In a significant move, 20 automakers have agreed to make automatic emergency braking standard on their cars by September 1st, 2022. This was announced by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration and the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety today. The announcement mentions that these automakers represent “more than 99 percent” of the auto market in this country.
Automatic emergency braking systems have long been hailed as effective measures for preventing collisions. Cars are equipped with forward-looking sensors which detect the risk of crashing into the car in front and ping the car to automatically brake should the driver not take any action.
These systems were initially only available in expensive luxury vehicles like the Mercedes-Benz S-Class but have since trickled down the cars you and I can afford. This agreement will go a long way in ensuring that mass market cars feature this technology which can prove to be the difference between life and death in such unfortunate scenarios.
Keep in mind though that this is an agreement and not regulation so there’s nothing compelling car manufacturers from abiding by this agreement. The fact that major car manufacturers in the country have decided to sign their names to the document shows their willingness to work together to bring the benefit of this system to as many people as possible.
By the middle of 2010, it was clear that something was broken at Google.
Investors, analysts and members of the media who once touted the company’s fast growth started to wonder if Google was just a „one-trick pony“ that cleaned up Internet searches and made a nice advertising business out of it.
Inside Google, teams had begun moving forward with a wide range of groundbreaking and potentially lucrative projects to dominate the smartphone market, scan millions of print books, map every street in the world and even build cars that would drive themselves.
Google’s problem wasn’t a lack of ambition, but rather a fundamentally flawed decision-making process at the very top of the company that kept slowing things down, according those in the C-suite at the time.
For nearly a decade, Google’s two brilliant youthful founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin, made all major business decisions together with the seasoned executive they had selected as CEO, Eric Schmidt.
„They were so close at the beginning of the company and they made so many great decisions together. It was very powerful,“ Patrick Pichette, Google’s former chief financial officer, said in an interview this week with Mashable. „But as the company grew and grew in complexity and momentum, that became an issue.“
The vexing issue, and Google’s eventual fix for it, set in motion a more „mature“ management strategy that helped it move faster, eventually influenced its move to create a new holding company called Alphabet and arguably propelled it (however briefly) to overtake Apple this year as the most valuable business in the world.
Looking back, Google’s flaw was obvious, but serves as a case study for the need to consistently re-think the leadership structure of businesses as they grow and adjust their goals.
From that perch, Pichette watched as this triumvirate at Google unintentionally created a massive bottleneck simply because they believed all three men needed to be in the same place at the same time deciding on the same things.
On multiple occasions, Pichette says, product teams would wait eagerly for the executives to emerge with a decision after some „2.5 hour“ long debate — all three are prone to intellectual sparring — only to be crestfallen to learn that no decision had been made because Page or Brin or Schmidt happened to be somewhere else at the time, necessitating yet another debate.
„No decision was made without the three of them being in the room and all nodding,“ Pichette recalls. „I can tell you at some point this created such a slowdown in momentum.“
Without necessarily realizing it, those outside the executive suite caught occasional glimpses of this dysfunction and relentless debating.
During one joint public appearance in 2008 (starting at the 3:20 mark in the video above) for which the three men have flown in from three different parts of the world, they are asked a question about the impact of Microsoft potentially acquiring Yahoo.
Brin admits not having had time to catch up on the news. Schmidt takes the lead in offering a corporate response, then asks a quiet Page if he agrees. The latter says yes.
„Great,“ Schmidt jokes. „With us you never quite know.“
Fixing Google
After a „dozen“ or so frustrating decision-making roadblocks, Pichette says Google’s management team recognized „there’s something broken.“
The fix was announced several months later, at the very beginning of 2011.
Google shocked the technology world by revealing that Page would take over as Google’s CEO, bumping Schmidt to the sometimes ceremonial position of executive chairman. Brin would remain „cofounder.“
Their roles became more clearly defined as a result: Page would oversee key technology and business-related decisions. Brin would focus on „new products“ like Google Glass and the self-driving car.
Schmidt, in turn, would function as an advisor to both with more of a focus on „broader business relationships, government outreach and technology thought leadership.“
„As Google has grown, managing the business has become more complicated,“ Schmidt wrote in a blog post at the time, hinting at the troublesome management arrangement that had plagued Google. „So Larry, Sergey and I have been talking for a long time about how best to simplify our management structure and speed up decision making.“
Even now, the sense of relief from this arrangement is audible in Pichette’s voice.
