‘New Technology’ Archive

No, that’s not a picture from a 2012 remake of “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang.”

It’s US company Terrafugia’s Transition Roadable Aircraft, a prototype flying car which has just completed its first flight, bringing its makers closer to their goal of selling it commercially within the next year.

The world’s first street-legal airplane has two seats, four wheels, a propeller, wings that fold up so it can be driven like a car, and a range of 425 nautical miles in the air. Last month, it flew at 1,400 feet for eight minutes. Terrafugia says it is compact enough to be driven on regular streets, and then, at an airstrip, it can unfold its wings and take off.

Around 100 people have already put down a US$10,000 (€7,497) deposit to get a Transition when they go on sale, and those numbers will likely rise after the Terrafugia company introduces the Transition to the public later this week at the New York Auto Show. It is expected to cost $279,000 (€209,171).

The flying car has always had a special place in the American imagination. Inventors have been trying to make them since the 1930s, according to Robert Mann, an airline industry analyst. He thinks Terrafugia has come closer than anyone to making the flying car a reality.

The government has already granted the company’s request to use special tyres and glass that are lighter than normal automotive ones, to make it easier for the vehicle to fly.

The government has also temporarily exempted the Transition from the requirement to equip vehicles with electronic stability control, which would add weight.

It is currently going through a battery of automotive crash tests to make sure it meets federal safety standards.

The Transition can reach around 70 mph on the road and 115 mph in the air, a company spokesman said.

Terrafugia has been working on flying cars since 2006, and has already pushed back the launch once. Last summer the company said it would have to delay expected 2011 deliveries due to design challenges and problems with parts suppliers.

With the appearance in New York, the company hopes to attract the eye of customers as well as investors.

Source: Motornet.ie, April 2012

The developer of a smartphone app that helps UK company car and van drivers record critical information at the scene of the accident says it will revolutionise the market. Typically, fleets have employed a ‘bump card’ and a disposable camera to document details when they are involved in a collision. However, with companies being targeted by so-called ‘crash for cash’ fraudsters and suffering from spiralling insurance costs, it is hoped smartphone technology could offer them much-needed protection by offering indisputable information.

“In th UK, compensation culture has been characterised by insurance companies selling on personal injury claims to lawyers and consumers being encouraged to claim for non-existent injuries. As a result, insurance premiums are increasing exponentially,” said Roland Maguire, director of iAccident. “The Government’s proposed ban on referral fees for personal injury claims only addresses part of the overall problem.”

The iAccident app, which has been developed by mobile marketing specialist 2ergo for iPhone and Android, is free for consumers to download and has been built to be as user-friendly as possible. But as well as being launched under the brand iAccident, the app is also available on a white label basis to allow industry providers to distribute it to customers under their own brand. As a white label product, the set-up fee to the provider is £10,000, plus a download fee per handset dependent on the number of drivers. It incorporates GPS functionality so that accident data is recorded accurately and all images are time and geo-location stamped.

Encrypted reports are submitted directly to the iAccident database. It’s compatible with systems used by all insurance companies and drivers simply submit their reports online from their smartphone. They can have the report forwarded to their own insurer, fleet manager or have iAccident deal with it on their behalf through its UK-based, 24-hour call centre.

“We think this could completely revolutionise accident management,” said Maguire. “It enables you to capture key information and I believe within three to four years the majority of accidents will be reported this way.”

09/02/2012 Fleet news

The Irish Times, 12/10/11

You probably think that in the future your car will be able to stop you from having a crash. That when some high-tech network of computers and sensors buried under the bonnet detects you’ve run out of talent, skill or luck, the car will take over, apply the brakes, tweak the steering and prevent the worst from happening. You’d be wrong. This isn’t some sci-fi notion written into a footnote by Isaac Asimov in some book about robots: this is happening now – and it’s not even that expensive.

The EU will next year introduce legislation to make Electronic Stability Programme (ESP, also known as Vehicle Stability Control) standard on all new models. ESP already takes control of our cars in dangerous conditions, steering and controlling the vehicle by applying the brakes sequentially, and often doing so without the driver noticing. It has been combined with systems that nudge the steering to return you to safety if you lose concentration and begin drifting across the road (available on the Volkswagen Passat, among others). It can even be used with a system that can apply the brakes if it detects a pedestrian stepping off the kerb in front of you (a Volvo creation).

So what’s next?

There are very real plans afoot to create cars that simply will not crash. Volvo is at the forefront of this technology and recently made a startling claim that within a decade no one who drives a Volvo should be hurt in an accident. “Our aim is to build cars that do not crash,” says Jan Ivarsson, the company’s head of safety strategy. “By 2020 no one should be killed or even moderately injured in a Volvo.” Even though Volvo qualifies this by saying it cannot foresee every eventuality and not safety system is entirely perfect, it’s still an astonishing claim.

To put it in perspective, Volvo sells 400,000 cars a year and plans to double that to 800,000 in the next few years. That’s 800,000 people buying a new car in which they will be incredibly unlucky to be even mildly hurt. Considering the World Health Organisation calculates 1.2 million people worldwide are killed in car crashes every year, that is a remarkable thought.

The next big step in car safety, according to Bosch, the German electronics giant that first developed ESP in the late 1990s, is to make the ESP system the central controller for all of the car’s dynamic systems: steering, brakes, suspension, airbags etc. Then, as with modern fly-by-wire aircraft, no command issued by the driver will be transmitted to the car unless the ESP system clears it. It sounds excessive, Orwellian even, but it will happen so fast and so seamlessly that the driver’s control will almost never be affected, unless the worst happens, when the metaphorical electronic parachute will be deployed.

Subsequent to that, the next big advance will be getting cars to talk to one another. As high-end electronic systems proliferate, the logical step is to have cars broadcast information to one another across a simple lo-fi radio link. If you’ve had a skid on oil or ice, for instance, your car can warn others coming behind to alert the driver and pre-load the ESP system to compensate. Such a system could even be used to ease traffic jams.

After that it’s a matter of letting the cars do the driving, and once again, Volvo is leading this next stage. The Swedish company is one of the main partners on the EU’s Sartre project to establish road-train technology for long journeys. Along with, say, five others headed in the same direction, your car could be electronically linked to a lead vehicle, which would take care of all the steering, braking and controls for you. You could literally, and safely, be able to sit back and read a book on long motorway journeys. Sounds far-fetched? Prototypes are already up and running.

So is control going to be removed entirely from drivers? No, at least not yet.

Legally, under the Vienna Convention, a driver is always responsible for their vehicle, whatever the electronics do, so all such systems can be overridden. Consider aircraft technology: an Airbus could take off, fly and land almost without any human intervention, yet airlines still pay hefty salaries to the person sitting in the cockpit. Ford, in the US, for example, is launching Driving Skills For Life, a programme that will imbue teenage drivers with better habits and stronger skill sets.

For all our mechanical marvels, a better, safer driver will always have less need for them.