The President Post
www.thepresidentpost.com
January 17, 2011 C7
Living The Future of Cars:
Drivers Not Needed It’s conventional wisdom in the auto industry, but the rest of us may be a bit shocked to find out that cars of the future likely will drive themselves. In some ways, they already are.
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$100,000 car from Mercedes aims to give the human foot a rest in traffic jams. It senses how far away other cars are – and then speeds up and slows down accordingly. No need to turn off cruise control and hit the brake. You just steer. (Wired Magazine, which tested the car, called this a “magically scary experience.”) And tech companies are pushing car automation even further. In October, Google announced it had developed a fleet of cars that use various sensors and maps to feel out the roadway. “They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles. We think this is a first in robotics research,” the company said on its blog. The latest edition in this trend comes from General Motors,
which showed off a self-driving car last week at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The EN-V (pronounced “envy” and short for “Electric Networked Vehicle”) combines two ideas about how to teach cars to drive – using sensors like cameras and sonar to keep the car from hitting pedestrians; and network technology that lets cars talk to each other. This “car internet” lets the cars link up wirelessly and follow one another in a sort of wirelessly linked train. If one EN-V needed to pull out of the line, it could. The pod-like cars, which are just prototypes for now (GM says they could be on the market by 2030 at a cost of $10,000), look somewhat like large scuba-diver helmets, or smushed dust busters. They roll on two wheels, which are aligned like the front two wheels of a car, not like a bicycle. GM partnered with Segway, maker of those futuristic-looking transporters, to create technology that allows the car to balance. “It’s basically a dynamically balanced skateboard,” said Chris Borroni-Bird, GM’s direc-
tor of advanced technology vehicle concepts.
The EN-Vs are just as wide as they are tall, measuring 5 feet cubed. Two people fit inside comfortably, but there’s not much room for anything else. A bubble of glass sits close in front of the driver’s face. “You can probably pack 5 or 6 times as many of these EN-Vs in a parking lot as you could conventional cars,” Borroni-Bird said. Even though the cars can communicate with each other and drive themselves, drivers can take control if they choose. That’s important, Borroni-Bird said, both for safety reasons and so drivers can get some sense of enjoyment from the vehicle.
3-D isn’t going away – Disappointing sales of TVs have not deterred technology and media companies from pursuing 3-D products. We saw 3-D TVs, laptops, cameras, movies, games, portable devices and picture frames. Three-dimensional TVs were a huge theme at last year’s CES, too, although cost, shortage of 3-D content and those bulky special glasses made consumers wary. This year, we saw big steps in 3-D big-screen viewing without glasses, though little in the way of solidified products. But in case the home 3-D craze falls completely flat, television makers are betting another trend may help them sell new TV sets or accessories. We saw all kinds of “smart TV” systems that connect the big screen to the content of the Web. Following the blazing success of Apple’s iPad, practically every manufacturer with any kind of expertise in building screens, gadgets or software unveiled their own touchscreen tablets at CES. Mobile industry watchers expect Google to repeat its success with the Android operating system for smartphones in the tablet category as well. The company demoed Honeycomb, its new Android 3.0 operating system for tablets, at CES to good reviews. More than just fun and games at CES One prototype Honeycomb tablet, Motorola’s Xoom for Verizon Wireless, got perhaps the biggest buzz. LG Electronics offered the GSlate for T-Mobile, which also runs Honeycomb, but the company had nothing to show at CES besides a video. There were dozens of other tablets running older versions of Android or a tablet-optimized version of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system. Or, in Lenovo’s case, both.
One disappointing trend, from a tech reporter’s perspective, was the companies’ reluctance to let the public handle tablets in person. Many devices were waved about on stage or displayed behind glass but not made available for show attendees to play with. Celebs are great for hawking gadgets – What better way to promote an otherwise dull piece of equipment than with a familiar face? Rapper Ludacris was in town to promote his upcoming line of headphones. Fellow musician T-Pain was hawking a microphone. And 49ers football legend Jerry Rice was scheduled to attend CES – but bailed days before – to promote a video game where his character competes against dogs. (No, that’s not a joke.) Lady Gaga, the official creative director for Polaroid (also not a joke), arrived about 40 minutes fashionably late to her event at the camera company’s booth. The pop star demonstrated a portable photo printer she said she designed herself, which she carries in her purse, and a bulky pair of sunglasses with a camera built in. Gaga encouraged the audience to buy the sunglasses and bring them to her concerts. If Polaroid wanted to make a splash, it worked: Gaga’s appearance produced a massive crowd, swarms of paparazzi and countless headlines. Whether anyone will actually buy the sunglasses is another matter. Gimmicky things can get buzz-Acer’s Iconia, a laptop with two touch-screens instead of a keyboard, won a gadget competition despite not demonstrating a working version of the product onstage. The Iconia appears to face some
Here are three things you should never buy unless you’re rich enough to stop working: Timeshares It never makes sense to buy a timeshare, even if you vacation in the same place every year. Timeshare sellers will tell you that the rooms are bigger than those in a hotel, and come with more amenities. What they don’t tell you is that the glut of timeshares has made it easy to rent one at a fraction of the cost of buying one. You could rent a timeshare every year for the next decade and spend less than you would if you had you bought it. And you wouldn’t be stuck with maintenance fees.