„To hear Sergey say, ‚On this issue, it’s Larry’s call,‘ that was a transformative moment for the company,“ he says. „It gave us a ton of momentum.“
The beginning of the Alphabet
For Page, that significant leadership restructuring was only the beginning.
From the moment he took over as CEO again in 2011, Page was interested in finding a new business structure that would help Google be more ambitious — and bring its ambitious projects to market — while also freeing him up from humdrum day-to-day management responsibilities.
„He talked about a million things he wanted to do, but he spent 100% of his time managing and trying to get his executives to work together,“ one former Google executive told Mashable in an earlier interview.
The solution came in two parts.
First, Page groomed a quasi-successor, Sundar Pichai, to assume more operational roles inside Google, while simultaneously empowering executives of other key divisions, freeing him up to focus more on the big picture.
Then, last year, Page once again shocked the technology world by announcing plans to create a new holding company called Alphabet. Google would be just one of its many subsidiary companies, along with Nest, Google Ventures and others.
Page, Brin and Schmidt remained the top execs at Alphabet, but more executives would potentially earn CEO titles and the autonomy to make crucial decisions on their own — without always waiting for the triumvirate to come together and finish a long debate.
Google’s stock has soared in the five years since its big leadership change in 2011, at one point making it the most valuable business in the world.
Image: screengrab, mashable
„Alphabet is about businesses prospering through strong leaders and independence,“ Page wrote in his note announcing Alphabet. „In general, our model is to have a strong CEO who runs each business, with Sergey and me in service to them as needed.“
Pichette, who played a role in preparing for Alphabet before leaving, sees this decision as a continuation of the growing maturity on the leadership team that prompted the first big change back in 2011.
„You see that same maturity coming up with Alphabet,“ Pichette says. „Larry saw there is great management in place so he doesn’t need to run day-to-day Google.“
„They are amazingly good at adapting to where they are and thinking ahead,“ he continues. After all, the one thing that hasn’t changed: „These are three crazy ambitious people.“
Apple has built no cars. Google has designed and outsourced the production of a small fleet of self-driving pod mobiles.
The newest carmaker on the block, Tesla, managed to build just 50,000 cars in 2015.
Meanwhile, in the US alone, the traditional auto industry built and sold 17.5 million cars and trucks.
This glaring imbalance between current reality and a highly speculative vision of the future hasn’t stopped pundits and tech and auto observers from transforming Apple and Google into serious auto-industry challengers.
[G]oogle may choose to build its own engineering and design prototypes, then partner with a Chinese automaker or an Asian contractor such as Hon Hai Precision Industry’s Foxconn Technology Co that wants to enter the automotive field, several experts said.
Given Apple’s extensive iPhone and iPad manufacturing in China, it’s also been suggested that the Cupertino, California, colossus would skip out building a car in the US and would do it in the Middle Kingdom.
It’s an attractive idea, but it overlooks the vast gulf that exists between assembling smartphones and making cars. Tesla is among the most technologically advanced automakers around, and it still has to make its vehicles in a large factory with millions of dollars of giant robots and huge machines designed to bend metal. A large factory in Northern California.
The rest of the US auto industry builds the cars it sells in the US predominantly in the US. As such, the Detroit Big Three are major employers, as are the Japanese and German „transplants,“ as they’re know, which build cars and trucks in southern US states with nonunion workforces.
Some production has been moving to Mexico, but Mexico has been positioning itself as a NAFTA manufacturing partner to US companies for some time and has invested is developing an automotive supply chain.
China calls the shots
China is a different story. Ford, GM, Volkswagen, and others build cars there and sell them under familiar brands, but they can’t do this without entering into a joint venture with a Chinese partner. There’s an obvious compromise baked into this arrangement: Foreign automakers gain access to the enormous Chinese market, but they also end up sharing R&D.
Kin Cheung/APThey aren’t building cars.
It isn’t exactly a joining of equals, but Chinese automakers don’t see themselves as mere assembly lines for Western designs. They see themselves as developing a robust national manufacturing base. And while they’re building Buicks, they’re also building Chinese-brand cars and trucks.
