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Dear Motor Medics,
I have been watching as cars and the car market is changing. With the move towards cars without internal combustion engines and cars that drive themselves I find myself a bit overwhelmed and wondering where this will all go. I live in town now and have a 10 mile commute each way and am thinking about an electric car. If I get one it will be my only vehicle and wonder what I will do about power if I want to travel across the state or country for that matter. Thank you, Tim, in Onida South Dakota
Dear Tim,
As the number of electric cars on the road grow so will the number of places to recharge them just as when the first gasoline vehicles appeared on the scene. In 1905 there wasn’t a gas station on every corner, but it didn’t take long for them to appear to meet demand. Supply will always meet demand so eventually you will be able to recharge a car at almost any exit but for now you will need to plan trips accordingly so you can make sure that you have a place to recharge. When shopping for that vehicle make sure you choose one with enough battery life for the driving you think you will be doing as well. Electric cars can vary in range from a couple hundred miles on a charge to more than double that range but the longer the range the more it will cost.
Dear Motor Medics,
Autonomous cars are talked about everywhere and being an old school guy I’m nervous about them. I don’t know if I will ever get in a car and ride along as the car itself does all the driving. How can one of these cars be safe? What kind of things are used to navigate the car and what decides how it will react in dangerous situations?
Thank you, Sam in Dallas Texas
Dear Sam,
Welcome to the future! When we first saw a driverless car, we were amazed and afraid. The thought of how they were controlled was on our minds. As technology has grown so have the safety features of how they operate. The cars use things like GPS, radar, Inferred and other heat sensing technology as well as perimeter sensing devices to name a few of the many things that keep the car on a straight path. the computers in the cars can also talk to some of the other cars that are connected as well. Some of the technology is very impressive and the cars can in some cases even see better than a driver can in certain situations. A computer always monitors everything everywhere where we can only see one direction. In theory the driverless car should be safer than one that has a human driver alone but… We wonder what will happen when the car must decide what to hit in an eminent crash situation.
Take care, the Motor Medics