Self-driving car computers may be 'as bad' for emissions as datacenters

If widely adopted, self-driving cars are going to introduce another source of unaccounted-for carbon emissions that could surpass those of the world's current complement of datacenters: The computer brains that power them. This, of course, assumes self-driving cars capable of level 4 or 5 autonomy are actually realized, but …

[Version 1.0]

Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

We have a lot of carbon dominant items, cars, plastic bags, knives and forks, water bottles etc etc etc etc ... if we're going to still be here in a couple of thousand years then we need to change a lot of things, self-driving cars are just a small example of what we need to change.

[sgp]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

Anyone who argues that there's a way in which a 1500+ Kg metal box that is used to move one person around is not detrimental to our climate, environment, safety, public finances really should come to terms with reality.

[Dante Alighieri]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

But if the business model changes to rent by the trip, the car can be used multiple times a day, scheduled for your routine.

It may even support ride sharing.

Reduces total number of vehicles on the road. Maximises benefit from a fixed resource.

As Henry Ford said, if you asked the customer what they wanted, the answer would have been faster horses

[Zolko]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

It may even support ride sharing.

brilliant ! And if computerized driving of that ride-sharing vehicle is consuming too much power (1200W), let's replace the autonomous driver with a human (who consumes ~100W). It might even be useful to have such vehicles follow a pre-defined path at pre-defined time-slots.

I think you're onto something, you should think about patenting it before Elon Musk does so

[Roland6]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

> let's replace the autonomous driver with a human (who consumes ~100W)

Given the human will be in the car anyway, their energy consumption delta whilst driving over-and-above sitting in the back playing games etc. will be even less...

[Justthefacts]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

A human bus driver consumes about 40 *kilowatt* embodied carbon. £10/hr = 40kWh/hr @ 25p/kWh.

Unless you plan to decant the bus drivers brain into a bottle, and run it on battery power, you have to include all the Earths resources required to put the brain into the driving seat.

[Roland6]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

The problem is the bus driver will be consuming regardless of whether they are driving a bus or being a couch potato, hence the use of an AI is additional energy consumption.

Interestingly, if we significantly reduce the population the economies of automation go downhill...

[codejunky]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

@Roland6

"Interestingly, if we significantly reduce the population the economies of automation go downhill..."

Isnt it the other way around? Due to a reducing population more automation is needed to care for the older generations and provide due to the lack of labour to do so? The lack of labour pushing up prices and so making expensive machines cheaper than the very expensive human?

[Potemkine!]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

Car crashes exist of course. So do ambulances saving lives too.

How many people can have a better work thanks to cars? A better life because someone can deliver them bread and food in their remote area thanks to a small van? Because they can see their family living in a place where's there are no trains? Do you know that not everybody is living in a city with public transportation everywhere, right?

What is detrimental to our environment is the growing number of humans on Earth. This is the main problem.

[quxinot]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

You're not allowed to say that. The only horrible thing to the environment is the internal combustion engine and the car it's within.

The eight billion people on the planet are absolutely not remotely at fault. Only the car.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Our potential future is a carbon-heavy one

Ignoring the various elephants in the room (how good or not they are at not killing people, rare earth mining, power sources for recharging etc) is it not possible that the "hidden" cost of the autonomy is countered by the potential benefit of the computer not lead-footing it around the place and driving the vehicle in a more optimal manner from an energy efficiency standpoint?

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: ...is it not possible that the "hidden" cost of the autonomy is countered...

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't. All such factors should be thoroughly investigated to give a complete picture of whether FSD cars are the same, better, or worse for the environment. Otherwise it's just facts-free handwaving.

[Marcelo Rodrigues]

The power usage may very well go down

Although everything said is technically true, there is one key point that doesn't have to be: the power usage. They did the math with 840W - and I believe their numbers are right, when the computer uses it. But the self driving problem doesn't uses a infinite amount of processing power - sooner or later we will reach the "this is really good" point, and the computational power needed will not grow further. Then the tech evolution will take care of power usage.

So, it may use 840W today - but in 20 years time it may very well be down to just 20W.

[DS999]

Re: The power usage may very well go down

sooner or later we will reach the "this is really good" point

How many deaths per year will be the "this is really good" point where you think everyone will agree advancements can cease?

