People are always quick to declare the death of this or that. Zip around the Web and you will find that people think that soon we will have no more postmen, no more newspapers, no more books, no cheques, no fixed telephones, no televisions and no record companies. Some radical thinkers believe that before long there will be no possessions because everything will be virtual and stored in “clouds”, floating somewhere out there in the ionosphere. There are some who think that the automobile will disappear, and thus by implication that there will no longer be any motor racing.
If this is so, could someone please explain to me why it is that horse racing still exists, as we have not been using horses to get from A to B for about 100 years.
The numbers of global car production do not show any sign of turning downward. It is reckoned that in 2011 there were 60 million cars manufactured (not including light trucks, lorries and so on). This was significantly up from the 2009 figure of 48 million, which was a result of the recession. The trend beyond this one blip has been constantly upwards from 40 million in 1999, to 45 million in 2004 and 50 million in 2006.
Having said that, the idea that cars might be replaced by autonomous vehicles is worth considering, but there is no link in my mind between that and car racing. With so many things saving time and energy, people will still want to be entertained and while living life in a virtual environment may satisfy some, there will always be others who want the hear the noise, smell the smells and take part in real life. Fighting space wars and building imaginary cities is all well and good, but they are just toys and games and we humans get bored of them.
The question of self-determining machines is one that upsets the older generations, who see cars as being symbols of freedom and adulthood. Perhaps the younger generation of urbanite will not feel the same way, but that does not mean that automobiles will inevitably become self-guiding. Car companies have started to demonstrate their clever technologies with cars that use cameras, radar and laser sensors to monitor one another. Google has developed a fully-autonomous Toyota Prius, and its driverless cars have clocked up more than 250,000 miles of running on the streets of California, although all still have drivers aboard – just in case of emergency. The state of Nevada has passed a law regulating autonomous vehicles and issued the first red license plate (to Google), so that its experiments can continue on the public highways. This, the developers argue, will be good for road safety as the majority of accidents are caused by human error. The big question at the moment is not what is technically possible, but rather whether the public will go for the idea. People like to drive and autonomous vehicles take away the basic joys of such activity. A recent survey said that only around 20 percent of people would purchase a fully autonomous vehicle at current levels of pricing. That figure nearly doubled when price considerations were dropped.
That may change. People are sceptical about not being in control of their vehicles and would like to make sure that the technology is absolutely bullet-proof before going down that route. At the same time we fly these days in fully-automated jets and ride in computer-driven trains.
There is another serious question that must be addressed before automobile companies jump on to the bandwagon: there are legal issues that must be addressed, ranging from how policemen stop autonomous vehicles, to the question of liability in the case of an accident. A driver who is not driving cannot be blamed for an accident. It must therefore be the fault of the manufacturer and that is frightening for those who deal in the world of liability, particularly as it has already been proved that it is possible to take control of a vehicle away from GPS systems. And what would happen if a satellite blew up? That would have the potential to be an “unnatural disaster” of devastating proportions. Some believe that it is pointless to invest in the machinery until the legal questions can be sorted out – and that will take time (and money).
What I think we will see in the short- to middle-term is the continuing trend of racing moving closer to (or into) urban areas and relying much more on public transportation methods to move people in and out. It is interesting to see that both rallycross and off-road racing is now moving to more stadium events, so as to guarantee bigger audiences. Perhaps before long we will see a few modern versions of the Circus Maximus…
Another tricky point with self-driving cars is blame in the case of an accident. Rather than individual drivers, a handful of manufacturers would have to fight their corner for every incident.
Having said this, Google’s cars have only been involved in two accidents. Once being rear-ended while stationary at a red light, and another when the vehicle was being driven manually.
“People like to drive and autonomous vehicles take away the basic joys of such activity.”
I know this is generally accepted as true, but doesn’t it also sound profoundly strange, at least after reading it a couple of times? What mindless chores could one have substituted for driving in above sentence in years, decades, centuries past? Are we still emotionally attached to doing our own laundry? Weaving our own cloth? Collecting our own food?
I’d hope for this to change in a generation or two, if not for the stubborn resolve of manual gear boxes in some parts of the world. Apparently, older drivers are more firmly settled in their ways, and seem to force their taste on their progeny with higher-than-usual resolve.
