tandempower

It's funny to me that you will accuse me of being unrealistic but then change the subject to flying drone deliveries. I think you are just interested in putting down everything that's not the status quo. Why can't you acknowledge that these autonomous delivery drones are very practical and realistic to have in mass production in 5-years time? What more efficient way is there to deliver groceries or anything else than an autonomous surface drone? Flying drones all over the place would just be annoying and dangerous, but well-behaved surface drones would just be effective and efficient use of roads. You know they're only 3.5 feet wide, so they could split lanes.

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Walter S

And the difference between the "limited" (extremely controlled) environment where driverless is deployed, and the technical and legal challenges of driverless on the open road and on city streets in varying weather conditions is HUGE.

Rollfast

Whatever happens, it will still be 5 years later. Hence this thread is a perpetual MACHINE.

tandempower

I don't think you are sincere, and it bugs me when people pretend to be sincere to mock the people they are using the sarcasm against.

What I think you're doing is talking about flying drones as something ridiculous and unrealistic to make autonomous driving drones seem ridiculous and unrealistic by association. For some reason you are just really in love with the status quo of cars with human drivers everywhere and you like to take shots at anything that smells like a move away from that.

Mobile 155

I don't care what you say you think. Because I don't know if you even believe it. But the inventor of the Flying Drone in the link disagrees with you. And you are the one saying you want less pavement not me. Plus they are a lot farther along than any train like self driving cars that you promote so who has the more fantastic idea? So far no one is making cars that follow routes like a train. They all use a mapping program. In fact who does agree with you?

tandempower

See how cautiously you word what you say. You say they are further along than the autonomous drones not because you truly believe in them but because you are using them to discredit the autonomous grocery vehicles relative to them. You are such a clever marketing lobbyist. Who do you work for?

Flying drones are noisy and they cannot carry a load of groceries. Wind blows them around and they have to use power just to keep from falling. Autonomous vehicles roll on wheels. I can't believe you get me to the point of debating basic physical mechanics. What is easier for you, pedaling a bike or pedaling a helicopter propeller to keep yourself airborne? Come on now.

I-Like-To-Bike

In the alternate reality envisioned by the Dynamic Duo of BF-LCF Dreamworld, such differences can be ignored if/when it harshes the buzz of their "Critical Thinking" process.

Mobile 155

I knew you did not do any research. Did you follow the link? Did you see the drone I was linking to? No you did not because if you had you would have seen it was no little grocery drone. Because this 5 year prediction thread has been extended to five years from the last post I guess I could have posted space flights and just popped them in every three or 4 years. Show me an example of your contention. Show me a grocery self driving car. Point me to the streets they are on. If not my fantasy post is every bit as valid as yours. https://www.bing.com/videos/search?q=New+Personal+passenger+drone+ready+&view=detail&mid=AA4B490CED2916583BB4AA4B490CED2916583BB 4&FORM=VIRE

Now to be fair show me a driver-less car following a preset route like a train in action. Just one will do. Or is this all talk once again? Did you maybe see it in a movie? Or was in manufactured out of whole cloth in your mind? If you had spent a flick of a finger to look at the link you would have seen people flying in some of the personal drones. Drones in action and looking for certification. Do something to check your own theory, anything.

tandempower

Show me an automotive culture that is sustainable, just one will do.

Mobile 155

This one we have with EVs will do. Now you prove your point. I have posted links others have as well. show us something to prove your point.

By the way I asked first and you simply don't comply. I bet you never took the carbon foot print test I linked to either.


Let me apologize to Cooker for letting this happen in his thread. And to you. I have come to realize you are a dreamer of dreams living in a world you are powerless to change. Debating any issue with you that doesn't include your lifestyle as ideal is worthless. And defense of anyone else's lifestyle or choices is offensive to you. We have no common ground to talk about such things. I believe my fellow man is as able to choose how they get from point A to point B as I am and you do not. You think they are duped and only you can see the light. From now on believe what you want and watch to see if any of it comes true. If it doesn't you can blame fate or the powers that be. I shall not try to dissuade you from your dream. Some day you will try some of the things you fight for and only then will you know if it works or not. No matter what the rest of us have done or seen will change you till you experience it for yourself. Have a great day and maybe listen to Mama Cass to calm you.

tandempower

EV's can run on renewable energy, but they still create unnecessary pavement and sprawl. You don't seem to understand/see how deforestation occurs as a result of development and development keeps expanding because of automotive (drive everywhere) culture. You don't see how urban reforestation is possible if certain kinds of infrastructure and architecture are used and then developed areas don't shirk their responsibility for CO2 re-uptake.

I am a material minimalist. I reduce my carbon-footprint whenever possible. Why don't you post another thread on things that add to your carbon footprint besides driving and I will participate?

Walter S

To me what's amazing is the stench of all the techno hype that has people behaving like all this needs to be figured out since it will "obviously" be a real factor in our lives in the foreseeable future.

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cooker

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tandempower

There has been plenty of ultralight activity in recent years, but personal flying just can't grow to high levels of popularity because we can't have all that traffic in the sky. People protest against new highways in their backyards as it is. When you have a corridor of flying drones, the noise hits everyone's backyards unfiltered. Do you understand that motor noise is bothersome?

LanghamP

I'd like to apologize ahead of time to ILIKETOBIKE and MOBILE; the following post is utter nonsense.