[Natalie Gritpants Jr]

Re: The power usage may very well go down

When the computers kill fewer humans than humans do when driving. With some fudge factor to take account of the fact that av lorries might be lighter because the computers can drive them 24 hours per day.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: The power usage may very well go down

When the manufacturers take full legal responsibility for all accidents where the AI has control and not an instant before. And that does not include the Tesla method, where the car detects an imminent accident and releases the car back to manual control 50 milliseconds before impact.

[Anonymous Coward]

Setting aside the potentially limiting assumptions made in the paper: Good at being wrong

The numbers in the paper are a joke. The authors admit their assumptions are problematic, and that's an understatement.

Projections on computing technology in 2050 in made in the 2020's are going to fare worse than the ones made in the 1970s about the 2000's.

Ev's with self drive systems burning half the power of the drive system.

An exceedingly high vehicle to population number, and assuming most of those are sporting a car sized self drive using Kilowatts of power.

No provision for any kind of road adaptiations to make AV's job easier and more efficient.

So while 20w would be awesome, I'm not making guesswork for that far up the exponential curve of computing. I know that was a back of the napkin number and I'm not razzing you for it, just the authors. In car computing isn't passing datacenter computing. Any projections that don't account for the basic level of reality in those markets and don't line up with them are a huge red flag.

This paper and it's conclusions are sadly bullshit, but are one more piece of pseudo-knowledge that will be shopped around like it's gospel for a couple years, and then quietly and conveniently forgotten when it's projections promptly diverge from reality and people who put more work into the analysis than the headlines put out projections for a more reasonable time frame.

[Roland6]

Re: Setting aside the potentially limiting assumptions made in the paper: Good at being wrong

>No provision for any kind of road adaptiations to make AV's job easier and more efficient.

Well given our multi-decade experience with adapting roads to make it easier for humans to drive cars, I would suggest it would be advisable to assume there will be minimal adaptions and those which have been made will not be fully maintained, given hi-tech generally requires more maintenance than low-tech.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Setting aside the potentially limiting assumptions made in the paper: Good at being wrong

WHAT!! Parking 25 quid??!? AI, I'll be inside 4 hours, just drive around and be back by noon, OK?

Thus, even more power will be used than necessary, snd nobody will be planning for this.

[cream wobbly]

Re: The power usage may very well go down

If only there were a way to guide vehicles along preplanned routes without having to have computers to help them track it. They could be coupled together in some way and trained to wait stationary at well-advertised locations, and leave according to a time printed upon a table. It seems raily obvious to me.

[Black Label1]

Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

If you are a realist like me, put in the account sheet the cost of rare earth minerals extraction into this, and you will see EV are WORST than fuel-based cars.

[Total_Blackout]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

The scale of human suffering that's needed to make these electric cars is astounding.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

Oh look, this bullshit again.

That's not even remotely true. EVs are only about 35% more energy intensive to build than fossil fuel cars. And once they're on the road, it takes less than 2 years of use for the EV to come out ahead. Since the vast majority of cars last over 10 years, EVs are a massive win even with the current mix of electricity production. And that's only going to get better as more power generation moves from coal and gas to wind and solar.

An actual realist would understand that, not parrot right-wing talking points. Sorry, asshat, reality has a liberal bias, you're living in a fantasy world in your head.

[Black Label1]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

Bullsh1t?

EV batteries: cobalt, nickel, lithium, manganese, aluminum, graphite, steel, copper

All this FINITE materials (like fossil fuels) are being extracted not using solar / wind energy.

If you present me some "green energy" mining operations, I take back my opinion.

"Compared with hydrocarbons, green machines entail, on average, a 10-fold increase in the quantities of materials extracted and processed to produce the same amount of energy."

BTW, I am not right or left or whatever.

Sources:

https://www.manhattan-institute.org/mines-minerals-and-green-energy-reality-check

https://www.world-today-news.com/tesla-exploded-with-dynamite-why-are-electric-car-batteries-expensive/

https://www.mining.com/web/the-key-minerals-in-an-ev-battery/

[Zolko]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

If you present me some "green energy" mining operations, I take back my opinion.