With Apple and Google, the idea seems to be that these companies will try to transform consumer-goods manufacturers into automakers. There might be something to this in theory: Remake the automobile by designing and building it like a piece of internet-enabled consumer tech. But in practice, the car-building part of building an automobile, even an innovative self-driving one, tends to catch up to the visionaries, as Tesla has learned.
Profit margins under stress
Additionally, in Apple’s case it would be necessary to harvest a much wider profit margin than the auto industry typically throws off: 30% vs. 10% — or less, in bad times. And if you think Apple or Google has designs on selling all-electric driverless tech to willing Chinese customers, making China and not the US or Europe the main market, then you haven’t thought through either China’s congested big cities, a nightmare for driverless cars, or its still-developing roadway system, which is friendlier to trucks and SUVs.
So the game plan, as it’s being discussed outside Apple and Google, would be to build cars outside the US, using cheaper Asian labor, and then import them.
It sounds great because for Apple, in particular, that’s been a pathway to massive success.
But when it comes to the auto industry, it would be impossible. Not impossible to build some kind of more or less traditional car, but impossible to build the wildly disruptive car of the future.
This shadow hardware market was rarely discussed in public. Companies like Google saw their latest data center hardware as a competitive advantage best kept secret from rivals. But then Facebook tore off the veil. It open sourced its latest server and data center designs, freely sharing them with the world under the aegis of a new organization called the Open Compute Project. “It’s time to stop treating data center design like Fight Club and demystify the way these things are built,” said Heiliger, then the vice president of technical operations at Facebook.
Google was the first company to rethink data center design for the modern age.
With the Open Compute Project, Facebook aimed to create a whole community of companies that would freely share their data center designs, hoping to accelerate the evolution of Internet hardware and, thanks to the economies of scale, drive down the cost of this hardware. That, among other things, boosts the Facebook bottom line. It worked—in a very big way. Microsoft soon shared its designs too. Companies like HP and Quanta began selling this new breed of streamlined gear. And businesses as diverse as Rackspace and Goldman Sachs used this hardware to expand their own massive online operations. Even Apple—that bastion of secrecy—eventually joined the project.
Two big holdouts remained: Google and Amazon. But today, that number dropped to one. At the annual Open Compute Summit in San Jose, California, Google announced that it too has joined the project. And it’s already working with Facebook on a new piece of open source hardware.
The announcement reaffirms the power of Facebook’s big idea. Google was the first company to rethink data center design for the modern age. For years, its technology was well ahead of anyone else. And when Heiliger complained of that Fight Club mentality, Google was surely top of mind. But through the Open Compute Project, Facebook has pushed the rest of the industry forward. And market forces have pushed Google to share its secrets in new ways. “The community and Google have inched closer and closer together,” says Jason Taylor, Facebook’s vice president of infrastructure.
But Google’s move also points to other changes inside the big Internet players. That joint open source project from Google and Facebook relates to the rise of deep learning, an artificial intelligence technology that is rapidly reinventing so many parts of the modern world. Both companies see AI as a key part of their future, and both believe they’ll get there faster if they share and collaborate on some of the core technologies that drive these neural networks.
“I know that historically in the press, there has been a tendency to position it as Open Compute Project versus Google. But it has never been like that,” he says. “Over the past ten years, we have shared many, many things with the industry. This is the latest one.”
Indeed, Google revealed some of its server designs in 2009. And last year, it lifted the curtain on its seminal approach to computer networking hardware. But typically, Google reveals its designs only after it has moved on to something else. And it doesn’t open source its gear a la Facebook. But now Google and Facebook are actively working together on hardware they intend to open source, which highlights the ever evolving priorities of both companies.
More Power to You
Together, Google and Facebook are developing a new data center server rack—an enclosure for massive numbers of computer servers. This new rack can deliver about four times more electrical power to all those machines, jumping from 12 volts to 48. As Hölzle points out, as we pack more and more hardware into smaller and smaller spaces, data center racks require more and more power, and this need has only increased with the rise of graphics processing units, or GPUs, inside the data center—a rise occasioned by the increasing importance of deep neural networks.
Companies are seeing that the best path toward improving their AI includes openly sharing their tech.
