How will car design change once we get driverless cars?
While electric vehicles all have good acceleration, an ideal robocar trip is perfectly timed with traffic lights and other traffic so it does not stop and start regularly. We like this because it’s more efficient, but it also means that acceleration is rare, and need not be that zippy. Indeed, for comfort, you may prefer it slow.
This may allow transmissions to be designed differently, to be cheaper and more efficient — or even non-existent.
Sport driving vehicles will continue to have good acceleration, of course. Whistlecars would probably want this acceleration too.
Today, the price of a car is often strongly linked to its acceleration. This may change.
Not all of the ideas listed are practical, some may not even make sense; but the general direction of Brad’s thinking is on-target.