I'll take the bait: take a field somewhere where it is sometimes sunny and sometimes rainy. Plant there sugarbeet, and wait. After some months, collect the sugarbeet, press the juice out of it, put the juice into some sealed container and the fibrous rest to dry in the sun, and wait. After some time, use the dry rest to make fire, with which you make the rested juice evaporate into some pipes. Collect the condensed liquid of some part of your pipes into some container. Pour the contents of this container into the gasoline tank of a gasoline car, and enjoy the drive.

Admittedly, there is no "E" – as in EV – in this plan. I still hope it qualifies.

[M.V. Lipvig]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

The graphene aluminum ion battery being made by GMG and backed by Bosch will solve this dirty little problem the EV has, along with most of its other problems.

But, we still keep coming back to the big problem of where the juice will come from to begin with. Sunshine and unicorn farts ain't gonna cut it unless there's a quantum leap in the technology. They'll either be powered by nukes, fossil fuels or not at all.

[Black Label1]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

While we wait for this "graphene aluminum ion battery" (I didn't researched it, just taking your word), I have a theoretical solution (costly, takes time, but viable)

In-orbit solar panels directing the energy 24/7 to a fixed point on earth via a laser beam, where it powers a "real green hydrogen" factory - converting water into H and storing it in fuel cells.

Then use these fuel cells to power cars, factories, planes, etc...

Problems I didn't took into account:

1) Effect of the 24/7 "laser beam" into the wildlife around the "hydrogen factory" - planes, birds, other flying objects

2) Loss of power of the "laser beam" traveling from orbit to earth

Based in real technology already available as of today, this is my theoretical solution to "real clean energy"

[Jimmy2Cows]

Re: Based in real technology already available as of today

Space-based solar power ideas have been around for ages, and don't involve a tightly focussed laser incinerating insects, birds, planes and anything else that happens to enter the beam.

Usually because the beam is radio frequency and distributed over a large areas such that incident power levels are around 250W per sq. metre. Use really big rectennas to harvest the RF energy and convert it back to electricity.

Problem solved, right? The physics is well known says it's theoretically perfectly viable.

Your existing "real technology" is the problem. You neeed vast solar collectors in space, areas measured in square kilometers, rather than square metres. We know how to make solar panels for use in space. We don't know how to construct collosal space structures, complete with station keeping and everything else you need to collect enough energy and keep the beam on target.

So that's a big problem, but even that can be overcome with sufficient will, time, effort and lot's and lot's of money. The biggest things missing right now are the will and enough funding to make it happen. Not enugh ROI for private investors, so it has to be governments. And they only care about the next election. SBSP is way to far out to be on their radar beyond "yeah, we've heard of it".

I think Caltech has just launched a cubesat demonstrator to test the principles. But that's an 8 inch cube, not a Disneyland carpark. Proving a concept won't solve the need for a truly vast collection area in space.

[Roland6]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

> And once they're on the road, it takes less than 2 years of use for the EV to come out ahead.

For the general case, that is bullshit, given the average UK driver does 7,400 miles, it will take 10+ years for the EV to start to come out ahead. But that assumes over that time the EV doesn't need a refit, like a new dashboard, new battery pack etc.

[MatthewSt]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

Does your realist account sheet factor in the cost of things like Deepwater Horizon too?

[Black Label1]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

Well, sh1t happens. Need to be vigilant to minimize the casualties.

[Thought About IT]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

"If you are a realist like me, put in the account sheet the cost of rare earth minerals extraction into this, and you will see EV are WORST than fuel-based cars."

Leaving aside your grammatical error (difficult when you shout it), worse in what way? They succeed in their purpose of reducing CO2 emissions compared with internal combustion engines. Reducing them poses an existential threat to the fossil fuel industries while business as usual poses an existential threat to life on the planet. Choose your priority!

[werdsmith]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

Old fashioned cars also use various kinds of battery and other materials that are of similar source to the ones that are being whinged about here.

Lots of work is going into improved energy storage density cells with an aim to avoid the use of these environmentally unsound materials.

This work is only happening now because it is being driven by the move to EV.

[Black Label1]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

I really value a correct grammar, but english is not my primary language, anyway, I beg your pardon on that.

>They succeed in their purpose of reducing CO2 emissions compared with internal combustion engines.

They did not succeeded. If you read my previous post, will see CO2 emissions only shifted to mining operations.

Owning an eletric car, sadly, is not saving the planet.