GPUs were originally designed as a way of rendering images for games and other graphics-intensive applications. But as it turns out, they’re also well suited to running deep neural nets, the AI technology that now helps companies like Google identify images, recognize commands spoken into smartphones, target ads, generate search results, and so much more. “Power density is going up,” Hölzle says. “GPUs are something that accelerates this—or amplifies it.”
Today, at the Open Compute Summit, Facebook is also open sourcing the designs for the GPU-based system that drives its neural networks. Hölzle indicates that the new rack standard that Facebook and Google are working on could help drive this kind of system.
It’s not news that deep neural nets have become a crucial part of our largest Internet services. Like Google and Facebook, so many others are moving toward an infrastructure in which AI plays a central role. What’s interesting is that so many of these companies believe that the best path toward improving their AI includes openly sharing their tech with the larger world instead of keeping it secret. This past fall, Google also open sourced TensorFlow, the software engine that drives its neural networks.
No More Fight Club
Why, exactly, is Google doing all this? Part of it that the academics who drive AI research believe that such sharing can accelerate research—that true progress comes from widespread collaboration. That’s the main reason Google open sourced TensorFlow. But the company is also looking for some good will. The new server rack project is a good example.
Google already uses a similar rack inside its data centers. If Facebook and others adopt this as a standard, it can potentially drive down the cost of this hardware. Economies of scale and all that. “We all benefit from an ecosystem that agrees on at least a few things,” Hölzle says. But in the end, he plays down this effect. He indicates that the company is really just trying to help others out. And when it comes right down to it, that generates good will—a circle of mutual benefit.
In the past, Google was mostly a company that offered Internet services to consumers. But now it’s intent on transforming itself into a cloud computing company, inviting a world of businesses to build and run their software on its vast online infrastructure. That means Google is also interested showing the world what it has built inside its data centers—and currying favor among the larger tech community.
In short: the rise of AI and cloud computing have put an end to Fight Club. The first rule of data centers is now: let’s talk about our data centers. A lot.
This following Article is an „oldie“, but an Goodie:
Summary: Jakob Nielsen’s 10 general principles for interaction design. They are called „heuristics“ because they are broad rules of thumb and not specific usability guidelines.
Visibility of system status
The system should always keep users informed about what is going on, through appropriate feedback within reasonable time.
Match between system and the real world
The system should speak the users‘ language, with words, phrases and concepts familiar to the user, rather than system-oriented terms. Follow real-world conventions, making information appear in a natural and logical order.
User control and freedom
Users often choose system functions by mistake and will need a clearly marked „emergency exit“ to leave the unwanted state without having to go through an extended dialogue. Support undo and redo.
Consistency and standards
Users should not have to wonder whether different words, situations, or actions mean the same thing. Follow platform conventions.
Error prevention
Even better than good error messages is a careful design which prevents a problem from occurring in the first place. Either eliminate error-prone conditions or check for them and present users with a confirmation option before they commit to the action.
(Read full article on preventing user errors.)
Recognition rather than recall
Minimize the user’s memory load by making objects, actions, and options visible. The user should not have to remember information from one part of the dialogue to another. Instructions for use of the system should be visible or easily retrievable whenever appropriate.
(Read full article on recognition vs. recall in UX.)
Flexibility and efficiency of use
Accelerators — unseen by the novice user — may often speed up the interaction for the expert user such that the system can cater to both inexperienced and experienced users. Allow users to tailor frequent actions.
Aesthetic and minimalist design
Dialogues should not contain information which is irrelevant or rarely needed. Every extra unit of information in a dialogue competes with the relevant units of information and diminishes their relative visibility.
Help users recognize, diagnose, and recover from errors
Error messages should be expressed in plain language (no codes), precisely indicate the problem, and constructively suggest a solution.
Help and documentation
Even though it is better if the system can be used without documentation, it may be necessary to provide help and documentation. Any such information should be easy to search, focused on the user’s task, list concrete steps to be carried out, and not be too large.
I originally developed the heuristics for heuristic evaluation in collaboration with Rolf Molich in 1990 [Molich and Nielsen 1990; Nielsen and Molich 1990]. I since refined the heuristics based on a factor analysis of 249 usability problems [Nielsen 1994a] to derive a set of heuristics with maximum explanatory power, resulting in this revised set of heuristics [Nielsen 1994b].
