Future Cars: Electric and Autonomous Vehicles

[mattaudio]

FYI if you need to trench to your garage for solar on it... Put your mast on your garage, put your solar equipment in your garage, and put a master distro in your garage. Then trench to your master panel in your house. Then you won't have Xcel lines over your backyard.

[David Greene]

Ok! I will ask our solar guy about that. Thanks for the tip!

[mister.shoes]

We had Xcel bury our main line when we built our garage in 2012, but the meter is still on the back of the house. No lines over the backyard is glorious. I also have two 1.5" (I think) conduits running between the house and garage. One holds power for the garage; the other has coax and cat-6 because nerd. I don't think I'd have enough conduit capacity to run the wire needed for solar or EV charging, so...yeah.

This discussion is also making me regret the direction of our garage roof. Running the ridgeline N-S makes adding solar panels a no-go, even on a 10/12 pitch. Unless it's possible to capture enough early morning and late afternoon MN sun to be worth it.

[David Greene]

We had Xcel bury our main line when we built our garage in 2012, but the meter is still on the back of the house. No lines over the backyard is glorious. I also have two 1.5" (I think) conduits running between the house and garage. One holds power for the garage; the other has coax and cat-6 because nerd. I don't think I'd have enough conduit capacity to run the wire needed for solar or EV charging, so...yeah.

I'll ask our solar guy about the buried line option too. I hadn't considered things like coax and cat-6, but that's a good idea.

This discussion is also making me regret the direction of our garage roof. Running the ridgeline N-S makes adding solar panels a no-go, even on a 10/12 pitch. Unless it's possible to capture enough early morning and late afternoon MN sun to be worth it.

Yeah, my understanding is that's basically a no-go for solar. Our house has side gables which means most of the roof is unusable for solar but it has a large front dormer that lets us put several panels up there. If we ever move, E-W facing gables would be a requirement along with a garage amenable to solar PV.

One contractor did suggest stands to angle panels to the south on the main roof, but another said that was basically a ridiculous idea, so who knows? Might be worth looking into if it's your only option.

We did have to take down a large voluntary elm over the garage to remove shade, so that's not great but we will plant more trees. Our crabapple also bit the dust because of disease so our backyard went from (literally) almost no direct sunlight to almost no shade (!).

[FISHMANPET]

Yo taking down mature trees in an urban environment and building an entire garage suited to solar seems like a gigantic pain in the ass, when we can just stick solar panels out in the prairie where they won't disturb anything.

[Silophant]

As a heads up, I'm going to move these last couple pages over to the new green living thread in Anything Goes when I get home from work, as we've veered off a ways from future cars.

[seanrichardryan]

FYI if you need to trench to your garage for solar on it... Put your mast on your garage, put your solar equipment in your garage, and put a master distro in your garage. Then trench to your master panel in your house. Then you won't have Xcel lines over your backyard.

Well, if youre trenching you'dight as well get some sewer lines and extra lv innthe ground.

[Anondson]

Waymo’s car simulator.

https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/ ... es/537648/

[Anondson]

House passes legislation to prevent states from outlawing self-driving vehicles.
http://www.reuters.com/article/us-autos ... SKCN1BH2B2

[Multimodal]

This seems like sort of a big deal: Bob Lutz (formerly of General Motors) says the end is nigh for cars & car culture:

http://www.autonews.com/article/2017110 ... es-goodbye


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[Multimodal]

And then there’s this: Waymo is cutting out (front seat) drivers from their autonomous cars already. (In Phoenix, where there’s no rain or snow, or much of anything.)

Waymo’s Autonomous Cars Cut Out Human Drivers in Road Tests - The New York Times
https://apple.news/AFqun8gAuRiOE3PLiagmYFg


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[Multimodal]

(Sorry; just figured out how to remove my Tapatalk signature. It’s gone)

[talindsay]

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41923814

[Multimodal]

http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-41923814

Ha ha. Well, as it says, it was the human driver’s error (as it is in virtually every case).

Roads & streets will be much, much safer when computers direct vehicles. It’s almost like we can’t trust humans with speed or attention.

[mplsjaromir]

A human would not have driven into a truck that was attempting into enter a loading dock. True driverless cars are 35+ years out.

[tmart]

Driverless cars are a race with a ridiculous number of runners, who have varying degrees of funding, talent, seriousness, and expertise. Unless the mistakes and accidents we see are coming from the biggest players, I wouldn't read into them too much as a read on how close the tech is to market.

Personally, I tend to think the tech actually is pretty close to market, but the social and planning consequences are poorly understood, and probably not as massive as everyone's making them out to be.

[David Greene]

In general terms, I think the tech is pretty close. But I wouldn't say it's close to market. It's the edge cases that will get you and it seems like we need a lot more simulation, etc. to make sure we have as many of those covered as possible.

[mplser]

something i just thought of as an electric car driver: How terrible would it be if your self-driving electric car ran out of battery on the way to pick you up? it would just be on the side of (or possibly in the middle of) a road somewhere and you'd have to go and search for it to even know where it is. (i suppose the same applies for gasoline, to a lesser extent)

[David Greene]

Given the range of today's vehicles, by the time autoomous vehicles are widely available there will be no range issues at all and charging will likely be time-competitive to filling the gas tank.

ICE-based vehicles are rapidly losing their edge.

[Silophant]

I've gotta imagine a fully self-driving car would have a software check to prevent it from starting a trip it didn't have the range to finish.