Electric cars are often seen as one of the great hopes for tackling climate change. With new models arriving in showrooms, major carmakers retooling for an electric future, and a small but growing number of consumers eager to convert from gas guzzlers, EVs appear to offer a way for us to decarbonise with little change to our way of life.
The Audi A1 Sportback has received a radical redesign. It’s still fairly obvious that it’s the much-loved Audi hatchback, and it’s available in South Africa now.
We take the all-electric, Jaguar I-Pace for a spin and look at some of the key features of the first luxury EV to launch in South Africa.
According to those in the industry, and researchers too, driverless cars will totally revolutionise the way we think about individual transport. They will change the way we work and rest. They could herald the end of traffic jams, and have the potential to change the lives of disabled people
Uber Air will start test flights of its aerial taxi service in 2020, and move to commercial operations by 2023, the ABC reported. Melbourne, Dallas and Los Angeles have been named as three test cities for the trial.
We are continually introducing more technologies to our vehicles. Drivers can now ask Alexa or Google assistant a question, listen to text messages read aloud by the vehicle and use voice commands to initiate phone calls. All of this tech also works on the assumption that if it’s only your voice you are using, there are no safety implications.
While the look and feel of our cars has changed in the past 100 years, the way we drive them hasn’t. But fundamental change is coming. In the next decade, not only will the way they’re powered and wired have shifted dramatically, but we won’t be the ones driving them anymore.
Rightly or wrongly, billions of dollars are being poured into autonomous vehicle research and development to pursue this autopia. However, barely any resource or thought is being given to the question of how humans will ultimately respond to the AV fleet. In a city full of autonomous cars, how might our behaviour and use of city streets change?
As Harry Potter’s encounter with the Whomping Willow reminds us, flying cars can be dangerous. Before futuristic visions of three-dimensional sprawling city traffic can approach reality, there are some serious safety issues that need addressing.
A controversy had Tesla at the centre of the debate in 2016, when it announced it would release self-driving capabilities over-the-air to their vehicles. Similar to what happened with Mercedes-Benz, the company was criticized for misleading advertising and “overstating the autonomy of its vehicles.”