Personal transportation is on the cusp of its greatest transformation since the advent of the internal combustion engine.
With the rise of self-driving vehicles, ride-sharing, traffic congestion and environmental regulation, we may not even own cars in the future, much less drive them.
A glimpse of the coming revolution can be seen in the models debuted at the Los Angeles Auto Show.
A large truck speeding in the opposite direction suddenly veers into your lane. What do you do?
Jerk the wheel left and smash into a bicyclist? Swerve right toward a family on foot? Slam the brakes and brace for head-on impact?
Drivers make split-second decisions based on instinct and a limited view of the dangers around them.
The cars of the future -- those that can drive themselves thanks to an array of sensors and computing power -- will have near-perfect perception and react based on preprogrammed logic.
During a White House event U.S. Department of Energy Secretary Ernest Moniz, Counselor to the President John Podesta, PG&E Corporation Chairman and CEO Tony Earley, and Edison Electric Institute (EEI) President Tom Kuhn announced two electric power industry initiatives to further commercialize electric transportation technologies.
As part of an industry commitment to electric vehicles and clean energy, more than 70 investor-owned electric utilities will increase investment by an estimated $50 million per year, or $250 million over 5 years, to add more electric vehicles to their fleets starting in 2015.
A group of four minivans recently tested by the Institute for protection in small overlap front crashes shows some of the worst possible outcomes for this type of crash, with only one vehicle performing acceptably.
The Nissan Quest, the Chrysler Town & Country and its twin, the Dodge Grand Caravan, all earn poor ratings. The exception to the disappointing pattern is the 2015 Toyota Sienna, which earns an acceptable rating. It joins the Honda Odyssey, which last year earned a good rating in the small overlap crash test, in the ranks of TOP SAFETY PICK+ award winners.
READ MORE about the safety results.
A decade ago, President George W. Bush espoused the environmental promise of cars running on hydrogen, the universe’s most abundant element. “The first car driven by a child born today,” he said in his 2003 State of the Union speech, “could be powered by hydrogen, and pollution-free.”
Steven Chu, the Nobel Prize-winning physicist who was President Obama’s first Secretary of Energy did not feel that the economy would convert to hydrogen-car over the next 10 or 15, 20 years. The administration slashed funding for hydrogen fuel cell research.
Attention shifted to battery electric vehicles, particularly those made by the headline-grabbing Tesla Motors.