[Roland6]

Re: Rare earth minerals extraction (cost, environment)

>They succeed in their purpose of reducing CO2 emissions compared with internal combustion engines.

Only if both the production and electricity supply chains are decarbonised.

Currently, EV's are really only relocating the place where CO2 emissions occur from the tailpipe. This isn't to say less pollution/cleaner air in our cities isn't welcome, just that we shouldn't confuse this with actually doing something about CO2 emissions.

[Filippo]

That's a weird claim. A car has to carry around all the energy it intends to use. Currently, almost all of that is traction. If it ever gets to the point where a significant portion of a car's energy consumption is processing, we can be damn sure that engineers will try very, very hard to make it as efficient as possible - because it would impact mileage.

Or, I guess they mean car brains will run in datacenters? But that means that a car's ability to drive relies on an Internet connection. Nobody remotely sane would trust such a system with their life.

[Gene Cash]

Exactly. The computer runs off the EV's battery.

I would think the sensors (RADAR, LIDAR, ultrasonics, cameras, pan/tilt/scan mechanisms, etc) would be more power hungry than the computer.

[Zolko]

we can be damn sure that engineers will try very, very hard to make it as efficient as possible

can we really be that sure ? Or are they going to use all extra power available to put in loads of useless functions that the marketing department asks-for ? Like infotainment, heated seats, lights all over and inside the car to impress the clueless, gesture-recognition systems to make away with steering wheels ...

[MarkTriumphant]

I beg to differ on one point - heated seats are not useless. For one thing, they are more efficient than keeping the complete interior warm. The rest of your comment seems to be absolutely correct.

[Roland6]

>If it ever gets to the point where a significant portion of a car's energy consumption is processing, we can be damn sure that engineers will try very, very hard to make it as efficient as possible - because it would impact mileage.

I think you have missed the point.

1 datacenter = n million car computers

Obviously, the more miserly the "processing" is with its use of energy the larger 'n' becomes.

[nmcalba]

It will all depend how they get used

Its not just the potential computing power needed for self driving - a lot of that is happening anyway for additional reasons, but how usage affects overall mileage driven will have a big effect on the overall impact.

Many people point out that a personally owned car is very inefficient, and in one respect they are correct - my car is expensive in terms of resources and money to buy, but spends the vast majority of its time sitting idle outside my house or in a car park somewhere - a very inefficient use of an expensive resource.

But in another aspect my car is immensely efficient - virtually every journey it makes is a "useful" journey - taking me where I want, or need, to go. The only exception is once or twice a year when it has to make a short journey to a garage for new tyres or servicing - maybe 20 miles p.a. out of 20 thousand - that's 99.9% efficient.

One of the big arguments for self driving cars is replacing the personal ownership aspect with a more "efficient" shared style which makes better use of an expensive resource. But its worth noting that almost any form of shared usage, a traditional taxi, Uber, shared ownership whether traditional or driverless will result in a big increase in "useless" journeys - returning to base after dropping a passenger off, going to pick up a passenger, going between jobs. All this means extra mileage, extra fuel consumption (whether of the liquid dinosaur or busy electron variety) and extra road congestion. Now the more widespread the service the lower this useless journey overhead is, but it's never going to approach the 0.1% of the traditional ownership model.

Another aspect is if you have a personally owned vehicle capable of full service driving - how do you use it?. Obviously there are the standard usages - get work done during your commute to work, getting brought home legless from the pub. But there are other possibilities :- Don't want to pay more for your airport parking than the cost of your flight? - just send the car home again after dropping you off and then it can pick you up again on your return. Don't have parking handy near your city centre office or the restaurant you are going to - just send the car home - or maybe send it to find a free parking space out in the residential suburbs (very popular with the residents I'm sure). But this is all additional mileage, additional energy, additional congestion.

One other interesting question - how fast does a driverless car go when it's not in a hurry? - When I am driving or being driven I want to go as quickly as is commensurate with my comfort, safety and maintenance of my driving license - but if I'm say sending the car home after dropping me off somewhere I don't care if it takes 1 hour or 2 - whichever is cheaper in energy terms. We all know that 56 mph is a more fuel economic cruising speed on an motorway that 70 mph - how much better is 30mph? - that's going to cause fun!.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: It will all depend how they get used

> replacing the personal ownership aspect with a more "efficient" shared style which makes better use of an expensive resource.

