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Electric cars?

Would you buy an electric car?

  • Already own one

    Votes: 10 5.1%

  • Yes - would definitely buy

    Votes: 43 21.9%

  • Yes - preferred over petrol car if price/power/convenience similar

    Votes: 78 39.8%

  • Maybe - preference for neither, only concerned with costs etc

    Votes: 37 18.9%

  • No - prefer petrol car even if electric car has same price, power and convenience

    Votes: 24 12.2%

  • No - would never buy one

    Votes: 14 7.1%
  • Total voters
    196
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Smurf1976 said:
There's a lot of examples where an automatic technology exists but consumers prefer to not use it or at least to not use it under some circumstances. Lots of things like that - there's still plenty of people using manual toothbrushes, washing dishes by hand and hanging washing out to dry for example.
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The problem as I see it is that drivers don't know how the computers are programmed and what it's priorities are in emergencies.

eg is it set up to protect the safety of the occupants of the vehicle as a priority or human life in general ?

So will it run the vehicle into a tree to avoid hitting pedestrians, killing those in the car to save other lives ?

Those are moral judgements that usually the driver has under their control, not so under autonomous driving.
 
With the current crisis and aud value, tesla will. soon be very expensive here.the Bentley of the eco warrior
 
qldfrog said:
But they follow a very careful insulation policy with no human interaction allowed
So no algo looking at pedestrian, etc...not comparable to releasing AV in the street..which is being done but much more difficult
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Yeah, Thats what surf was talking about, I was just saying that sort of thing is already here.

I hospital I visited in Sydney also had meal trolleys being pushed around by robots, even talking the lifts themselves.
 
SirRumpole said:
The problem as I see it is that drivers don't know how the computers are programmed and what it's priorities are in emergencies.

eg is it set up to protect the safety of the occupants of the vehicle as a priority or human life in general ?

So will it run the vehicle into a tree to avoid hitting pedestrians, killing those in the car to save other lives ?

Those are moral judgements that usually the driver has under their control, not so under autonomous driving.
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I have always found this a very interesting question, but just that. It has little or should have little value when talking about the introduction of autonomous vehicles to the roads.

The number of crashes where such a moral judgement is required would be tiny, and in the rare moments they are required, I dont think many human drivers are capable of making any moral judgements, they are mostly panicking and freaking out.

Interesting question, but what actually matters is if the total numbers of vehicle related injuries and deaths can be reduced
 
fiftyeight said:
Interesting question, but what actually matters is if the total numbers of vehicle related injuries and deaths can be reduced
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Probably too many factors involved to accurately measure how many accidents have been avoided due to autopilots as these are never reported.

The road toll has been steadily reducing over the years due to better roads mainly, but sure I'd rather trust a properly designed autopilot than a drunk driver.

An autopilot didn't help the 737-MAX though.
 
SirRumpole said:
Probably too many factors involved to accurately measure how many accidents have been avoided due to autopilots as these are never reported.

The road toll has been steadily reducing over the years due to better roads mainly, but sure I'd rather trust a properly designed autopilot than a drunk driver.

An autopilot didn't help the 737-MAX though.
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Going on how my car responds with adaptive cruise control, I would say the biggest problem will be cars stopping, you could end up with a traffic jam at an intersection with no car being able to go anywhere.:roflmao:
 
I was listening to an interesting podcast the other day with an expert in sleep. (The Drive - Matthew Walker #47, #48, #49)

Matthew made the interesting observation; at least with a drunk driver they react, albeit delayed. A micro sleeping driver doesn't react. With a sleeping driver its a 1 tonne missile with no one at the wheel. I know myself there have been times on long drives when I have zoned out. And I'm sure I'm not the only one. Autopilot on these long drives will be a godsend.

1Eyed
 
SirRumpole said:
Probably too many factors involved to accurately measure how many accidents have been avoided due to autopilots as these are never reported.

The road toll has been steadily reducing over the years due to better roads mainly, but sure I'd rather trust a properly designed autopilot than a drunk driver.

An autopilot didn't help the 737-MAX though.
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That is why you take a very very large sample size???

Autonomous vehicles by their nature will be the most scrutinised drivers on the road. It will be trivial to compare the safety of auto vs human.

I am not saying autonomous is there now, but humans have not set the bar very high.

As you said I'd trust an appropriately regulated autonomous over a drunk driver any day.... and a tired driver, and a distracted driver, and an old driver, and a young driver, and a driver suffering a heart attack.......