See Also:
Bruce „Tog“ Tognazzini’s list of basic principles for interface design. The list is slightly too long for heuristic evaluation but serves as a useful checklist.
It takes more than martial-arts training and a cool cape to protect Gotham City. Over the years, Batman has relied on an evolving series of vehicles to help bring down his most infamous enemies.
The Batmobile has changed a lot since the 1941 original. It now has a more imposing, military-influenced design, as seen in „The Dark Knight“ trilogy and the upcoming „Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice.“
Read on to see how the Batmobile has kept pace with Bruce Wayne’s quest to keep Gotham safe:
The first car to be referred to as a „Batmobile“ appeared in Detective Comics No. 48 in 1941. It was far more subtle than any of its successors. The car, which appears to be inspired by the Cord Roadster, had a small gold bat on the hood.
DC Comics
The first drivable Batmobile came from Adam West’s 1966 live-action „Batman“ adaptation. Based on the Lincoln Futura, legendary designer George Barris dreamed up the car in 15 days.
Rather than the red and black of previous iterations, the Batmobile from the 1970s „Super Friends“ series was blue and black, with yellow details to highlight the more prominent bat insignia.
Frank Miller’s „The Dark Knight Returns“ (1986) is an important evolution. The Batmobile was overhauled to appear as a redesigned tank. Prioritizing weapons and defense was important to the much more stark version of Gotham in the comic series.
DC Comics
Tim Burton’s live-action adaptation of the Batmobile from 1989 is very cool. It’s sleek and imposing, and the jet-black exterior and polished finish really give off a sense of wealth, tying together Bruce Wayne and the Batman persona.
Warner Bros.
The 1992 debut of „Batman: The Animated Series“ began a new era. It featured the voice of Kevin Conroy as Batman and debuted the updated sleek Batmobile design seen in the later „Justice League“ spin-off.
Warner Bros/YouTube
The Batmobile in „Batman Forever“ (1995) is one of its flashiest appearances, with an almost rib-cage-like design. Its shape is also vaguely reminiscent of the 1989 version.
„Batman & Robin“ (1997) was panned by critics, but its Batmobile isn’t the worst ever. It has a similar shape to previous live-action Batmobiles, but is black instead of the eerie blue glow of the 1995 design.
The live-action „Dark Knight“ trilogy from director Christopher Nolan introduced the Tumbler, an all-terrain, military-inspired version of the Batmobile. It could also be seen as a realization of the Batmobile in Miller’s „The Dark Knight Returns.“
REUTERS/ Toby Melville
In a first for the popular „Arkham“ video-game series, players take control of the Batmobile in the quest against Scarecrow’s fear toxin. Heavily inspired by Nolan’s Batmobile, the game also featured un-lockable „skins,“ which changed the vehicle’s appearance to match other famous Batmobile iterations.
WB Games
Finally, the upcoming „Batman v Superman“ will usher in a new era for the Dark Knight. Ben Affleck will take on the role, and we’ve already gotten a close look at the new Batmobile, which weighs over 7,000 pounds and, in the film, can drive up to 205 mph.
SAN FRANCISCO/DETROIT—Google’s self-driving car team is expanding and hiring more people with automotive industry expertise, underscoring the company’s determination to move the division past the experimental stage.
The operation now employs at least 170 workers, according to a Reuters review of their profiles on LinkedIn, the business-oriented social network. Many are software and systems engineers, and some come from other departments at Google.
More than 40 of the employees listed on LinkedIn have previous automotive industry experience, with skills ranging from exterior design to manufacturing.
They hail from a wide range of companies, including Tesla Motors Inc, Ford Motor Co. and General Motors Co.
For a look at the composition of Google’s self-driving car team, Google has not disclosed details about the size or composition of its self-driving car team, and Johnny Luu, spokesman for Google’s car team, declined to comment.
The team could have additional members who do not publish profiles on LinkedIn.
Google has said previously that it intends to ready the technology for a marketable self-driving car by 2020, but it may never manufacture vehicles itself.
The tech giant is more likely to contract out manufacturing — much like Apple does with iPhone — or to license technology to existing car manufacturers, automotive industry experts said.
Licensing would follow the model Google has used with its Android operating system for mobile devices.
In the past four weeks, Google has advertised nearly 40 new positions on the team, and many are related to manufacturing.
