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In other EV news, a Govt spokesman in the Lords has admitted broken down EVs can be a hazard on motorways. When EVs run out of charge or otherwise break down they brake to a rapid halt: you can’t use your momentum to coast to get onto the hard shoulder. And (mostly) you can’t tow or push them either: they have to be put onto a low loader, which complicates getting them out of the way.
https://www.telegraph.co.uk/politics/2020/02/22/electric-cars-hazard-motorways-government-admits/
Ivan
Presumably it will be a very short period of time before AA vans come with a small generator in them which would get the cars up to 1% in a few minutes, then they can either be towed (and a lot can be anyway) or drive to somewhere safe.
I dont think many drivers run out of charge without a good bit of notice either, they are pretty intelligent battery management systems.
Plus bear in mind it is illegal to be towed on a motorway anyway, they have to be on those lift-up tow bars at least. (i think)
Ivan:
Also in the category of “untowable” are vehicles with all-wheel-drive (towing them in neutral destroys the diffs). As SUVs represent a much larger proportion of cars on the road and their absolute sales numbers continue to increase ahead of EVs, it’s unlikely that EVs will form anything more than a small contribution to any issues there, for quite some time at least.
AlistairTW:
One of the largest fleet operators of Teslas has reported that as the battery units age out, they can unexpectedly shut the car down with 50-60 miles of predicted range shown. While I agree most (if not all) EV drivers rapidly become very good at managing their range, the first generation of mass-market EVs are now approaching the window where age-related issues begin to crop up, and in some cases the management software has never been tested under such conditions.
James
No …. Or not if you disconnect the central diff as well – as you can do with Land-Rovers – i.e. you put it in “Neutral + Neutral” …..
Greg: Most recent consumer SUVs aren’t Land Rovers and don’t give the driver manual control over the diff.
It is quite absurd that those manufacturers looking towards autonomous vehicles are relying on visualising road signs. 3 years ago I had an argument with the main developer from Volvo on this. He was trying to persuade me that road signs had to be identical across Europe to make this work. He hadn’t considered that road signs get bashed, turned and defaced all the time. And, all the while, there is an alternative which is digital mapping. This requires its own effort to achieve but is much more secure and much more foolproof once its done. Indeed, companies such as TomTom have done most of the heavy lifting already.
Quinlet
Or dealing with the after-effects of the absence after the fact of old road works signs.
One road I regularly ( at least once a month ) drive along …
There is an over-the motorway bridge, that needed new barriers, so they put temporary 30mph signs up.
When they had done the work, they took the signs on the N side away, but forgot the others ..
For OVER A YEAR there were signs saying “30mph” – so if you were going N – an autonomous vehicle would presumably obey that restriction, for an unlimited distance thereafter?
Ditto an unremoved “40” sign on the London-bound M20/A20 after finishe roadworks.
“Deep Joy!”
This has all too clearly, not been thought through.
The main issue is that a vehicle which suddenly stops in the carriageway of a high speed road, is at high risk of being struck by another vehicle within a very short time period. It’s the unexpected nature of it, as opposed to congestion. The government is noting that this is an incident of sufficient frequency to be of concern. The increased disruptiveness of break-downs is a secondary issue.
SUVs are indeed so increasingly popular that the overall fuel consumption of the car fleet is going up rather than down. It is a strong demonstration that a large portion of the population is not really so concerned about its carbon footprint to let it affect their life materially. They are not likely to be very happy at being told they are is only allowed to buy an EV, not even a plug-in hybrid. But the government insists that is going to be the rule very shortly. Which force will predominate remains to be seen.
Quinlet/Greg T
And how would vehicles relying on visualsing road signs cops with the street lighting rule for the 30 mph in built up areas (in which signs are actually prohibited)?
Will the on board systems be programmed with the relevant legislation and guidance and with devices to count street lamps and the distance between them???
Re. taxi charging, the prices are shown per kW and the units have a capacity in kWh. Either I’ve had a complete brain freeze or these are the wrong way round.
@Ronnie MB
30mph zones all have entry signs, it’s just that there are no repeater signs where there are street lights, so that’s not really an issue.
The main issue is about who pays for what. The reason some of the automotive sector wants to rely on visualising street signs is that this will cost them nothing. Digitising traffic regulations is a non-trivial task. This might have been something that, in the past, you would have expected highway authorities to do – and some of them are. But those that have done so have too frequently used proprietary methods which are not then easy for others to use. The DfT commissioned the British Parking Association and Ordnance Survey to produce some standardisation (known as TRO-D) which should help in the future. But the bigger issue is that many highway authorities do not have the resources to do this work and it is essential that everything is digitised for autonomous vehicles to rely on it. Hence the automotive sector is worried that they will be fingered to contribute to the costs. As always with the private sector they take they view ‘why should we pay a penny if somebody else will foot the bill?’
@Quinlet
“30mph zones all have entry signs, it’s just that there are no repeater signs where there are street lights, so that’s not really an issue.”
When I passed my test (rather more years ago than I’m going to admit), it was a clear rule that if there were street lights and no repeater signs, the limit would be 30mph. That no longer holds.
Many urban roads are now 20mph (for example, virtual every road in Tower Hamlets), but the roads do not have repeater signs. Vehicles relying on software will need digital mapping to know the limit – relying on street side signs won’t work.
There is a second problem with relying on signage. Some signs are relevant to only certain vehicles. For example. Across Scotland it’s common to see repeater signs showing ” 40mph for vehicles over 7.5tonne”. The 40 is shown in the conventional red round sign. (Set aside for now that most HGV drivers seem strangely blind to these signs). I use a lot of rental cars, these are always latest models and many now come with speed sign detection. They always get fooled by the HGV-specific signs and show the limit as 40 if they pass one of these signs, which is wrong as the 40 restriction only applies to heavy vehicles.
I think there are currently two types of 20mph zones, precisely because of the streetlight rule. If there are no repeater signs, just threshold road-markings, then the 20mph zone is ‘advisory'(?) but if there are repeater signs, it is fully enforceable.
@ChrisMitch
Not sure that this is true. I’ve seen tweets from my local police about successful prosecutions in the 20mph zone that is the Isle of Dogs – and we don’t have repeater signs. The speed cameras on the Westferry road seem to be calibrated for 20mph too.
As this interpretative site says, of the legal changes that came into force in 2016, (first sentence under heading “Implications of the new rules”) “The new regulations and directions place no legal obligation on highway authorities to provide terminal or repeater signs at all.” http://original.abd.org.uk/speed_limit_signs_2016.htm
If the LA takes advantage of that, the driver has little idea when the force of a speed limit sign ends. I have resorted to looking in my mirror to see where a speed limit starts in the other direction to know when it no longer applies, including specifically in the case of 20mph limits. There is a case like that close to where I live.