How Do You Insure a Driverless Car?

Automobile creators apparatus up to offer innovation that mechanizes the most crushing parts of an every day drive, getting clients ready for be the simple part. It is the controllers and insurance agencies that may require the hard offer.
In the middle of now and 2016, an expanding number of auto creators will offer "road turned parking lot help" frameworks that assume control braking, controlling and quickening for vehicles creeping along in low-speed movement. It is a long ways from Google Inc's. vision for an auto that can drive itself in all conditions, yet automobile creators and suppliers have long taken the view that quantum jumps normally occur one mile at once.

Automobile industry executives say they expect to offer frameworks that can mechanically pilot an auto at paces up to 40 miles for every hour inside around five years. In the mean time, government security controllers say they are as of now leading research on the potential wellbeing and profits of independent innovation.

Robotized parallel stopping frameworks are lawful for utilization, yet that engineering is more about accommodation than anticipating crashes. Supporters say out and out utilization of heading toward oneself innovation will strongly decrease the 90% of mishaps that are focused around driver failure.

Audi's Tampa test drive for a framework that permits drivers to arrange automobile overloads without hands highlights how progresses in self-governing driving engineering are outpacing exertions by controllers to compose principles of the street for heading toward oneself vehicles. Photograph: Audi.

Controllers and insurance agencies are ill-equipped, then again, to welcome even incremental steps that permit without hands driving—a reality that could limit interest for even restricted heading toward oneself innovation.

"Why purchase a self-governing vehicle in the event that you need to keep up control?" requires Adrian Lund, president from the Insurance Institute for Highway Safety, who predicts without hands driving frameworks won't be offered soon on account of lawful and protection hindrances. While a few states permit proficient drivers to try different things with independent controls, not one has issued an arrange that permits commonplace street warriors take their distant the wheel for critical periods.

U.s. auto-wellbeing controllers are "investing a considerable measure of our time on ahead of schedule warnings frameworks in light of the fact that we feel these innovations can cut down the mishap numbers," Nat Beuse, partner manager at the U.s. Division of Transportation, said at an industry meeting on Monday.) However, the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration hasn't proposed decides that would permit without hands driving, and has instructed states not to permit operation concerning self-governing vehicles on open streets aside from testing by expert drivers.

Volkswagen AG Vow3.xe -0.72% is one of the auto organizations pushing legislators to accelerate deal with standards to oversee an universe of heading toward oneself autos. The German auto goliath's Audi Nsu.xe -0.41% division has started utilizing Tampa's Lee Roy Selmon Expressway to test a higher-rate congested road pilot framework introduced on an A7 vehicle bearing a Florida plate that peruses "Self1e"

Audi has begun using a Tampa, Fla., expressway to test a higher-speed traffic jam pilot system installed on an A7 sedan. AP
 
The "Self1e" A7's system can automatically keep pace with the vehicle ahead, stop itself, speed up and stay in its lane without the driver's help. In fact, touching the steering wheel or hitting the brake turns off the autonomous system, which could operate up to 40 miles an hour. As of now, however, this level of hands-free driving isn't legal.

Florida Gov. Rick Scott was among those in line for a recent test drive of the A7. Mr. Scott said he has "a good legislature I can work with" when the technology is ready. State Sen. Jeff Brandes, who pushed the law allowing Audi to test on state roads, says he needs to see more testing occur before drafting laws allowing ordinary motorists to drive hands-free.

Industry players looking for a more immediate ray of hope are turning their gaze to California. Bernard Soriano, California's Department of Motor Vehicles deputy director, said the agency could publish draft regulations on the issue this month. The agency hopes to have final rules in place by January. California—home to autonomous driving pioneer Google—is one of four states to allow professionals to test self-driving cars on public roads.

Latest QNX Technology Concept Cars 2014

You know what? Writing this post isn’t easy. All I’ve got are words and pictures, and neither could ever do justice to the user experience offered by the new QNX technology concept car. They cannot, for example, recreate the rich, luminous sound of the car’s full-band and wide-band hands-free calls. Nor can they evoke how the car blends speech recognition with a touch interface and physical controls to make navigation, Internet radio, and other applications wonderfully easy to use.

But on second thought, words and pictures aren’t that bad. Especially when the car — and the in-dash systems that the QNX concept team created for it — are so downright gorgeous. So what are we sitting around for? Time for a tour!

Actually... hold that thought. I just want to mention that, if you visit our Flickr page, you can find full-resolution versions of most of the images I've posted here. Because why settle for low res? Okay, back to the tour.