The team currently has six people with such experience, including purchasing, supplier development and supply chain management.
Hires with manufacturing skills could help Google find and coordinate with a partner to build a vehicle, said Paul Mascarenas, a former Ford executive who is president of FISITA, the International Federation of Engineering Societies.
Google is also engaged in discussions with federal and state regulators about how to revise motor vehicle safety standards to accommodate autonomous cars.
The competition for technical talent is intensifying as tech and automotive companies race to build driverless vehicles.
Beyond Google, the players include Tesla, established car makers such as Daimler AG and GM and, and technology companies such as Apple Inc and Uber Technologies Inc.
Google’s team is being assembled by John Krafcik, an industry veteran who previously headed Hyundai Motor Co’s U.S. operations and is an expert in product development and manufacturing. Krafcik joined Google in September 2015.
Another senior executive with previous automotive experience, Paul Luskin, was hired last month as operations manager, according to his Linkedin profile.
An engineer with stints at Jaguar Cars, Ford and Japanese supplier Denso Corp, Luskin most recently was president of Ricardo Defense Systems, a unit of Britain’s Ricardo PLC, according to the Linkedin profile.
Google hired industry veteran Andy Warburton in July to head the vehicle engineering team, according to his Linkedin profile.
Warburton spent two years as a senior engineering manager at Tesla and 16 years as an engineering manager at Jaguar.
A third auto veteran, Sameer Kshisagar, joined Google in November as head of global supply management on the self-driving car team. Kshisagar is a manufacturing expert who previously worked for GM, according to his Linkedin profile.
Luskin, Warburton and Kshisagar did not respond to requests for comment.
Google’s self-driving car group also has tapped people with experience beyond the auto industry, including aerospace (Boeing, SpaceX, Jet Propulsion Lab) and electronics (Intel, Samsung, Motorola), according to LinkedIn profiles.
Krafcik and Chris Urmson, director of the car team, have said they want to forge partnerships with established automakers and others to build vehicles. Krafcik made a public pitch for alliances at an auto industry conference in Detroit in January.
However, Google may have to look farther than the auto industry to find a manufacturing partner, said Raj Rajkumar, a Carnegie-Mellon University professor who advises companies on self-driving car development.
The tug-of-war over who controls — and profits from — the stream of user data in self-driving cars is „an inherent and fundamental conflict“ between Google and traditional automakers, Rajkumar said.
Instead, Google may choose to build its own engineering and design prototypes, then partner with a Chinese automaker or an Asian contractor such as Hon Hai Precision Industry’s Foxconn Technology Co that wants to enter the automotive field, several experts said.
Michael Tracy, a Michigan-based auto manufacturing consultant, said Google sees the potential of several different revenue streams from its self-driving technology, including licensing its mapping database and vehicle control software, as well as an integrated package of software, sensors and actuators that would form the backbone of a self-driving vehicle.
The least likely prospect is that Google will manufacture its own vehicles, Tracy said, due to the massive expenditures required and the stiff competition from established automakers.
The Goodyear Eagle-360 is Goodyears vision for a tire for the long-term future that looks radically different from tires today…it’s a sphere! The unique shape means better manoeuvrability, safety and connectivity for autonomous vehicles.
You might think the super-wealthy have it pretty easy, what with their private islands, private jets and the ability to buy just about anything. But there’s been one thing they’ve not been able to buy in a while: an all-new Bugatti.
In fact, it’s been more than 11 years since the Veyron first went on sale. Can you imagine driving the same Bugatti for a decade? I can’t even.
Thankfully, that more than decade-long nightmare is over; there’s finally an all-new one. It’s called the Chiron. Along with the illustrious French moniker (yes, Bugatti is French), it boasts a 1,500-horsepower 16-cylinder engine, room for two very lucky passengers and a base price of just more than $2.6 million.
W16
Let’s not mince words here. Granted, simply based upon its price tag, the new Bugatti Chiron will be the chariot of global glitterati. Though, it’s more than a coupe from an elite brand. It hits the roads as the most powerful and fastest production car ever.
That impressive title is thanks to the 8.0-liter W16-cylinder engine mounted in the mid-rear of the car. If you’re not familiar with a W16, that’s OK. Only Bugatti uses such an engine. Imagine two V8s intertwined into one shape. That’s a W16. Imagine two V8s intertwined into one shape. That’s a W16.