I grovel at their feet for such a bad post. I can't help it; I'm addicted to bad ideas.

I would like to think flying EV's would work quite well.

Helicopters require about 16 or more times energy to go the same mileage as a car does; however if you have time on your side then you could just run energy from your solar roof into the airborn EV. If all EV's were automated then I could see them rarely colliding. Air space is big, it's the runways that airplanes and pilots fight over.

The road infrastructure could be greatly reduced, made tiny, because a runway is much smaller than a road. For short distances, last mile transport could work. For bad weather, perhaps drones could deliver supplies.

We think of helicopters as being extremely loud but this is not always true! They are loud because they need to be effecient, and efficiency is a rotor just below the speed of sound. We've seen whisper-quiet helicopters when no care at all was made for gas mileage. If you are getting solar energy then you can care much less about being fuel efficient.

The ICE automobile and its expensive infrastructure is what will kill most of us, possibly all of us, and so if we oourselves do not adopt long term policies to reduce auto culture, then in the somewhat near future limitations will be imposed upon us.

Since only nations can impose such long-term policies, and since most nations are now democracies that are beholden to the short-term interest of their voters (or influencers), then it follows we will all follow the automobile down to its natural conclusion.

History is full of societies that collapsed following their destruction of their habitat to its natural conclusion:
--Easter Island utterly lost its fishing base when its all of its trees were cut down.
--Iceland and Greenland destroyed their slow growing trees and grass through cow herding. Iceland barely survived but Greenland lost every single European settler.
--Rwanda recently went through a genocide that freed up more land to people. Before the genocide there was less than a quarter of an acre of farmland for each person. A sky-high birthrate alongside modern medicine results in a Melthusian nightmare.

I think the present US and Western European policy of importing vast number of immigrants, legal or otherwise, is a misplaced policy because we cannot give everyone the same high standard of living without tremendous environmental cost.

Instead, we should be attempting to import their standard of living (within reason); the 1st world is like a lifeboat that cannot even safely carry what it has much less three times.

Every society above, when goods run out and they lose all their trees and grass, then experiences a sudden and dramatic loss of population as people scramble desperately to save themselves and their loved ones. Cannibalism is documented in those collapses (human protein is found in dna samples of human feces). The lifeboat is tipped, and so nature runs its grim course.

So I think living car free is the most important policy our civilization can have. There is no long-term future in cars, and to be honest the cost of giving up cars isn't much because we have so many other technological alternatives. Electric bicyles, AI driven electric cars, airlines using batteries (heavy, expensive, but perfectly feasible), work from home, urban planning, immersive video games so you do not often have to leave your domicile, online dating, and a myriad of other alternatives.

We can say, well, that's too expensive! Well, an ICE car is not cheap; it just appears cheaper over the short-term, the cost is distributed over everone and therefore is somewhat hidden. ICE's are cheap because they spew hydrocarbons where ever they please, but the great cost of doing so will become more apparent over time (as if it isn't already apparent and destructive).

cooker

I would like to remind people this is the 5 year prediction thread. LanghamP - I assume your apocalyptic vision is not expected to be realized within 5 years.
Anybody have a 5 year prediction, or an update on one made earlier in the thread?

LanghamP

You cannot assume that, because human populace, along with their emissions, is on a logrithmatic scale. Historically, things going south occurred over the span of 1-3 years.

In other words, while the ultimate causes may take decades or centuries, the proximate causes are very short indeed.

I have three of many data points that I would argue against your assumption.

1. THe almost entire die off of the Australian Great Reef. This has happened in just the past three years, and when that goes so does the fish population, and indeed we have seen a dramatic dying off of smaller invertebrates in that area. This is very bad but predicted.
2. The almost entire die off of honeybees in Western Europe, about two years ago. Since then, the great dying has spread worldwide. Honeybees are responsible for a great number of plants being pollenated, so once they go we all go. Again, bad but predicted.
3. The introduction of micro plastics 50 microns or less inside of bacteria. We now use more plastics in the past 10 years than the previous decades combined (again, log growth). It was postulated that finding plastics inside bacteria would be bad because it disrupted their functions. That predictions has come to pass.

So, yeah, I have to reject your assumption that really bad things won't happen within five years, but I will be happy for you to provide counterarguments.

In fact, I think I would be ecstatic if you proved me wrong, because that would mean the avalanche of accumulated evidence ecologists have collected need not be taken seriously.

cooker

Please make a specific prediction relevant to car-free living which you believe will occur over the next 5 years

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cooker

Thanks - of course, as you know, I actually enjoy this kind of wide ranging discussion, but hadn't intended this specific thread for that.

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tandempower

Do you predict development in electrically-powered 'whisper-quiet' helicopters in the next five years?

I'm going to go out on a limb and predict a new type of ultralight helicopter with very large rotor blades that turn relatively slowly and lift the heli up almost like a huge bird flapping wings with a corresponding, 'whoosh whoosh whoosh' sound. Once this vtol heli rises to a suitable altitude, the rotor tilts slight forward as its broad wings give it lift at its slow speed. The wings and rotor blades could have solar cells to charge the battery, which will need to be light, of course. The rotor/propeller will turn relatively slowly with high torque, something electric motors do well. Is something like this what you have in mind?