The car
I've got two things to say here. First, the car is based on a Mercedes-Benz CLA45 AMG. If you guessed the model correctly based on the teaser images we published on the QNX website, I bow in homage to your eagle eye. Second, while we snapped this photo in the QNX garage, don’t think for a minute that the garage is ever this neat and tidy. On any given day, it’s chock full of drill presses, tool boxes, work tables, embedded boards, and QNX engineers joyously modding the world’s coolest cars — exactly the kind of place you expect it to be. And want it to be! But to humor the photographer, we (temporarily) made this corner clutter-free. We're nice that way.


The dash
Let's get behind the wheel, where you can see the car's custom-built digital instrument cluster and infotainment system. The bold design, the clean layout, the super-easy-to-access controls — they all add up to systems you want to interact with. Just as important, the look-and-feel of the instrument cluster and infotainment system are totally different from the corresponding systems in our previous concept car — an excellent illustration of how the QNX platform can help customers create their own branded experiences.


The multi-talented cluster
Time to zoom in on the digital instrument cluster, which helps simplify driving tasks and minimize distraction with an impressive array of features. Turn-by-turn directions pulled from the navigation system? Check. Video feed from front and rear-view cameras? Check. Notifications of incoming phone calls? Check. Alerts of incoming text messages, which you can listen to at the touch of a steering-wheel button? Check.


The Android app support
Automakers want to tap into the talents of the mobile app community, and the QNX CAR Platform for Infotainment helps them do just that, with built-in support for Android, OpenGL ES, and HTML5. In the concept car, for example, you'll find an Android Jellybean version of iHeartRadio, Clear Channel’s digital radio service, running in a secure application container. The QNX CAR Platform takes this same sandboxed approach to running HTML5 apps — perfect for protecting both the HMI and the overall system from unpredictable web content:


Helping you get there in more ways than one
We designed the QNX CAR Platform to give automotive developers the greatest possible choice and flexibility. And that’s exactly what you see when it comes to navigation. For instance, the car supports navigation from Elektrobit:






If that’s not enough, a demo system in the QNX booth at CES also demonstrates a navigation system from Aisin AW — more on that in an upcoming post.

Pardon me while I barge in
As I alluded earlier, what you can't see in the new concept car is just as important as what you can see. For instance, if you look at this image, you'll see the infotainment system's media player. But what you can't see is new acoustics technology from QNX that lets you "barge in" and issue voice commands even when a song is playing. How cool is that?


When you find yourself in times of trouble...
... don't let it be, but rather, check and see. And to do that, you can use the infotainment system's virtual mechanic, which keeps tabs on your car's health, including fluid levels, brake wear, and, in this case, low tire pressure:


The cloud connection
Hold on, what's this? It looks like a smartphone app with an interface similar to that of the virtual mechanic, above. In fact, it's a lot more than that, and it touches on some cool (and very new) technology that can help cars become fully managed citizens of the cloud. More on that in an upcoming post.


That's it for now. For more details on what QNX is showcasing this week at CES, check out the press releases posted on the QNX website. And stay tuned to this channel for further updates from 2014 CES — including a profile of our very new QNX technology concept car for acoustics.

Denny Hamlin To Get Nascar Bristol Trophy

Choose Denny’s Ride: For the seventh-consecutive season, FedEx will raise awareness for the March of Dimes with a special #11 FedEx Office/March of Dimes paint scheme at Texas Motor Speedway in April. This year, race fans will decide what Denny Hamlin’s car will look like in that race by voting for their favorite scheme at http://bit.ly/1ndBuJW. Voting ends Friday, March 14.


Las Vegas Recap: Denny Hamlin finished 12th in Sunday’s NASCAR Sprint Cup Series race at Las Vegas Motor Speedway, fighting an ill-handling #11 FedEx Ground Toyota throughout the 267-lap event won by Brad Keselowski on the bumpy 1.5-mile oval. Hamlin lined up third for the final restart on Lap 226, but was put three wide in the middle into Turn 1, losing a handful of spots. The #11 machine was too loose on corner entry during the final run, and Hamlin did all he could to hold off a host of other drivers down the stretch. Hamlin started 27th and quickly worked his way through the field from the drop of the green flag. Varying strategies on pit road moved Hamlin into the top-15 nearing Lap 100, where he remained as the laps clicked. On the edge of the team’s fuel window to make the checkered flag on just one more stop, crew chief Darian Grubb elected to keep Hamlin on the track until his final pit stop on Lap 213 — and leading one lap — hoping for the race to stay green for the remaining laps. Unfortunately, the final caution flew for debris less than 10 laps later, and Hamlin was forced to stay out for the valuable track position.