Shared style usage might not be all that much more efficient than personal/private usage. It all depends on how things are being used. It's like with the trains. Lots of trains are rammed during the morning rush hour and the evening rush hour and very lightly used the rest of the time.

Add in all the extra road miles your post rightly predicts and we could be worse off.

As for your point of "let it drive home slowly" Oh boy is that one going to be popular, who's going to get stuck behind the slow moving energy save mode returning AVs.

[Paul Hovnanian]

Re: It will all depend how they get used

"Don't have parking handy near your city centre office or the restaurant you are going to - just send the car home"

I'm going to pop into the local Starbucks and parking is damned near non-existent. Just circle the block until I'm ready to leave.

[David Hicklin]

Re: It will all depend how they get used

>> I want to go as quickly as is commensurate with my comfort, safety and maintenance of my driving license

Then you don't want to travel in excess of R17

[Anonymous Coward]

High customer satisfaction

If they want this customer to be highly satisfied they could start by taking 90% of the computer crap out of the car.

[TekGuruNull]

Re: High customer satisfaction

Agreed. I can't find a single (US market) electric vehicle to even look at. That's because they all have satnav, embedded cellular and ten more pieces of sh*t that I don't want. It's ridiculous.

[Anonymous Coward]

Go restomod

Plenty of classy old frames rolling around, if you aren't worried about crash ratings, or grab an old Volvo wagon if you are and aren't concered with looks.

Conversion will cost at least as much as the car, but imagine rolling around in a classic jag with all of the unreliable and fiddly bits removed.

And of course no need for the foil hats as the only modern electrics are ones you install.

[captain veg]

Re: Go restomod

I ran a 2007 Dacia for several years. Really ugly vehicle. Absolutely no "image" whatsoever.

And yet everything worked, it rode pretty well, sipped fuel, and it had all the crash-worthiness that Renault could engineer.

But much more importantly, to me, it didn't try to drive itself. Not even a tiny bit. No lane assist, no automatic headlights, no electric handbrake, no nothing. No insistent beeping for having the audacity to think that you know better. Want to reverse around a carpark with seatbelt off*? You're an adult, make that choice for yourself.

-A.

* This is permitted by the highway code, by the way.

[NATTtrash]

Re: Go restomod

But much more importantly, to me, it didn't try to drive itself.

I agree with you that that is the issue we are talking about here (disclaimer: oldtimer here).

The human species is slowly realising that action and reaction are indeed connected, and the "Not my problem. Out of my sight so not my concern" paradigm doesn't work on the long run. Unless you're an ignorant egocentric bastard that is...

But have a think about this in the same context. So yes, humans want to transport themselves from A to B. And what we can acquire to do this has all this top heavy stuff... but does that service that human exclusively wanting to transport her/himself from A to B? As mentioned here (and in other issues, will come back to that later) it seems more and more "things" are sold to humans as "essential", which in essence are not. Well, to that specific human. It is, in this automobile situation, the producer of that automobile who makes it top heavy, carrying around a lot of "baggage" that can be done more economic, or are not needed by that individual specifically. But since it benefits the manufacturers specific bottom line, life without it "is not possible". And if you transpose that to not just vehicles, but e.g. many other electronic actions of humans, the issue becomes more painfully clear. So do we need a car that is so tied in electronically? And what about also electronic payments, electronic on demand entertainment, personal devices that can't function without "phoning home" or being connected to an energy guzzling backbone, everybody running around with a (connected) phone all the time? Since we are techies here: just the fact that we know that if we de-Google a phone, battery life carries you way beyond its "usual charge again" point. And how many mobiles are there at this moment in the world? Do we need mobiles to begin with, because if you calculate the carbon footprint of that, I think the result might be surprising?

So if we factor in all these "services", that do consume energy, produce carbon, and most likely are not there just for the benefit of the individual (service providers who make money with it, and hence it is offered), then IMHO you can see that humans keep moving to a future where they will never manage to live in harmony with their surroundings and will always be locust bumbling ignorantly towards their own end.

[werdsmith]

Re: Go restomod

I have a modern EV which can drive itself.

By strange coincidence everything works on this car too! Imagine that!

