Forget the plug and the battery: Safety rules

Could safety be more important than the battery?

Most energy used by a car is wasted moving just the weight of a vehicle. Thus, many have pointed out that simply making vehicles much lighter would have a dramatic impact on reducing fuel consumption, at a far cheaper cost than adding batteries.

Unfortunately, lighter vehicles means less safe vehicles as well.

Nonetheless, if a gas-guzzling SUV is inefficient by design, does adding a massive lithium-ion battery pack and plugging it into a coal-powered grid make that SUV that much more efficient?

Regardless, if autos could be made much lighter, not only would conventional vehicles achieve vast improvements in fuel economy, but battery-powered vehicles could then use far less battery and achieve much cheaper, mainstreaming-possible, prices. And such capabilities already exist today.

Despite the hype, the battery is not the most important automotive development ever, or even recently. Instead, it’s software.

According to Continental Automotive Group, for example, software could make the smallest micro cars – the future car of the world – just as safe as much larger vehicles through driver-assisted technologies, such as “blind spot detection, automatic braking, and lane departure warning” according to InsideLine. In fact, Continental’s ‘Vision Zero’ envisions the possibility of zero crashes and zero deaths in automobiles thanks to such technologies.

Already, luxury cars are beginning to roll out similar features, as programs such as the Darpa Challenge prove that these luxury capabilities are only the beginning of how software could – will – revolutionize the auto industry.

Of course, without any doubt, the battery is in an incredibly important development in the auto industry. Yet, a major breakthrough in algae-based biofuels or hydrogen production, for instance, could instantly make the battery much less significant.

Software, on the other hand, offers the ability to make every kind of vehicle much more efficient, regardless of powertrain or fuel. In fact, software offers the ability to develop entirely new business models around personal transportation that are almost unimaginable today – yet so very close.

Plugging-in the box we drive today is not cost-effective for the masses according to almost every single bit of evidence. We must think outside of the box, and software offers the greatest potential to build new boxes.

Via Hybridcarblog