The 737-MAX is a great example, no-one is claims autopilot stops all crashes, but it MASSIVELY reduces the total number. There has been no call for a reduction in the use of auto-pilot, simply to fix where it went wrong. This is
 
sptrawler said:
Interesting article that is probably accurate, there is very little underlying demand for electric vehicles, they will have to make them cheaper or the Government will have to subsidies them.

https://www.dailytelegraph.com.au/m...s/news-story/75b2d1d1fe33a8361fd6e86c81a5710a
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Myself & my brother(older) are both nearing(still a couple of years away) from needing a new car.
I'll go for a hybrid or full battery if the tech is substantially better in a couple of years, my brother talks about wanting to buy a Ford Ranger/Dodge Ram even though he's only ever driven sedans in his life... o_O

I think there's probably a lot of folk in our situation. Keep the current run around going as long as possible while it's still relatively cheap. I paid $1k for a service & new tyres last year, only need a service this year. I own the car outright so other than fuel & insurance I don't really want to buy another car just to save $20 a tank on fuel a week. If your car was built in the last decade it's probably still going to do the job in 5 years with good maintenance.

I see lots & lots of young people driving around in brand new shiny utes, can't be cheap to run or buy, $50-$60k+ by the time you add on all the extras necessary for a city lad that never goes near a dirt road :roflmao:
 
CBerg said:
Myself & my brother(older) are both nearing(still a couple of years away) from needing a new car.
I'll go for a hybrid or full battery if the tech is substantially better in a couple of years, my brother talks about wanting to buy a Ford Ranger/Dodge Ram even though he's only ever driven sedans in his life... o_O

I think there's probably a lot of folk in our situation. Keep the current run around going as long as possible while it's still relatively cheap. I paid $1k for a service & new tyres last year, only need a service this year. I own the car outright so other than fuel & insurance I don't really want to buy another car just to save $20 a tank on fuel a week. If your car was built in the last decade it's probably still going to do the job in 5 years with good maintenance.

I see lots & lots of young people driving around in brand new shiny utes, can't be cheap to run or buy, $50-$60k+ by the time you add on all the extras necessary for a city lad that never goes near a dirt road :roflmao:
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Spot on CBerg, that is why the ex head of Peugot was saying the price of E.V's has to drop, peoples love of cars has been in decline for the 10-20years, it will decline faster as ride share companies like Uber take away the need for a car in places like Melbourne and Sydney.
Cars are moving from a status symbol, to a necessary evil and the last thing people want to do spend a lot of money on them.
They would rather have the money for holidays, netflix, 85" T.V's, latest smart watch, a night out etc.
just my opinion.
 
SirRumpole said:
Probably too many factors involved to accurately measure how many accidents have been avoided due to autopilots as these are never reported.
.
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I personally was on autopilot two days ago and the car avoided a collision, a car attempted to merge into my lane and just after my car had changed into that lane, the other car was in my blind spot but the Tesla saw it as moved to avoid a collision.
 
Value Collector said:
I personally was on autopilot two days ago and the car avoided a collision, a car attempted to merge into my lane and just after my car had changed into that lane, the other car was in my blind spot but the Tesla saw it as moved to avoid a collision.
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OK, consider that as reported. ;)
 
Value Collector said:
I personally was on autopilot two days ago and the car avoided a collision, a car attempted to merge into my lane and just after my car had changed into that lane, the other car was in my blind spot but the Tesla saw it as moved to avoid a collision.
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It would have been interesting to see what the car would do, if there were cars on the opposite side and behind you.
 
sptrawler said:
It would have been interesting to see what the car would do, if there were cars on the opposite side and behind you.
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Because we had just changed lanes, the lane was clear thankfully, so it was able to move back to that clear spot, if it gets to crazy the car alarms and tells you to retake the wheel.

Hopefully in the future and more and more cars are autonomous, they communicate with each other and operate as a swarm/pack as they move down the freeway, and open gaps for each other etc as they need to merge and change lanes.
 
Don't underestimate us dumb humans though as a lot of them examples you would see the drivers ahead actions as in checking mirrors and tailgating touch of brakes and alarm bells would start going off in my head that this dudes Gunna do something.
Like you can't have too dark tinting so you can see the drivers head and what their thinking or not thinking

Still amazing technology that will definitely help those $hit drivers you see on a daily basis
 
GM's Electric commitment of $20billion investment though to the end 2025 is, in my view, best pulled apart by Gali Russel on his Hyperchange youtube...bare in mind he's way long in TSLA.
Good on GM.. But they're fighting the last war... AND; Best case(big maybe) they'll be doing 600k units world wide by end 2025(Rob Maurer/TeslaDailyPodcast calcs)...
any criticism welcome.
 
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