Boats
The EN-V (Electric Networked Vehicle) by General Motors
Drivers use a joystick of sorts to steer and throttle the vehicle, which can spin in place and accelerates rather quickly. Still, Borroni-Bird says, there are a number of obstacles that need to be hurdled before something like the EN-V hits the market. The wireless signals that let the vehicles communicate are problematic because hackers, in theory, could access them and send
The Consumer Electronics Show, a showcase of cutting-edge gadgets, took over the Las Vegas Convention Center last week.
of challenges. It has the heft of a laptop without the convenience of being able to type on physical keys. Chinese computer maker Lenovo got some attention for its laptop hybrid with a removable touchscreen tablet – despite the fact that the company showed off basically the identical gadget at CES 2010. And several companies introduced home appliances – refrigerators, ovens and washing machines – with internet connections and touchscreens. Your oven, for example, can send you a text message when your roast is about done. Of course, declaring something a gimmick before it’s had ample time to be accepted or rejected by consumers is probably not fair. Who knows? Maybe people will really want to tweet from their fridge. Gadget ‘Transformers’ – Sometimes being a really good phone, laptop or Web-connected entertainment center isn’t enough. Take Motorola’s Atrix 4G , for example. It’s all three. The Android smartphone is superfast, with a dual-core processor inside. But like in the hit “Transformers” movie, the big reveal comes when this truck becomes Optimus Prime. The Atrix can dock to a laptop shell or monitor to become a sort of Android desktop computer, complete with Firefox for full Web browsing. Hook it up to a TV, and the videos and music stored on the device can be played on the big screen using a media-center system. Samsung’s Sliding PC 7 Series laptop starts out as a touch-screen Windows tablet. But users can pull out a hidden keyboard, similar to the ones on slider phones, which turns the tablet into a sort of netbook. (CNN)
3 Expensive Things You Shouldn’t Buy Many people’s financial troubles begin when they buy an expensive toy or a vacation home. The buyers assume they’ll save money because they’ll own the items instead of renting them. While that might be true short-term, it rarely works out that way in the long run.
The EN-V runs on battery power and plugs into a wall – giving it a max speed of about 30 miles per hour and a range of about 30 miles. That’s not far or fast, but it’s enough to make the EN-V useful for cutting down congestion in urban settings, particularly high-density cities in China and India, BorroniBird said. The car also aims to improve safety, since human drivers don’t have a sterling record on that front. An estimated 1.3 million people die in trafficrelated accidents each year, according to the World Health Organization.
The Things We Learned at CES After tapping dozens of greasy touchscreens, getting our ears pinched by 3-D glasses and braving crowds that would make a penguin claustrophobic, we members of the tech media said goodbye Sunday to the Consumer Electronics Show. While the planet’s biggest technology companies box up their prototypes and disassemble their grandiose booth displays, we’re reflecting on the past week and what it could mean for the year ahead. Here are the things we learned at CES:
Photo: www.gagagadget.com
cars off track; and because a lost wireless connection could cause the automated system to lose control of the car. “It’s one thing if a computer goes down, but it’s another thing if it happens here,” he said. But he sees a bright future for the concept. “For the last 100 years the car really hasn’t changed in a fundamental sense,” he said. Self-driving cars may buck that trend. (CNN)
There’s an old saying that the two happiest days for boat owners are when they buy the boat and when they get rid of it. Boats are a great way to throw money down the toilet because they cost so much to maintain. There are repairs, docking fees, gas and insurance. You could rent a much nicer boat on the days you want to spend at sea for much less than buying one.
Recreational vehicles Some people think vacationing in an RV will be cheaper than staying in a hotel room, but that’s only true if you’re retired and live in the RV. If you buy a modest vehicle for $50,000 and use it 30 nights a year for 10 years, you’ll have spent $167 a night. That can get you a nice room in most places in the U.S. That doesn’t include the costs to fuel, store and insure it. If you want to take a trip in a RV, rent one. You could also spend less by staying in a four-star hotel.