The surge towards tech cars will be stronger in the future and would swap the conventional mobility options one by one.
Currently, we are passing through the most interesting era of car technologies where hundreds of innovations are actually changing the overall global view of mobility. People are looking to buy driverless cars where other are planning to use their cars as aeroplanes at the same time.
All these innovations and ultra-modern technologies are turning the automotive industry upside down. The technology experts and automotive industry experts are arguing that the conventional cars have no future and they would be the part of museums in next 50 years or so, in fact, a majority of these cars would be removed from the planet.
They will be swapped by the tech cars which will bring the investment opportunities and will shift the industry over alternate and renewable energy sources.
The drive towards tech cars
Transport industry has always been remained in need of modern technologies and always remained under the direct influence of innovations. The models like Ford Model T, sold in millions when rarely people were aware of cars. There were 16 million units of only model T on the roads from 1910 to 1925.
The model T was swapped by modern technologies, similarly, Ford Mustang 1965, was an icon of power and speed, replaced by even faster and modern cars and technology wins yet another time. The world saw the fastest car on the planet in 2005, it was a Bugatti Veyron with titanium engine.
The vehicle set a world record of speed and power but soon after its instigation, it was beaten by Koenigsegg One, it was a modern car. In 1994, the world saw battery powered cars integrated with engine power at the same time, these cars called hybrid cars, Toyota introduced it Prius as world’s first hybrid car ever.
Then the time came when Tesla Motors Inc., who was the major outsource of batteries to Toyota, announced their own vehicles, 100 per cent on battery power with a driving range of more than 200 miles.
So, started from the Model T to the Tesla Model S although we drive back on the letters by one letter, from T to S, but actually, we have travelled a long distance spread over the generations.
On the production and performance side, technology has rewarded the world as well. The modern technologies and tech cars have advanced safety features which have improved the overall safety of the occupants.
From airbags to hundreds of sensors every single bit of new technologies is pushing the world towards the modern mobility. There are electric powered cars, electric drivetrains, smaller engines with smart features and turbocharged induction to increase power by large.
Electric powertrains are more powerful than conventional engines and they are more environment-friendly.
Electric Drive Trains
The tech car automaker and emerging technology leader Tesla has actually captured the minds of people and hooked up electric motors into the axles of the vehicles and then connected to the battery packs. This is the simplicity that makes the Tesla even famous.
The owner of the Tesla Motor company has sent a car to space as well. The electric vehicles are almost maintenance free and extremely efficient to save energy. According to the experts, more than 95 per cent energy converts in driving power and movement while on the other hand, the conventional vehicle has only 20% to 40% efficiency rate.
The battery packs are the major logjam at the moment in the progress of this emerging market. They are highly expensive, for example, if you own a Tesla Model S and looking to replace its battery pack, Tesla’s pack costs 30-40 thousand dollars, still with low energy density.
These battery packs require a long time and special equipment to full charge. The security risks also include with these battery packs where they can stop working in total at the same time and or might explode in the case of improper charging current given to them or even if not charged properly with the said equipment.
Tech Cars Bringing Down costs and improving the shortcomings
There is an absolute rule in the field of technology when it comes to the automotive industry. It is a very small rule but it has strong effects on the industry overall. This rule says that the steady and slower improvement in the car industry brings down overall costs and improves performance.
But in past few decades, the steadiness and slow movement has been vanished somewhere and swapped by swift improvements and innovations. The entire industry is in danger to be swapped by tech cars.
The change is coming so rapidly, where a third world country like India has urged that by 2030, they will swap all conventional cars with tech cars. Electric and hybrid electric cars would replace the current industry they said.
The importance of tech cars
The tech cars have great importance in future and they are actually the need of the time when the earth is facing global warming, the overall temperature of the planet earth has been increasing by 2-degree Celsius in the past few decades. The world is facing scarcity of water and rains.
Overall weathers are badly changing, where we didn’t saw sandstorms in the UK in history but a few years ago the island like the UK face sand storm including major parts of Europe. This has happened in 2014 and we saw cars were covered with red sand from Sahara desert sand.
You are thinking now that how tech cars would save these conditions in future, right? The answer is simple, all this happening due to pollution and change in the global temperature. The tech cars would remove the conventional cars in future and by large would reduce the use of conventional fuels like diesel and petrol as well.
This saves not less than 11 billion gallons of fuel every year which we are burning in our cars only in the UK. Globally this figure would go countless maybe. By stop burning this fuel or even may reducing this amount to one third, planet earth would be saved a lot.
This was not the only factor we have discussed that is asking for the need of tech cars. There are many more and would discuss in another article in detail.
The development of tech cars
The development of tech cars starts with the development of battery packs, increasingly making this transformation a reality. The raw materials to manufacture the base elements of these battery packs are also expensive where the prices of lithium carbonate have spiked up in past years.
Advanced Driver Assistants vs. Autonomous vehicles
Today, there are many cars on the market which can be categorised as tech cars. Every car which has advanced technologies like automatic safety features, advanced driver assistance systems and automatic features like lane departure systems, connected drive systems, blind spot warning system, parallel parking system, emergency braking system, etc. can be categorised as tech cars.
Fully autonomous cars, on the other hand, has even removed the driver from its seat, there is no steering wheel even. These cars only require a command from passengers and take them to the place where they wish to go. But the risk with this system is only that if it doesn’t get there?
There must be a room for piecemeal system approach and there should be some room for the drivers to make decisions if the system fails or even hijacked by someone else. The autonomous driving system works on connected drive approach and this is where someone else can hijack your system.
The Autonomous cars
Google has developed its fully autonomous car in 2009 and still experimenting and testing the vehicle to make sure the reliability of the vehicle and its system. Goole is working on the mission of organising the world information and during this all process, much as they see their search engine and related products, they saw autonomous vehicles as a big need.
If according to their information if Google is right and the autonomous vehicles will rule the world in near future.
Challenges developing autonomous vehicles
Google indicated that the data for connected vehicles is a big problem for them, however, technology is at its best. Google also highlights the challenge they faced during the development process.
Autonomous driving vehicles would work like a machine would learn everything, every problem and need for the software engineers to thrive in and it is not something car makers could do easily or they can claim it as their strength in the future.
The learning Machines
A Silicon Valley insider says that not even Apple Inc. has the system and software to take the autonomous driving car. In the development process, the hurdles are much higher than they were expecting, Google’s self-driving cars are such a great marvel and they can only drive through the suburbs of the Silicon Valley.
Looking at the importance of these autonomous and tech vehicles in the future, the industry is in the need of more advanced and they need to adopt the change by large. They must adopt the technologies that Google is using and install them in their conventional electric vehicles.
Recently, NVidia has announced a machine learning platform for the automakers to use in their vehicle. This platform has 12 CPUs and a processing power of more than 150 MacBook Pros. It is efficient at working, impressive on paper, sufficient to run a vehicle system. It proves to be fully reliable to be used in tech cars, not to mention how expensive it is.