Bristol Preview: The Series heads to Bristol Motor Speedway for Sunday’s 500-lap race on the high-banked, half-mile bullring. Hamlin has one victory (August 2012) and seven top-10 finishes in 16 career Bristol starts, and is eight laps shy of 500 career laps led at the track. One year ago, Hamlin started third and led 117 laps, but contact prior to the final restart eventually caused a flat right-front tire, forcing Hamlin to limp to the checkered flag in 23rd, two laps down. In August, Hamlin qualified on the pole and led the first 23 laps. A late-race multi-car incident relegated the FedEx team to a 28th-place finish.


What are your thoughts on racing at Bristol?
“Bristol has been a pretty good track for our FedEx team over the years. We don’t have all the good finishes that I think we deserved, but we have run up front, led a bunch of laps and got a win there. It’s a tough place to pass and you have to deal with a lot of traffic, but it’s a fun track for the drivers and a great place to watch the race as a fan. Hopefully we can get another Bristol trophy on Sunday.”

2014 Formula 1 Cars

ictured here is not the millionth "concept livery" or speculative render, but the first official image of a 2014 Formula 1 car, specifically the Force India VJM07 that Sergio Perez and Nico Hülkenberg will be piloting at next week's opening pre-season tests in Jerez. But what's different under that newly-blackened livery? The same things that will be different on the other ten car designs this year. Let's break them down.


The Body
Before we get under the skin, let's look at the skin itself, which eagle-eyed folk will notice has changed, particularly at the front. The noses will be significantly lower for safety reasons, with the tip of the nose only being allowed to be 185mm off the ground, as opposed to the 550mm they were last year. Subsequently, the front of the actual chassis, where the nose cone connects, will drop from 625 to 525mm, giving us the steep angle seen above in the new Force India. Meanwhile, the front wings will be narrower this year to reduce downforce (also making it less likely for cars to clip them during a tight overtaking manoeuvre), from 1800mm to 1650mm.

Further back, the side-exit exhausts we've seen for so long will be banned, to avoid teams using the Coandă effect (like an aero version of surface tension) to guide the exhaust gases to the diffuser. Instead there will now be one central exhaust exit under the rear wing but well above the diffuser, pointing slightly upwards just to make sure. This will also mean tighter sidepods towards the back, but conversely the large air intakes at the front of the sidepods, either side of the driver, will be wider in order to get more air into the bigger radiators, as well as improve side impact safety. The rear "beam wing" - the little wing at the bottom - will be banned in place of two vertical struts, as the new exhuast would now be pointing straight at it, opening up an opportunity for aero trickery. At the same time, the main part of the rear wing will be at a much shallower angle in another bid to reduce downforce and increase a reliance on mechanical grip and driver input. Finally, fake camera pods are now banned, as teams were using their aerofoil shape for guiding air flow to the right places. Now any camera pods must have cameras in them, and their positioning will be restricted.