Along with two-stage turbocharging (a new Bugatti development), the Chiron’s W16 produces 1,500 horsepower and 1,180 pound-feet of torque. That, along with a very stout all-wheel drive system, allows it to go 0 to 62 mph in 2.5 seconds, and on to a limited top speed (it could do more) of 261 mph (although the speedo goes up to 310 mph). To put that into perspective, a 747 lifts off the ground at 180 mph.
Understandably, to be able to safely keep the car on the road, and, you know, bring it to a stop once in a while, Bugatti engineers had to go to great technical lengths. That meant they had to develop both a chassis and a braking system as stout as the most advanced and technically complex race cars in the world. Moreover, the tires were tested to aerospace tolerances, which makes sense, given the speeds this thing can hit.
Understandably, a huge, fuel-thirsty engine like that produces a lot of tailpipe pollutants at full throttle. Accordingly, the catalytic converters (the devices that clean the exhaust gases as they pass through it) in the titanium exhaust system are six times larger than catalytic converters fitted to a mid-size sedan.
According to Bugatti, if you dissected the Chiron’s catalytic converters, you’d find surfaces — when the many layers are spread out flat — larger than the area of 30 soccer fields. And that’s just in one single car.
Electromagnetic
Of course, in creating the Chiron, Bugatti couldn’t spend all its technical energy on performance. After all, the car needs to be as opulent as it is fast.
Accordingly, Bugatti engineers created a new instrument cluster with three TFT digital screens as well as an analog speedometer. Cleverly, the faster you drive the Chiron, the more the information displayed falls away. The dedicated infotainment screen fades, as the miles per hour climb in order to limit driver distraction.
Between the driver and the passenger is the signature illuminated C-bar, which is the longest light conductor in the automotive industry. What’s more, its surrounding bezel is machined from a single piece of aluminum. Certainly, this isn’t especially techie, but it is stunning.
Effectively, the Chiron can withstand electromagnetic interference and disruption as well as a military vehicle. This means that the passengers as well as their electronics are about as safe as you can get from electronically harmful electromagnetic waves.
The Chiron effect
Of all the astounding things we’ve just discussed about the Chiron, they’re just the tip of the iceberg.
For example, the front 3D Bugatti logo is covered in gemstone. The cabin sound system was created specifically for the Chiron by the elite German audio system company “accuton” (no, I’ve not heard of it either). And the exterior has been fashioned entirely from carbon fiber.
Perhaps the most astounding thing of all, though, is the fact that — despite the years of development and painstaking attention to detail that went into its creation — Bugatti only plans to ever build 500 Chirons.
Since Bugatti is owned by the Volkswagen Group, I’d like to tell you that some of the tech and features of the Chiron will trickle down into a VW or Audi you can buy in a few years. Truthfully, if it does, it won’t be the stuff you want, like 1,500 horsepower or a gemstone-covered front grille emblem.
Instead, your future car will likely be blessed with lessons learned from Bugatti’s painstaking attention to quality, reliability and precision. That’s because, in order to build a car that can be both the world’s fastest and finest vehicle, it has to be quadruply over-engineered.
That said, I encourage you to still admire the Chiron from afar. Or, better yet, see the latest Bugatti as an aspirational vehicle. Either way, the Bugatti Chiron is going to make the lives of the super-rich very lovely indeed and your future car that much finer.
The long-awaited, oft-delayed electric car revolution is now scheduled for 2022.
That’s according to a report from research firm Bloomberg New Energy Finance, which posits that in just six years, the biggest obstacle to the sale of EVs—they cost too much—will be obliterated and cars that run on electricity will cost less than those that run on dead dinosaurs.
“By 2022,” the report says, “the unsubsidized total cost of ownership of BEVs [battery electric vehicles] will fall below that of an internal combustion engine vehicle.” From there, the report projects a steadily increasing rate of adoption, reaching global sales of 41 million—25 percent of total market share—by 2040.
