Vehicles Should Be Able to Communicate to Achieve Fuel Efficiency
As the world waits for self-driving cars to be the new normal, a group of researchers may have discovered the next best thing in the name of alleviating carbon emissions.
Experts over at University of Michigan and California Institute of Technology believe that fuel efficiency might be achieved by making the vehicles at least smart enough to communicate with each other.
While there are smart cars at the moment and while there are many ongoing attempts to improve the technology, the most common ones use autonomous-type cruise control features designed around adjusting to just that one car directly in front of them. The researchers believe that expanding this very connection to several more cars will make a huge difference.
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For their experiment, they integrated what they refer to as "vehicle-to-everything communication" features into an autonomous vehicle, which allowed it to control its speed based on the speeds of multiple cars that surround it.
This made the car twenty percent more energy-efficient than it was without the expanded connection. The car was able to slow down using 60 percent less braking force than a human driver.
This is due to the autonomous car learning the traffic from several cars away. In turn, the car used significantly less fuel, making it more energy efficient and environment-friendly.
The experiment conducted by the team involves the same old traffic situation wherein a driver several cars ahead suddenly slams on the brakes, causing the cars behind him to do the same.
Some of the drivers that followed the chain hit the brake a bit too hard, decelerating from 55 miles per hour to almost a complete halt. Futurism points out that this force is almost as strong as gravity, making the whole affair a little harsher to the environment.
The autonomous cars within the same chain using the "vehicle-to-everything communication" features, on the other hand, handled the abrupt stop much more gracefully.
They only used half the braking force used by the others seeing that their expanded connection informed them that the cars in front have reduced their speed.
Not only did this make for a smoother driving experience for drivers, it also spares the environment from a lot more carbon dioxide that it can take.
While this research proves promising, there is no way of knowing yet if this advanced navigation technology will ever see the light sooner or later.
Despite this uncertainty, the experiment did demonstrate that the Earth's atmosphere could benefit from cars getting literally street-smart as much as necessary to communicate with each other.
For now, of course, the best solution to curb the carbon emissions the world has to endure is taking the bus to get to places. While this may not always the most appealing workaround, it is the cheapest way.
The challenge here lies in the fact that the public transit infrastructure, as it is at the moment, is not the greatest to the point that it actually becomes the primary reason that makes someone want to drive their own car to work in the first place.