One final thing to point out about the new aero regs is that the nose measurement of 185mm is only across a small central section of the very tip of the nose, so because air intakes/channels on the nose are banned, we may see teams only making the tip of the nose as wide as they have to, having this narrow pointy bit stretching out to meet rules and then the full width of the nosecone being further back, to get more air under the car so they can channel it to the diffuser for more rear-end grip. Many speculative renders by people studying the regulations have given us something that looks rather... phallic. The nose of the VJM07 up top looks OK from the side, but they say it will probably look much different come testing. We'll see......
The POWERRRRRR
Unless this is somehow the first F1 2014 article you've ever read, you'll be well aware that the biggest change of all to the quickest racing cars in the world is not the raft of exterior changes, but a new engine. The 2.4L naturally-aspirated V8s have been heard screaming at 18000rpm in a Grand Prix for the last time, possibly ever. Feel sad. Now feel excited again, because in their place is an all-new 1.6L V6 Turbo engine revving to 15000rpm. Yup, dig out that '80s nostalgia CD you got for Christmas, because turbos are back! This is to reflect the fast-growing trend in road cars for smaller turbocharged engines that use less fuel but make the same or more power and torque. Power output is said to be 600bhp or more, which is down from the ~750bhp that the V8s made, but torque will likely go up noticeably from the ~260lb/ft or so of last year's engines. Power delivery will be very different, so drivers will have to adapt their right legs accordingly. That said, the turbochargers will be extremely clever hybrid ones, which brings me on to...
KERS 'n' TERS
...Energy Recovery Systems. These will play a much bigger role than merely being a temporary push-to-pass system as we've seen up to now. Let's start with KERS, or ERS-K as it's now called officially (perhaps to avoid the common tautology of "KERS system" which I find really annoying). This will be much bigger and more potent than it has been before, with a bigger battery. But there will now be a second ERS for the turbo, which I'm calling TERS because it sounds kinda funny. Essentially it works in the same way, gathering waste heat from the turbocharger and storing it as electrical charge and then using said charge as power. Together with KERS this will, via an electric motor on the rear axle, add around 160 horsepower to the engine's  600, giving us as much as 800 horsepower in total depending on which engine power rumors you listen to. As I pointed out in yesterday's drivers post. Adrian Sutil says the new cars are actually faster in a straight line. The hybrid turbos will also use some of that stored energy to spool up faster, reducing lag significantly and thus improving engine response, so the power delivery won't be as jerky as some may have feared. This sort of technology could give us road cars with lag-less turbos in less than five years, which will be awesome. For a better-detailed explanation of how all these systems sync up.
The Consequences Of The POWERRRRRR
Seeing as this new age of Formula 1 is about saving fuel, a maximum of 100kg of fuel will be allowed per race (they're still allowed to store more, but they can only use 100kg), plus the engines will now have a "fuel flow restrictor" that limits fuel flow into the engine at 100kg/h maximum when it's revving above 10500rpm (below that it will be changed accordingly). This is a similar device to what you'll find on this year's revamped Le Mans Prototype (LMP) racers in the World Endurance Championship, although in that case the use of a fuel flow meter allows them to use any engine they want, because the fuel delivery will be restricted with said restriction based partially on the size of each car's hybrid system. They get a choice of four, see. Why can't F1 enjoy such freedom of choice? They can't pretend it's a cost-cutting thing, because these new V6 Turbo hybrids are notably more expensive than the V8s of old...
Interestingly, an "electronic brake control system" will now be allowed on the rear wheels, because the brake balance will be harder to adjust and the KERS boost - now available for 33 seconds per lap instead of just 6.7s - will dump a massive amount of extra power onto the rear wheels. This must surely open the door for electronic "brake steer" where such a system can brake the inside rear wheel in a corner to keep the car on the racing line at higher speed, much like the McLaren 12C road car. That would be slightly ironic, as Red Bull were accused of illegally using such a system last year.

The other big change compared to the V8s will be reliability. Last year an engine failure was rarer than a fast Marussia, as the manufacturers had got their designs pretty much nailed having been running them for the eighth year. These new engines aren't only more likely to go wrong, but the punishment will be bigger if they do. They will be required to last 4000km, twice as long as last year, and the number of engines allowed per car throughout this season will be five instead of eight. Drivers using a sixth "power unit" (engine and/or supporting hybrid systems) will be given a 10-place grid penalty. Seeing as that will happen towards the end of the season, these penalties could change the outcome of both championships, so both drivers and teams will be doing everything they can to avoid breaking anything.
Weight Watchers
Of course, adding all this extra hybrid gubbins means that the cars will weigh more in the middle. Because of this, the minimum weight limit has been raised from 642kg to 690kg. This is one area that isn't in line with what road cars are doing, as most car companies are finally championing the fact that lightness is rightness, but at the end of the day it has to happen because otherwise none of the teams would be able to meet the minimum weight limit, and engineers hate things that are overweight (although tastes in women may vary). Still, this change in weight and thus balance will be something else for the drivers to get used to this year, which they've already been doing in simulators. It also means the drivers have to get lighter to compensate for the heavier cars - Daniel Ricciardo was told he would have to lose 2kg for this season, as one example. Balancing strength, stamina and fitness with losing weight can't be much fun...
2014 Reasons To Watch!
So then, we've got a newly re-jigged lineup of drivers, new cars with new hybrid engines and aerodynamic properties to get used to, plus a new race track at Sochi in Russia where they're also hosting the 2014 Winter Olympics (I hope a podium-scoring driver kisses the man who presents him with his trophy at that event). We've got Kobayashi back, Alonso vs Räikkönen in the same cars, Ricciardo at Red Bull to prove how talented he and Vettel really are and Bernie Ecclestone might be relinquishing his powers this year to go to prison for being a naughty boy with his money. How could you not watch Formula One this year?!
I'll make sure to post pictures of each new F1 car reveal over the next week, and maybe some pre-season testing news if I find time. It's time to start your engines!

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