I’m sure there’ll be numerous fascinating studies on the public opinion and financial success of autonomous cars in the next decade or two. I know I’d buy an autonomous car in a heartbeat.
People generally like to drive. They do not like to commute.
Shouldn’t we then see more mindless driving about, rather than the usual getting from A to B most motorist seem generally engaged in? (see traffic patterns)
I’d posit, in contrast, that what people are fond of, rather than driving, is the perceived freedom they draw from owning a car. This idea is strong, no doubt, and dutifully reinforced by the auto industry, but still shows its cracks in many urban settings.
Objectively, owning a car seldomly affords one additional freedom, and objectively, I’d argue the overwhelming majority of kms travelled on the roads of this planet are endured in some form of purposeful commute rather than leisurely enjoyed.
Why is it, if driving was indeed as much of a draw as you claim, that roads are generally less full after regular commuting hours, when large parts of the population schedule time to engage in whatever activities they enjoy in their free time? If people generally like to drive, why don’t they in greater numbers?
I like being places but generally hate the getting there … unless I am driving a manual car outside of a town/city centre (my wife’s manual serves the same kind of purpose as a vacuum cleaner, ie it’s functional but not enjoyable). Even within cities, I dislike buses and trains, so usually tolerate a taxi if I have to.
It’s not just down to ‘stubborn resolve’, it’s also because automatic gearboxes are noisier, slower, more expensive, inefficient and several magnitudes more complicated than an already quite complex manual box.
It’s a problem that’s more likely to be resolved by moving to electric motors (which don’t use gearboxes) than forcing all the cheap/reasonably priced cars on the road to have a couple of thousand pound added to their list price by slapping in something else to go wrong.
I think that you’ve missed out on how much more efficient automatic gearboxes have become in the last 30 years. They’ve changed since you drove a Rover 3500 with a Borg Warner box.
The fuel consumption stats for new cars exacerbate prejudice against automatics. In the tests, an automatic is compared with a manual transmission car driven by a robot which is better than a typical driver at judging when to change gear. Thus the reported efficiency of manual transmission vehicles is boosted in the results.
If most accidents are human error and humans make these robotic cars, I’m still scared and my internet crashed twice yesterday without even leaving the house.
How many times do you hear about a life support machine failing though? An aeroplane’s autopilot? The reason your internet crashed is because it’s OK for it to crash.
Isn’t the modern version of the Circus Maximus called Nascar or IndyCar?
Yes! Knew they reminded me of something other than motor racing. All they need now is a Scalextric-type exploding track button. I can see that going down very well with the crowds.
Ah, when I was a child, Scalextric cars had hard, narrow tyres, no traction control magnets and proper race tracks. Scalextric was for real men, er boys, in those days! And I had to provide my own cars (except at Christmas), no wealthy parents or sponsors to buy me a drive! Spectator figures weren’t good though, often consisting of a solitary dog!
Seeing change in our individual worlds is not always a nice experience, but many changes are necessary, there’s no progress without them.
For those getting toward the end of their driving lives it probably isn’t an issue, but for the generations below us it will be unsettling to say the least.
I started driving in the 60′s, and the car industry then wouldn’t believe today’s vehicles if you showed them a glimpse into the future!
Interesting short talk about one possible future transport scenario using existing technology
http://rynomotors.com/three-minute-ted-talk-from-ryno-founder-chris-hoffmann/
Specific reference to cars and not a Ryno Cycle sales pitch
Horse racing Joe – simply gambling isn’t it, otherwise practically no one would attend race meetings expect horse lovers? I know it is possible to gamble on F1, like any sport, but I think it’s a side issue (thank God). Happy New Year by the way.
I should have written “except” – never realised how close the spellings are! You learn something every day…..
Who goes to motor races apart from car lovers?
What I meant was I’ve only seen gamblers for the most part at horse races. However car racing only attracts car lovers, otherwise why go? I’m surprised Bernie hasn’t started his own official F1 betting to make even more money for CVC.