[captain veg]

Re: Go restomod

Yes, but my point was that in a 7 year old (at the time of purchase) budget-class vehicle everything worked. And continued to work for the next 50 thousand kilometres. And it cost 3 euro-grand. From a dealer.

-A.

[Czrly]

Re: Go restomod

Could you possibly mean it doesn't do stuff like pulling an emergency-stop in the middle lane of the notoriously narrow-laned Brenner pass (between Austria and Italy) with no reason or other vehicle (apart from the overtakee) in sight, while I'm executing a perfectly tame, considered, pre-meditated over-take?

Someone who works in the automotive industry as a programmer explained it to me: these systems basically only count false negatives. Slamming on the brakes (even causing a pile-up because of inadequate following distance from those behind) doesn't count as a black mark against them but FAILING to slam on the breaks when the driver is incompetent does. So they all just guess that any sensor blip is worth a crash-stop and, even if that actually causes a crash, blame the human anyway.

(It slammed on the brakes and induced so much unexpected under-steer, I ended up half in the lane on the outside of the curve which was thankfully vacant. I can anticipate a lot of things on the road – I drove for decades in South Africa – but who can anticipate the moment when software or sensor bugs will suddenly strike?)

[David Hicklin]

Re: Go restomod

You can leave self driving, lane assist etc out for me as well but leave my auto lights and windscreen wipers alone - they are just distractions from driving.

Oh and I'll keep cruise control thank you.

I can't see fully self driving happening for a long long time (if ever) and anything that needs me to be alert to take over if it craps out is a non-starter, I would sooner drive all the way then have hands hovering over the controls "just in case"

[captain veg]

Re: Go restomod

My current ride switches on the headlights when it's dark. I'm OK with that, though I certainly don't need it.

A few years ago I had a hire car which thought that it could operate the dip switch automatically in an intelligent manner. It couldn't. After an hour or more of being flashed at by ongoing traffic I finally worked out how to turn that "feature" off. Hire cars really ought not to require reading the manual before setting out.

I'd rather do the windscreen wipers in person rather than have the vehicle decide to screech the blades across an almost entirely dry windscreen, thanks.

I've never even tried cruise control. There's a button for that in my car, but I've no idea how it works. Why would I wan't to forego control over one of the primary axes of driving? (I mean the accelerator pedal.) I understand that some contemporary systems can also apply the brakes. This is just wrong.

-A.

[Roland6]

Re: Go restomod

>Hire cars really ought not to require reading the manual before setting out.

Okay there are a few things you do need to get sorted out, like seat position, ignition switch, which lever is the indicators and which is the windscreen wipers, where the handbrake is and fuel cap release, otherwise it should be possible to simply move between cars and drive off without having to read the manual or having the garage/rental rep. taking an hour to explain how the car works.

>My current ride switches on the headlights when it's dark.

Mine does that, but is unreliable in fog and spray. The worrying thing is that I expect Tesla's with all their supposed tech also get this simple function wrong along with the operation of intermittent windscreen wipers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Go restomod

> Conversion will cost at least as much as the car, but imagine rolling around in a classic jag with all of the unreliable and fiddly bits removed.

I have an old Jag which would be great to switch over to electric. It's so comfortable and while the engine is quiet for an ICE a good electric motor would do the job even better. Sadly as you say the conversion would be ruinously expensive but the other big problem is our friends in the DVLA. Any change of this magnitude would require the car to go through the current generation of safety tests and it is quite likely that you can't make an old Jag comply with some 2020s rules and regs. For years the powers that be have turned a blind eye to people messing around with old cars and so long as they pass an MOT they were happy. This is no longer the case. Whether it is because older cars are no longer required to have an MOT (stupid, stupid, stupid) or because some rule stickler has taken over, I don't know.

[Kevin McMurtrie]

Re: High customer satisfaction

I like the tech as long as it's only on when asked to be on. But yes, there are too many cars out there with buggy nuisance tech that defaults to "on" for every drive. I think some Mazda cars beeped constantly from faulty lane-assist. VW has their random brake-slamming from crude collision avoidance.

[Phil O'Sophical]

Re: High customer satisfaction

The cars score higher on safety tests if these "features" are on by default.

