Politicians and pundits get excited about new technology they barely or don’t even understand. Too often their pronouncements are based on, or taken literally from press releases. I’m not against new technology, but someone has to cool off the hype before we corner ourselves based on belief that exceeds possibility.
California is on the brink of outlawing vehicles that are not electric. They have not decided where all that electricity will come from without burning fossil fuels somewhere. Have they forgotten the great East Coast Blackout of 2003? Nothing in an area almost as large as the European Union worked unless it was powered by combustion. No refrigerators, no elevators, no TV, nothing.
Some things have to work every time, like ambulances and fire trucks. A fire engine pumper may have to run nonstop for hours or days at a time, even if the electricity is off. Electric cars have become practical for many car drivers, but long-haul trucks are another matter entirely, California is 1000 miles long. Diesel fuel has at least 24 times the energy density of the best battery. To replace the typical 200 gallons of Diesel fuel, 900 pounds, with a battery requires a 20,000pound battery. Electric drive might be 3 times as efficient, so we might get by with a 7,000 pound battery. That reduces the payload by 3 tons, for the life of the truck. A tank of fuel gets lighter as you drive, a battery does not.
Did I mention Cali is anti-nuclear power too; even though no member of the public has ever been harmed by a pressurized water reactor like the ones that power France.
Nuclear fusion, not fission, is promoted as the unlimited energy source that is just about to take off, and has been all my life. So far it has failed to produce anything but press releases for about 80 years. One recent demonstration produced slightly more energy, once, than it took to ignite it. My truck engine does that every time a spark plug fires, and the resulting power stroke is thousands of times more energy than the spark. To produce the fusion spark in the demonstration took thousands of times more energy than the final output. In theory fusion is an inexhaustible source of energy, but to make it work they have to reproduce the conditions at the center of the sun. A condition that is hard to discover, let alone reproduce.
Many of us look forward to the day when a car will be our truly humble servant, requiring no service and will take us anywhere even if we cannot drive. Cars have become relatively service-free. An oil change every thousand miles was once necessary. Many modern cars could go 100,000 without opening the hood. They just need occasional tires and wiper blades.
It’s been about 5 years since sages predicted self-driving cars would be available for all in 5 years. It turns out that it’s a lot harder than they thought. Several attempts have disappointed or failed completely. Automatic train control has been around since 1920, but it is considered wise to have at least one person who can manage the train. Trains don’t have to be steered. Airplanes have autopilot, at altitude and some have internal systems that can self-land or take off on command from a human pilot.
Traffic on the other hand is very unpredictable.Freeways would seem to be the place to start, there is no cross or opposing traffic. City streets are the most challenging; it is impossible to predict what might happen, even something that never happened before. A human operator can usually respond to a situation he or she has no experience with if already involved. Humans have the ability to analogize a new situation and respond appropriately as they would to a familiar situation. However, a human detached from the operation by a self-driving system probably cannot respond to a surprise without many seconds warning. Computers are getting close, but until they can be completely autonomous, they are not ready for prime time. Expecting a human in an automated vehicle, who is not involved in control to react instantly is unrealistic, and frankly, dangerous.
Ken Obenski is a forensic engineer, now safety and freedom advocate in South Kona. He writes a biweekly column for West Hawaii Today. Send feedback to obenskik@gmail.com