Gambling is a big part of all professional sports. The NFL was forced to settled a strike by it’s referees due in part to heavy pressure from the gambling industry because the inconsistency of “scab/replacement” refs was wrecking havoc with the betting odds. It would be the same in soccer, basketball, cricket… I often get pop-up ads for betting sites when I visit F1 sites.
I don’t actually – could be your server?
I think the only place you’d find ‘horse lovers’ at a racing meeting is at the gate, protesting against the sport.
Exactly.
(Stephen) “Horse racing Joe – simply gambling isn’t it, otherwise practically no one would attend race meetings expect horse lovers?”
There’s more to horse “racing” than racing itself. There’s a big industry for showing and jumping horses (and can be quite lucrative for the horse owners – no gambling involved), and there are olympic equestrian sports.
Of course – I was referring to flat/steeplechase racing in meetings at tracks ie where organised betting takes place.
One of the effects of increased automisation or virtualisation is indeed the loss of freedom or ‘adulthood’ to which you refer, which of course equates to greater control for the establishment (governments and corporations) by homogenising populations. The frightening reality is people will not be given much choice, either via legislation, taxation or price structuring.
That said, I do believe there will be a future for racing cars with drivers and, who knows, some circuits may have a bright future offering ‘real’ driving experiences. Track days, as we know them today, will become increasingly popular in the short term too as more and more restrictions are introduced to road driving.
Rallycross can be good fun but I am not sure that, in the present world, F1 has anything to learn from it; and I enjoy the stadium-based Race of Champions – but once a year, I could not watch twenty of them! The future, though, could be very different in so many ways and the more he thinks about it the happier this Graham is to be over the hill.
Autonomous race cars—I bet some race engineers and team managers would love that!
Hah, I was just wondering about that, a sort of robot racing league, speed and acceleration wouldn’t be limited by safety concerns (although you still need to protect the spectators)… probably boring in the end – you’ll never see a drone giving the other the finger or switch team.
Hi Jo,
Happy new year!
Interesting article. Man has always wanted to prove that he is better than his fellow man, whether it be by running faster, throwing further or more accurately, etc., since time began. With the current health and safety worries of drivers being injured, maybe in the future we will see “drivers” remotely controlling cars via satellite links, god help us! I can remember not so long ago there were worries that the human body will not be able to cope with the extreme g-forces generated by the cars, maybe that will be one way round the problem.
As to autonomous vehicles, I don’t doubt that one day they will be commonplace, the technology will allow it to happen despite the glitches at present. Hopefully by then I will be long gone as I would hate to see that day arrive! I still enjoy driving despite the amount of cars on the road and it will take a lot to prise my keys out of my hand. But we have some way to go before all the potential problems of mixing autonomous and ordinary cards sharing the same piece of tarmac are sorted out.
Cheers!
Didn’t Benetton have an autonomous car in ’94?
Very droll
Thank you, and Happy New Year Joe!
It’s interesting how the inventive human mind works in a cyclical nature – something I have observed in my real world career in patents. This story is a perfect example:
Start with a horse and cart. Problems: not fast enough, horse may be unpredictable or uncooperative due to posessing its own limited intellegence. Solution: replace horse with motor engine, incorporate engine into vehicle.
You now have a car. Problems: car now contolled by human, humans make errors, errors cause crashes. Solution: replaces human with computer having it own limited intelligence . . .
Might help stop drink drivers, if you could just tell your car to drive you home.
Good point on the legal issues of autonomous cars. I wouldn’t describe myself as the older generation (32) but I would hate to have an autonomous car. I enjoy driving and very much like my cars old school but I do notice other people my age and younger think that a car is cool because it has an ipod connection or some fancy iDrive/stability system/heated seats rather than because it is fun to drive (I’ve spent hours trying to explain why my MX5 is more than a hairdresser’s car) so I suspect people will just think automated cars are cool and futuristic (and then quickly get bored of it!).
