and uniquely yours was the ultimate expression of cool. It’s a good time to ask how they will evolve since they are a staple of summer weekends, as iconic as picnics and peach cobbler. With more and more EVs and self…
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The Porsche Paradox: Old Performance Routs New EVs
The manual transmission had a long automotive run and gear-heads were reluctant to see it fade out. Today, electric vehicles (EV) and full self-driving (FSD) cars meet resistance for similar reasons. Just forty years ago, a third of new U.S. vehicles were equipped with stick shift, manual transmissions. Learners could not pass the driver’s exam…
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In Robot Cars We Trust or Do We?
One hundred years ago, society worried about what would happen when the traffic light failed and the electricity went down. One hundred years later, we are asking the same question to programmers of autonomous vehicles—only now, the answer involves gigabytes of data and millisecond-latency pings. To understand this, we take a quick look back at…
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Time- Well- Spent in Autonomous Vehicles
For decades, transportation planning has focused on a core metric: getting people from Point A to Point B with maximum efficiency. We optimize for utility, comparing the personal car to public transit on the basis of “Time Saved.” But the autonomous vehicle (AV) revolution demands a more sophisticated model. It’s not just about the clock…