Technology: Getting Their Trucks in a Row, Europeans Revisit the Convoy

Researchers in Europe are working on a concept that will be familiar to anyone who has seen films about the bands of travelers who settled the American West. The project is developing an electronic communications system that enables a wagon train of tractor-trailer trucks and cars to make semiautonomous road trips possible — without the complexity of efforts like Google’s driverless vehicles.

The Volvos — both the car and truck companies, that is, which have different owners — call the idea “platooning” and see it as a bridge to traveling by driverless cars. It may look as simple as a pack of Nascar drivers strung together for a 200-mile-an-hour draft at Talladega, but this bridge is years away and faces challenges.

Rather than the increased speeds that are the incentive for nose-to-tail spacing on the racetrack, the goal of platooning is to reduce accidents caused by driver error.

Erik Coelingh, senior technical leader for safety and driver support technology at Volvo Car in Sweden, said in an interview that his group participated last year in successful tests involving a semitrailer that led another truck and three cars on European tracks and roads. The tests were part of a project called Safe Road Trains for the Environment, or Sartre, financed by the European Commission.

Drivers in vehicles outfitted with radar and laser systems that inform the adaptive cruise control, emergency braking and lane-departure systems, as well as video cameras, pulled in behind a moving semi. After getting the leader’s permission, the cars and truck linked wirelessly, and computers took over.

While the lead truck driver guided them, drivers in the following vehicles — each 12 feet apart — relinquished control. Alerts about emergency maneuvers were passed instantly through the platoon.

Fuel economy increased 10 percent to 20 percent, according to participants, because airflow behind a long, tapered shape creates less fuel-gobbling turbulence.

Asked about the system’s commercial viability, Mr. Coelingh did not mince words: “We’re not there yet.”

He said it could be a decade before platooning became a reality.

Volvo’s platoon research involves mostly technology that automakers already offer, as well as solutions expected in coming years,, including vehicle-to-vehicle computer communication. Installing that equipment in a new vehicle today, Mr. Coelingh said, would add about $5,300 to the sticker price. That includes redundant systems in case primary systems fail.

According to Mr. Coelingh, the project was started to answer questions about making driving safer. “But we’ve come up with a lot more questions,” he said.

Then there’s the interval between vehicles. Twelve feet might be too tight.

Volvo researchers found that at that distance, at highway speeds, even the computers couldn’t always read the lane markings needed to position vehicles. It also resulted in truck tires firing road grit into the radiator of the car behind the lead truck.

Intervals can be extended, but that cuts fuel savings, Mr. Coelingh said.

Technology: Porsche’s Entry in the Science Fair

As in, what if Porsche, a German brand with a 75-year pedigree of building winning racers and delightful sports cars, threw into a single vehicle everything it knows about advanced materials, hybrid-electric powertrains, sophisticated electronics and the shaping of car bodies both to appease the wind and to get wealthy buyers to drop to their knees.

The forthcoming Porsche 918 Spyder, an $846,000 gasoline-electric hybrid supercar with all-wheel drive and 4-wheel steering, scheduled to arrive at dealers next year, is what can happen when management lets its white-coated geniuses run loose. Production is to begin on Sept. 18 — as in 9/18 — and a total of 918 are to be built.

The rakish two-seater is both a technical reach and a business risk for Porsche. Though the Toyota Prius and others have proved the quotidian reliability of hybrids, no automaker has yet put such a powerful hybrid on the road. The 918’s 4.6-liter gasoline V-8 has a redline of 9,000 r.p.m. and pairs with two electric motors, one driving the front axle and one between the midmounted engine and its 7-speed automated gearbox.

The combined horsepower is 887, which should propel the car to 60 m.p.h. in about 2.6 seconds and take it to a top speed of 211 m.p.h.

The mostly carbon-fiber 918 will travel up to 18 miles on electric power, at speeds up to 93 m.p.h., Porsche says. On European fuel economy tests, the car has achieved 71 m.p.g. while running in its most efficient mode.

Even among the many stupendous rewards that signal their owners’ financial success, the 918 will be a standout.

Though Porsche’s self-imposed technical challenges were formidable, the company had no other choice if the 918 is to have a hope of success. The market for cars over $250,000 is extremely small, and it’s increasingly hard to bedazzle the few highly jaded buyers at the high end. With up to 1,200 horsepower, the Bugatti Veyron 16.4, priced around $2 million, has already established the likely upper power limit for street-legal cars.

So instead of brute force, Porsche, as well as rivals like Mclaren with its planned P1, Ferrari with its limited-edition LaFerrari and even Honda with its forthcoming Acura NSX, have turned to lightweight construction and hybrid technology.

The reasons to go hybrid now include social acceptance in Europe, where reducing carbon emissions is a priority, and the expectation that more localities will join cities like London, Berlin and Stockholm in having zones open only to low- or zero-emissions vehicles. A 918 running in electric mode would qualify.

Also, new rules for Formula One racing, which mandate smaller hybrid engines in 2014, will help to link the technology with a sporting image.

The 918’s hybrid hardware also lets engineers better control power distribution to the wheels to aid handling. In the 918, which has about 50 microprocessors onboard, the front-axle motor can vary its torque side to side, which along with the 4-wheel steering helps aim the car at corners and makes it more stable under braking and acceleration.