I don’t see automated cars or car usage going down as something negative for F1, it has grown hugely in recent years and now everybody knows the drivers and a bit about the sport but having automated cars would make no difference, the vast majority of people who watch it don’t take part, that is something different. (I wonder what percentage of football fans play football?) I don’t really see a connection between driving or not driving a shopping car with F1 so the decline of one shouldn’t affect the other
It all depends on one’s situation. I’m retired now, but when I was still working, an autonomous drive back to Hampshire from Crewe or Stockport or Birmingham in the evening, would have been very welcome to me, struggling to keep awake on the A38/M40 etc. Given the chance, I would have slept all the way home!
When I read the article I thought it can’t be easy being a publisher when there is little to publish but on reflection, very few people outside of the sport and in my opinion realize just how restrictive the rules and regulations are when it comes to designing and manufacturing a F1 car. It’s easy to think when the term pinnacle of motorsport is thrown around that F1 cars are just about as good as they could be but in a world without rules the cars would be so different they’d be unrecognizable and so fast you’d require a pressurized suit to drive them so as not to pass out from the G forces.
Costs aside – if you were to remove the safety considerations, by removing the drivers and enclosing the circuit you’d have the potential to build some truly amazing automated race cars. The new champions would be the computer scientists who could write the best algorithmic control system, pushing the car to beyond the human limit and managing fuel, tyres etc…
I’m happy to drive a cast iron V8 for the rest of my life but some amazing technology could come out of the above and I’d certainly watch it.
As a motorcyclist, I think the idea of being hit due to poor programming is worse than being hit by some idiot texting and driving. At least I can sue someone. (This is a joke, no need to flame me.)
Your Bradbury-esque analysis of the future of automobiles is stimulating as usual!
Healthy and prosperous New Year to you and yours.
I can see insurance companies getting involved. If they save more than they risk, it’s simple.
Then Allianz will have a different meaning as F1 sponsor…
I’m with proesterchen on this.
As the world population grows, especially in urban areas, driving is anything but a pleasant exercise. If traffic isn’t completely jammed, it’s moving along at 5-10 kph or is just a continual stop and go. I call this excruciating, not pleasant.
When I was in my late teens and early twenties (’60s & ’70s) I would drive my father’s car to the nearest race track on Saturday mornings. At legal driving speed it would take you about an hour and a half, it usually took me less than an hour. No traffic, no cops. This was freedom and fun on the wide open roads! Nowadays, the same drive on a Saturday morning feels more like a commute to the job; slow, stop and go, and feels like a giant waste of a free Saturday morning.
I let my driver’s license expire 3 years ago and didn’t even notice. Now, I get driven when I leave the city. The rest of the time I use public transport which allows me to do all the things that technology offers and I don’t have to deal with all the idiots that can barely drive.
By the way, I’m on my PlayStation several hours every week racing the circuits of the world as well as the made-up ones that are just a blast to drive. Driving on public roads doesn’t hold a candle to my cyber-racing.
You are not racing the circuits of the world. You just think you are.
Of course it’s not real life! But it beats driving a stupid and useless road car.
BTW I read that China is now the world’s biggest volume producer of cars.
They have just released their own SatNav system for use by the public, (it was previously restricted to military use) and intend to extend it worldwide. (again primarily for military use, as was the original purpose of the US one.)
We also now have the first few Galileo satellites up, which will eventually provide the european sat-nav system, independent of the US satellites we currently use. (it has been 20 years or so in the making so far and like all scientific dreams, the limiting factor is not the brain or computing power but money, ok in the meantime nav systems have got considerably smaller at the car end and new chip technology will carry this on)
F1 lives in it’s own little relatively insulated bubble, where money is not a limiting factor, at least for some teams. The pace of development is forced by intense competition, second only to a war situation. So I see no major obstacle to driverless F1 racing. (bummer for the drivers though!)
But if we took Joe’s thought to it’s logical conclusion with driverless F1 cars; we could for instance remove a lot of the driver safety features and instead concentrate on collision avoidance. Though I am slightly reminded of the model racing that used to happen every Sunday morning at Crystal Palace on the purpose built track. F1 teams could tweak systems remotely from a vantage point just as we used to watch the RC races from an adjacent bridge.
A lot of big agriculture equipment is autonomous, or nearly. I know farmers who sit in their big climate-controlled tractor cabs and can read the paper while the field is being plowed. I’d love to have a robot car drive me to work, but there’s something about giving up another freedom that bothers me.