[AndrueC]

On the other hand if the cars have good acceleration sense programmed into them they will save more fuel and have lower emissions than most of the human drivers on the road. Most human drivers seem to put little thought into what they are doing and are happy to leave their braking until the last minute and accelerate hard between junctions.

Also AI driven cars could communicate amongst themselves which would offer opportunities for efficiency that even the best efficient human driver would struggle to achieve.

[Anonymous Coward]

Realistically, if we want safeish self driving cars

We need to look at:

1) dedicated lanes/roadways

2) specific lane markings and signals

3) as you mentioned, car to car network/signaling

Those things bring the both the scope and consequences down to a manageable level of both safety and complexity. The first two aren't especially hard, expensive or time consuming to set up. The last isn't rocket science but has been consistently screwed up by the auto industry since the dotcom era, and they lost their dedicated spectrum recently as it is clear that if it is ever going to work, it will be build outside those teams and forced on the industry.

I'd let the car hackers at Defcon take a stab at it next, they have a better track record and as a community are happier to point out each other and their own mistakes.

[Zolko]

Re: Realistically, if we want safeish self driving cars

I agree, this is the ONLY realistic AND useful scenario for self-driving cars: highways. By having cars follow each other at the same speed and short distance (1m ? 3m ?) we could save a lot of fuel, and this would be more secure than drivers falling asleep after hours of staring at the straight road ahead. Also, the technology is quite easy, no need for many fancy unreliable sensors.

THIS is actually something I'd be looking positively at. But NOT in the city or mountain roads.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Realistically, if we want safeish self driving cars

1) dedicated lanes/roadways

2) specific lane markings and signals

3) as you mentioned, car to car network/signaling

It's called a "train"

[anthonyhegedus]

Have I missed something?

Is this really pumping more carbon into the atmosphere or have I missed something? Surely it's just using the supposedly green energy that the car is running off? It's just taking away from the power/battery runtime of the car itself, which is itself charged hopefully by renewable energy sources.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: Have I missed something?

Also, something not mentioned in the article. Did they account for more green energy production? All I saw was lots of talk about huge amounts of computing power causing more CO2 emission at source. No mention of the gradual reduction of CO2 emitting power generation decades into the future. Of course, that may or may not happen. But then that's the case with self-driving too. "Futurists" and SF authors make many and varied "predictions" of how the future may look and we mainly remember them for the few they got right, or nearly so, not the majority which were way off beam. As someone earlier mentioned, look at the predictions for computing tech from 30-40 years ago and where we are now :-)

[Roland6]

Re: Have I missed something?

>look at the predictions for computing tech from 30-40 years ago and where we are now

Don't remember the exact numbers, but I seem to remember the PC-AT had a 200w PSU, my mid 90's 486 a 450w PSU and my latest Ryzen PC has a 550w PSU...

[DanceMan]

Wrong target

The research and expenditure is going at the wrong target at this stage. It should be focused on traffic controls at this point instead of the cars. This may already be the case in areas of freeways and carriageways but my experience and intent is on city driving. My route to work and shopping goes through an urban area with a mix of traffic light intersections and pedestrian lights (also with cross-traffic induction loops). During rush hours the pedestrian lights should be synced to the intersection lights in the main direction of travel and the pedestrian and loops disabled. But this would mean expenditure by the city rather than a venture capital self-driving outfit so it does not happen.

in general work on making the cars communicate with the traffic control systems would yield more immediate results at this point in development.

[TMeats]

Power all that shit with nuclear. Much greener.

[Black Label1]

If one can safely miniaturize a nuclear reactor for civilian use, I agree. Currently we have the same problem with hydrogen cells, I believe.

[TimMaher]

This is utter rubbish.

Surely these over paid, self indulgent twats could go away and do something useful?.. Such as research in how to improve our energy use. Rather then whingeing about some stats.

[Black Label1]

Re: This is utter rubbish.

This same explanation was posted above, but I pasted it online also. Maybe someone will pick it up:

In-orbit solar panels idea:

https://pastebin.com/dj5x4BsX

[T. F. M. Reader]

So data centres do not consume all that much power?

Let's consider a 120hp car. In the past 120 horses looked quite powerful, but for today's cars - rather large and heavy, for convenience and, above all, safety - it doesn't see all that excessive. 120 horses equal 90kW. 840W of a computer is less than 1% of that - can we ignore it?

