Autonomous Driving and E-Mobility

From 2001-2010 and 2011-2020, the two previous decades saw considerable advancements in the mobile phone industry, often referred to as the technological boom of the 21st century. Such a boom has never occurred in the transportation industry yet. The wheel began rolling in ancient times, and the wheel is still pulling road transport. Humans were the drivers of vehicles, and it was combustion engines that powered these since the time of the first car. Though it looks like the wheel is here to stay, at least for now, the combustion engines and human intervention might make way for electromobility and automated driving soon.

Electromobility refers to electrically powered mobility. The craze for electric cars is on. Carmakers big, small, expensive, and cheap all develop practical electric cars driven like a typical gasoline-powered car. The new slew of electric cars is indeed a very viable option; they have a low running cost, at about Re.1 per km, they send instant torque to the wheels, and most importantly, they are eco-friendly. Meanwhile, gasoline-powered cars are a significant source of air and noise pollution. They are considerably costlier to maintain, owing to the massive machinery that comes with the engine.

However, there is the problem of range. Electric cars typically provide a range of around 300 km on a full charge while gasoline-powered vehicles provide twice as much range for the same price. Electric cars would then be just limited to city driving, and that it would still take time to get it mainstream. Another problem is the time taken to recharge a battery. Tesla superchargers nearly take as much as 30 minutes to recharge their cars, and the situation is not much different from the MG ZS EV or the Hyundai Kona EV. Fast chargers are still limited to the metro cities, yet another cause of concern.

One solution to slow chargers is the idea of a temporary battery pack slot in a vehicle; just like the rechargeable batteries that we use in remote controllers, we have a slot in the vehicle to insert batteries. Once we reach the charging station, we replace the drained-out battery pack with a fully charged battery pack. We recharge the old battery pack can taking all the time that it needs. This mechanism could save much time, and it could make recharging the batteries as easy as refueling a gas car.

Autonomous driving has been a much sought-after topic, especially in the sci-fi movies of the 90s. A brave man like Elon Musk was able to make it into a reality in the Model S. That car gets Level 3 automation, which means that human presence is required in the car, as it is not entirely aware of the road situations. It requires driver intervention at times of emergency. However, unlike the science of electromobility, the future of fully autonomous driving still seems far off, despite ambitious projects by Google and Volkswagen, to name a few. There is the complexity involved while programming because one has to program a machine to react to a particular road situation.

There is also a psychological factor involved; human drivers can quickly react to different road users. For example, if we are behind a seemingly rash driver, we automatically leave a safe distance behind them, but to program what exactly is a rash driver to a car is hard, let alone explain a rash driver to a non-road user. Nevertheless, things are not all that bleak. Google had successfully tested its Google car, self-driven along the roads of Nevada. The real test for the self-driven car lies in India, where cars have to compete with scooters, bikes, and buffaloes for their road share.