I don’t care if an automated car is supposedly safer. I like driving and I don’t trust a computer. If the computer was perfect, we would not need pilots in planes or conductors on trains. The fact that humans are still required demonstrates that the technology is neither omniscient nor fool-proof. I have seen what the HAL 9000 is capable of and I’m not interested in going there. To paraphrase Charlton Heston, they’ll be taking the steering wheel out of my cold dead hands.
And as for automonous race cars, they exist. It’s called “Scalextric”.
Great article!
Autonomous cars are definitely a decade or so away in my opinion, but I agree that it won’t spell the downfall of motor racing. The spectacle and thrill of wanting to ‘go fastest’ seems to be an inate part of the human psyche (for most people anyway!).
The horse analogy is a good one, but you could draw a similar one with sprinting (modern life rarely calls for speeds of 36km/h) or boxing (when was the last time you settled an argument by punching the guy?). These vestiges of society that have little relevance to day to day existence, but still hold a thrill for competitors and spectators.
What is worrying for me is that Formula 1 just seems to have no interest in being ‘hi tech’ in way that will be attractive to the next generation of viewers.
We more or less mastered the internal combustion engine years ago, and they will be consigned to the museums before long (yes really). But there’s no sign of Formula 1 embracing a proper next generation powerplant in the next ten years.
Aerodynamics might be interesting to the physicists among us (specifically the aerodynamicists), but not many others. Yet it is the main difference factor between the cars – and even then amounts to nothing more than fiddling and tinkering during the development ‘race’. Since 2009 the cars have looked outwardly almost identical without very close inspection.
F1 is already less the pinnacle of motorsport than it is a throwback to a bygone era (an entertaining one though, granted).
This year, Google will release their ‘Project Glass’. So where are the HUDs in F1? Newer supercars already have them, and I bet motorcycle helmets will have them within 5 years.
Look at the technological advances made in 2012 (and ahead to those expected in 2013) and you’ll see plenty that could find application in F1.
After Bernie, I’d love to see someone take over that looks to the future instead of the past. Can you imagine someone like Elon Musk or Sergey Brin running F1?
This is all wishful thinking of course, I know how conservative F1 is. I’m really hoping Formula E actually surprises everyone by being a success and giving Bernie something to worry about.
Thinking about it developing autonomous cars would be helped by racing, although the track would be fixed you would have scope to develop sensors to detect other cars and AIs that could detect a gap to overtake. Obviously cars made for road use would be the best choice as that’s where the tech would end up…
I give you The British Turing Car Championship.
Excellent last line!
Would it have restricted testing?
“The question of self-determining machines is one that upsets the older generations”. Citroen’s electronic gearbox system, on a C4 Grand Picasso Plus VTR, is an example of a box which decides which gear to select! Upsetting is too mild a description.
Driving your own car is so last century. Having your own car is a waste of space, money and resource which we can no longer afford in the future.
In my crystal ball, the roads will be filled with driver-less taxis. When we want to get from point A to B, we simply use our phone to order a taxi and it will arrive in 5 minutes. And since there will be no driver, the ride will be cheaper than current taxi fares, and much cheaper and more efficient than owing your own car. And did I mention no parking fees? And just think about all the time you can spend for yourself, real, productive time working on your tablet pc or keeping in touch with your friends while the car does the driving. A two hour commute will no longer be two hours of your life wasted every day, and there will be less traffic jams and accidents because computers are more efficient than human drivers.
I’m sorry for the car enthusiasts out there, but the task of keeping your car within the boundaries of the road and obeying the traffic rules will be a thing of the past, and the sooner that day arrives, the better.
The Google project will be of extreme interest to hosts of professors of telematics, and may have some future use in the USA for driving down empty Interstates at 90kph, where effective alternatives for non-drivers (trains) do not exist to any significant extent.
Spin-off from the technology may also have significant benefit in collision avoidance in cars, particularly when drivers nod-off.
But at the end of the day people buy products – based on perceived value and legislatures create laws to regulate people not machines – in both these contexts, cars driven by lines of code are a dead-duck.
We have very few driverless trains, yet the technology has been around for decades.