(12-24-2016 11:21 AM)Surbadger Wrote:  

(12-24-2016 10:58 AM)OptimisticOwl Wrote:  

(12-24-2016 10:40 AM)Hilltopper2K Wrote:  

(12-21-2016 09:15 AM)USM@FTL Wrote:  Can't wait! The airlines are going to take a hit because people will do "red-eyes" in their own vehicles. Take a nap and wake up at your destination.

I think 3 years is a little quick. Too much to do. Huge $ to be made though.

People are going to LIVE in their cars/mobile office/campers. Car toilets are coming. This is going to be a revolution.

YEP. 3 years, 5 years, whatever. Its coming and it will change the world. I could see cities having centralized traffic controllers that have algorithms to anticipate bottlenecks and reroute traffic BEFORE congestion happens. How many lives could be saved by not having drunks on the road? How much gas could be saved by reduced idling?

I LOVE the idea of having your car drive overnight and sleeping on the way. Attendance at away games should increase!

Cities, maybe. But UPS and FedEx cannot find my house, even with GPS. Rural residents will be much slower to adopt this.

some questions arise. Will we still need driver's licenses? Or can your seven year old climb into the car alone and say "Smith Elementary" each morning? If there are no more driver's licenses, what will we use for ID? Will the Feds issue a national identity card we must carry wherever we go? (Your papers, bitte).

Will the card plug itself in to refuel without waking you on those red eye trips? How will it react to your wife screeching "Turn here NOW"? Will it take orders from any passenger or be keyed to your voice?

It's going to be a lot of fun watching this thing happen.

This is true, it mightbe adopted in urban areas within the next 5-10 years, but the rural areas will fall far behind. The trend has already been shown with Hybrid vehicles. In cities, they are great, but it is not convenient in the least for those in rural areas. I have yet to see one Electric Plug-in station in the state of West Virginia.

The technology will rely on GPS and satalite tracking, but there are an extreme amount of unmarked roads everywhere. I do not see a self driving car becoming the norm for many years because of outdated GPS tracking services.

Chevy is releasing the Bolt any day now. It has 238 miles of range and would be great for rural areas. It would be nice to leave the house with a full charge every morning.

I'm waiting for the Tesla Model 3 which should be out by the end of 2017. It's much nicer looking than the Bolt and Tesla has their Supercharger network which makes cross-country travel reasonable for their electric cars.

At a bare minimum, an autonomous car should be able to navigate to a longitude-lattitude. Until GPS data is updated, long-latt navigation should be an adequate stopgap. Plus, one could drive the final few miles manually.

Tesla has one Supercharger in Triadelphia, WV and several more in the surrounding states. Tesla is planning to double the number of Supercharger locations by the end of 2017.

There are two Tesla destination chargers, one in Wheeling and one in White Sulpher Springs.

Tesla chargers in and around WV
https://www.tesla.com/findusm#/results

There are numerous slower chargers in WV.

Use Plugshare to find one near you.
https://www.plugshare.com