The coming car revolutions
Atty. Jerome G. Neri
The Scrutineer
I’VE been a car lover all my life that I remember as far back as the 70s. During that time, cars were very basic such that airconditioning did not even come as standard, it was an option. Transmissions were manual and no power steering, power windows and power locks.
During the 80s, airconditioning became standard. But during this time the radio that came with the car was only an AM radio, no cassette tape player or FM radio. Standard cars still had steel rims with hubcaps, while only the deluxe models had alloy wheels. The cars were very basic. Aftermarket accessories were a thriving business then as a lot of car buyers had to accessorize their cars. Install a stereo system, alloy wheels, electric windows, car alarms, etc.
Come the 90s, everything became standard equipment. Cars had proper stereos, electric windows, power steering, etc. By the turn of the millennium, the demise of manual transmission cars were taking place that today it is more difficult to buy a manual car compared to an automatic. Cars today have on board computers, reverse cameras and even self parallel parking on some models.
The many years that I’ve been having a love affair with the car, what I have seen has been an evolution. Up to today it is still the same basic car, four wheels driven by an internal combustion engine that runs on fossil fuel. In the very foreseeable future I see a revolution coming, a revolution that could make car lovers like me fall out of love for cars.
The two major revolutions that I see coming in the foreseeable future will be the demise of the internal combustion engine, in lieu thereof are the electric motor and the autonomous car.
Just recently, a complete outsider in the automobile industry, Tesla Motors has come out with their latest car called the Model S. It is all-electric, is more affordable than its predecessors and has an autopilot feature.
The car is all-wheel drive with two electric motors, one for the front and one for the rear. The front motor has 259 horsepower and the rear motor has 503 horsepower. That’s almost 800 horsepower in total! It has an autopilot feature that allows the Model S to steer within a lane, change lanes with the simple tap of a turn signal, and manage speed by using active, traffic-aware cruise control. Digital control of motors, brakes, and steering helps avoid collisions from the front and sides, and prevents the car from wandering off the road. Autopilot also enables your car to scan for a parking space and parallel park on command. And the new Summon feature lets you “call” your car from your phone so it can come greet you at the front door in the morning. This is already a step closer to being completely autonomous.
We know that Google is working on a completely autonomous system for cars. Some car companies such as Rolls Royce and Volvo are also said to have been developing a system.
My reservations with these radical changes that are forthcoming are that while electric motors can easily produce a lot of horsepower, it’s range is very limited when a lot of horsepower is used. It also takes a long time to recharge, making fun limited. For a person who loves to drive, the autonomous feature would be too invasive to the pleasure of driving.
Even some of today’s modern cars that are already equipped with electric power steering, the driver can barely feel the road. The connection between the driver and the road has disappeared. It is this connection that enables a driver to drive on the limit and have some fun. No matter what, once a car will have an autonomous feature, there will be some motor between the steering wheel and the tires, thereby interrupting the driver’s connectivity with the road. Cars will be safer, more efficient but less fun.