That’s a remarkable prediction given that today, EVs make up less than 1 percent of new car sales in the US. Government subsidies and mandates are largely responsible for what consumer interest and R&D investment we’ve seen so far. For the technology to go mainstream in the way Bloomberg predicts, the industry must address the biggest impediment to adoption: EVs simply cost too much. It’s a BFD that General Motors managed to develop a car, the Chevy Bolt, that will go 200 miles on a charge and cost $30,000. That’s just below the average price of a new car in the US, meaning there’s a lot of room for improvement.
Change is coming, according to the Bloomberg report. “We project that the cost of manufacturing electric vehicles will fall dramatically, and faster than most people realize,” says Salim Morsy, the author of the study.
The key to that trend, Morsy argues, is the battery pack that powers the car. The pack can account for about a third of the cost of the entire vehicle. Between 2010 and 2015, the average cost per kilowatt hour (kWh) dropped from $1,000 to $350—a 65 percent plunge. (Today’s EVs have packs ranging from 30 kWh in the new Nissan Leaf to 90 kWh in the Tesla Model X.)
Even if EVs match gas-powered cars in total cost of ownership, it might not be enough for a revolution.
Continuing that trend doesn’t rely on any big breakthroughs in battery tech. Instead, it’s based on moderate improvements in production processes and battery chemistry, economies of scale as manufacturing expands, and “aggressive pricing” by producers eager to sign contracts with major automakers. “We believe that between now and 2020, cost will continue to drop significantly,” Morsy says.
The rate of change will slow, sure, but prices could reach $200/kWh by 2022, and $120/kWh by 2030. Meanwhile, GM says it’s already paying just $145/kWh for the batteries powering the Bolt. Bloomberg can’t verify that figure, but the imminent arrival of cars like the Bolt and similarly affordable Tesla Model 3, Morsy says, is “a material testament to the fact that we’re rapidly approaching cost parity.” The fact that the auto industry is slowly moving toward a world in which people don’t own cars could limit total vehicle sales, Morsy believes, but shouldn’t impact the growing ratio of electric cars in the market.
A Few Words of Caution
There are some caveats here. First, longterm EV adoption projections rely on the reasonable assumption that by 2030, customers will have access to a well-developed and widespread charging infrastructure beyond the one they’ll use most often—the plug in the garage.
Second, Bloomberg’s study relies on the idea that government subsidies that are keeping the EV market alive and pushing automakers to invest in the technology, aren’t about to disappear. In the US, that’s a $7,500 federal tax credit for buying an EV, tax breaks on home chargers, and various state incentives, including access to carpool lanes on congested highways. European countries offer a mix of tax breaks and “bonus payments,” and China uses mandates to encourage the sale of electrics. The American support of electrics may soon come under attack, considering reports that the Koch brothers are planning a major lobbying effort to kill those subsidies in the US.
If charging infrastructure is not better developed, that could limit the 2022 knee in the curve. Tony Posawatz
And third, the total cost of ownership comparison is based on the expectation that oil prices will sit between $50 and $70 per barrel, meaning today’s crazy low prices—about $32 a barrel—have to head north again. Of course, it’s inevitable that they will.
The biggest reason for concern, though, is that even if EVs match gas-powered cars in total cost of ownership, it might not be enough for a revolution. “Way too much is put on that,” says EV advocate Chelsea Sexton. The 2022 date sounds about right, she says, but if consumers are going to switch to EVs, popular thinking needs to change, because car buying isn’t a rational process. If it were, she says, “we’d all be driving white Honda Civics.”
To make that happen, dealers will have to actually work to sell electric cars, despite the lower cost of maintenance that takes away potential revenue. Automakers must market their electric offerings as vigorously as their gasoline-drinking vehicles. And they have to build enough of the things to meet the demand they could generate.
Tony Posawatz, the engineer who led the development of the Chevrolet Volt, briefly led Fisker Automotive, and is now an industry consultant, says there’s nothing too surprising in the report. The 2022 timeframe is “certainly within the realm of possibility,” he says, as long as charging infrastructure continues to roll out. “If that is not better developed, that could limit the 2022 knee in the curve.”
So why doesn’t the report call for a faster advance of electric cars, once they cost the same as the gas guzzlers we’ve been stuck with for a century? Because big infrastructural changes move slowly. Posawatz points out it took 50 years for half of American households to hook up to the electricity grid. Good things are happening with EVs, he says, but “it’s a long haul.”
TheIdea – The Innovation Agency 