There are bigger problems to consider. Look at the UK. According to the government [PDF] total electricity demand - that's everything: industry, transport, military, offices, households, and data centres, too - in 2021 was 334TWh. Supply was actually a bit lower - the UK is a net importer of electricity. Total generative capacity is 76.6 GW. That's fossil, renewables, nuclear - everything.

Now, consider a 120hp=90kW car (autonomous or not) driven for 1.5-2 hours per day (daily commute, school run, supermarket, pub, visit friends/family). It won't use it's max power all the time, so reduce it to ~1h or 100kWh/day as a nice round fiducial number. If you want another number feel free to scale what follows - what's a few KWh between friends, eh? Now, the government says there were more than 40M registered vehicles in the UK in 2021 (same year as the electricity figures). Let's say we want a relatively modest, but significant, step of making 25% of those electric. That's 10M, consuming 1TWh/day or 365TWh/year - more energy than the UK consumes or produces in total today.

Now, let's say my EV consumed 100KWh on Tuesday. According to the wet dream of EV enthusiasts I will be able to replenish that by plugging the car into the grid during the night between Tuesday and Wednesday, and there will be no problem either finding a station or spreading the charge over hours. Forget that I want it to happen in 3-5 minutes I spend filling up the tank today - I am completely on board. If I have 5 hours to charge the car I will be drawing 20kW from the grid. 10M cars like mine will draw 200GW during the night - almost 3 times today's grid capacity. That's assuming 100% efficiency, etc.

It looks to me that before we can plug a significant fraction of our vehicles into the grid we'll need to increase the grid capacity at least a few times. it sounds to me like a really big project for which we'll need to pay through the nose and frankly I don't see how this can be accomplished by 2030 or whatever "the deadline" is.

On the plus side, I am not terribly worried about the carbon footprint of data centres in this context.

[David Hicklin]

Re: So data centres do not consume all that much power?

new car sales have been all over the shop recently but an average of around 2M on a good year should be possible, so it will take you 5 years to reach your 10M

Still too long to build a few Nuke power stations however.

Of course the EV cars are so dammed expensive that it will be a push to get 2M EV's sold each year even without finding all the materials needed to make that many batteries etc

[anonymous boring coward]

Even a powerful home gaming PC uses a small fraction of the power needed to propel a car. Even small gains in reduced consumption by accelerating more sensibly, keeping to speed limits, decelerating less by planning better, will easily cover the energy used by the computers.

[codejunky]

meh

So a paper counting something that doesnt seem to matter, trying to guess decades in the future technology on a subject we have demonstrated a stunning lack of understanding compared to the amount of faith we hold in it, and yet we are to believe it?

Throw it on the pile of other MMCC ideas in the round receptacle next to the desk.

We cannot know nor account for the many ideas and interactions that go on every second in this world, the central planning doesnt work. They dont and cant have sufficient information of sufficient accuracy to make decisions with. Thats without the fairytale guesses of the future (look back at old predictions for what life would be like decades back).

[captain veg]

Re: meh

Ever wonder why your modular Ford engine get so much better mileage than your old small-block?

That was "central planning" in operation.

-A.

[codejunky]

Re: meh

@captain veg

"Ever wonder why your modular Ford engine get so much better mileage than your old small-block?

That was "central planning" in operation."

No it wasnt. Stunning factory production of the USSR was central planning. The increasing efficiency of the combustion engine is markets.

[Roland6]

Re: meh

> The increasing efficiency of the combustion engine is markets.

And sensible "raising the bar" regulation (which probably also helped in the demise of British Leyland other poor quality manufacturers...).

[codejunky]

Re: meh

@Roland6

"And sensible "raising the bar" regulation"

Well said

[geemy]

840W is also negligible compared to an ev consumption and could be offset just by driving more smoothly.self driving cars will be mostly EVs so will still be way more efficient than gas cars. also when self driving is mainstream and there is competition in the robotaxi market costs will be low and many families won't have to own several cars and people living in ities won't even need cars so there will be a lot of energy/emissions savings. on the other hand 840W is enough to move an ebike around 30mph which is comparable with average speed did cars on the roads. hopefully in the long-term self driving makes riding a. Ike on public roads much safer