Photo: Screenshot from Youtube
The recent improvements in adaptive cruise control technology have made today’s cars so advanced, that they can practically drive themselves. The only problem is city driving, in slow moving traffic.
With the BMW i3 coming in 2013, its good to know that the Bavarian electric city runabout will not be ‘one of the herd’ of new EVs coming out, which are basically the same in terms of construction methods, materials and philosophy. The i3 will be a bespoke car (not using any existing BMW platform or components), which with the aid of all the new systems developed in recent years will practically be able to drive itself in town.
The combination of its Adaptive Cruise control which maintains a constant distance to the car in front, Passive Front Protection which will detect obstacles and pedestrians and will brake on its own if the driver fails to react and the Traffic Jam Assistant - a system which kicks in when driving below 40km/h (25mph), allowing the car to change lanes by itself. Add in the Self Parking system, and, in essence, the driver will become a semi-active passenger, in case the systems malfunction, which with the amount of testing that goes into modern cars, especially new cars like the i3, that's highly unlikely.
These systems and arrays of sensors will let you sit back and read and read a newspaper or a book as you will be driven to work - as if we weren’t getting fat enough!
Story via bmwi3.blogspot.com
The combination of its Adaptive Cruise control which maintains a constant distance to the car in front, Passive Front Protection which will detect obstacles and pedestrians and will brake on its own if the driver fails to react and the Traffic Jam Assistant - a system which kicks in when driving below 40km/h (25mph), allowing the car to change lanes by itself. Add in the Self Parking system, and, in essence, the driver will become a semi-active passenger, in case the systems malfunction, which with the amount of testing that goes into modern cars, especially new cars like the i3, that's highly unlikely.
These systems and arrays of sensors will let you sit back and read and read a newspaper or a book as you will be driven to work - as if we weren’t getting fat enough!
Story via bmwi3.blogspot.com
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