But Porsche’s success with the 918 is hardly guaranteed. While the costs of developing such tech flagships are high, the sales can be fleeting. Porsche’s last foray into the market’s upper stratosphere was the $448,000 Carrera GT, a 605-horsepower roadster with a V-10 engine. That car was canceled in 2007 after 1,270 were built — well short of the sales goal of 1,500.

Porsche is a known risk-taker, having twice gambled its reputation on unexpected products, first with the Cayenne S.U.V. and then with the Panamera sedan. Both have paid off richly. The Cayenne quickly became Porsche’s best-selling vehicle worldwide, and it positioned the brand for growth in Asia. The Panamera has also exceeded sales expectations, helping Porsche to its best sales year ever in 2012.

Still, an $846,000 toy from a brand that is considered only near-exotic may prove a stretch. When the required $250,000 deposits came in at a slower pace than expected, Porsche began inundating the media with teaser photos and “preview ride” opportunities for journalists. The company says it now has more than 400 deposits.

What if the 918 never makes its sales target? With the car still almost a year away, Porsche isn’t ready to ponder that possibility.

Technology: As Workload Overwhelms, Cars Are Set to Intervene

The simple act of turning left on Allaire Road in Wall Township, for example, is confounded by a traffic circle, where an attempt to head east casts the driver into a ballet of choosing the proper lane, looking for the exit and maintaining a high alert in the crush of beach-seeking vehicles.

Now imagine that during this encounter a low-tire warning flashes on the dashboard. Next, a chime alerts the driver that a text message — maybe important — has landed. Then the cellphone rings.

The overload of inputs, perhaps amplified by foul weather or a demanding toddler, presents a real challenge to the driver — and a danger to all road users. The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration estimates that distraction and inattention contribute to 20 to 30 percent of reported crashes.

Much as regulators and automakers have rushed to deal with the flood of distractions that invade the automobile — GPS displays, Internet radio, e-mail and even Facebook apps — there is a growing effort by engineers to build cars that gauge the difficulty of situations and recognize a driver in distress. Then the car would react, delaying all but the most urgent alerts, sending phone calls to voicemail and freeing the driver to focus on the task.

The study of driver workload management — some would point to the irony in this reaction to a situation partly created by automakers themselves — is progressing alongside the efforts of the planners who dream up new generations of infotainment features. A foundation of workload study is the Yerkes-Dodson Law, a theory developed in the early 20th century that plots workload and performance on a bell curve.

There can be trouble at either end — an inattentive, underworked driver may be as much a risk as an overworked driver who cannot handle the combined sensory inputs and driving chores. In the middle is the ideal, a driver functioning at optimum level.

Systems that detect driver drowsiness, like the Mercedes-Benz Attention Assist feature, can prompt a driver to be more alert, but driver overload is harder to manage. N.H.T.S.A. has issued voluntary accessory-design guidelines in an effort to reduce distraction, but given consumers’ hunger for gadgets, managing those distractions to reduce workload may prove a better solution.

As safety groups press for restrictions on phone conversations and messaging in the car, the urgency to find a solution will only increase, experts say. Studies of driver workload have a long history, but a milestone came in 2003 when the John A. Volpe National Transportation Systems Center, a unit of the Transportation Department — in conjunction with Delphi, the giant parts supplier, Ford Motor and several universities — began a research project to quantify distractions and driving situations as a way to generate workload estimates.

Paul A. Green, a University of Michigan research professor, said in a telephone interview that the Volpe study stimulated research. Today, automakers and universities are developing technologies that will let them measure the level of driver stress and the response to the pressure. That data could be used by a management system that would delay calls, alerts, text messages and warning lights at the times when the driver’s workload was peaking and the stress level was high.

Because many cars are equipped with advanced electronics — radar, sensors and cameras developed to enable features like smart cruise control and lane-departure warning — some of the equipment needed to gauge workload is already in vehicles. Sensors that determine speed, throttle position, steering wheel angle and transmission gear selection, and even weather conditions, can be adapted to see traffic on the road and monitor driving situations.

With Bluecar, Vincent Bollor wants to first popularize its battery technology

Launched in December 2011, the syst me French CarSharing Autolib' a evidence that the small town four places, and especially its 'lithium-m tal-polymer re' battery technology, held the road. If it is sometimes uncouth e jug by s passionate of the automobile, the Bluecar has demonstrated its reliability. S PR of 12 million kilom very have travelled in some eighteen months by the 63,000 ile s Subscriber - ann e or casual - this service which has 1 750 v vehicles in circulation.

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A CO COSTLY TECHNOLOGY

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ELECTRICITY STORAGE

"Our business model is on three pillars: battery, capacitors [that allow to operate a camera flash, for example] group d is 40% of the world market, and energy management solutions", insists Mr Bollor. It is this last pillar, which is the most promising, with two main targets.

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Sustainable energy producers, Blue Solution offers to store energy in a unit s most important, of the order of 1 megawatt-hour, or 33 30 kw/h batteries. E id is this time to store the electric bill the time network absorbs... In addition to Bluecar, are these offers which should, long term, profitable plants production of batteries, which can produce 45 000 batteries of 15 s pr or 30 kw/h... And that is what pushes Mr. Bollor will introduce its activity storage of electricity by the end of 2013.