Sleeper cars! No, not as in railway cars, but as in automobiles. Self driven ones. The idea here is that people can travel overnight in a car built as a sleeping compartment. The big draw of these is that they are very energy efficient, have low costs are are individualized taking you from origin to destination. Technology like this has the potential to make short haul flights obsolete because they would be a cheaper, more convenient and pleasent experience compared to a flight. Unfortunately, the same also applies to sleeper trains, with the added bonus that these cars will be faster and require no transfers between pickup and drop off. The page below goes through a detailed analysis of these cars, but needless to say, try to get on an Amtrak train soon. It will probably be rendered obsolete and shut down by the end of the decade.
At age 85, I think I can safely say that I will not use one of these. Nor would I buy any stock in a company that builds them.
Has anyone ever investigated the possibilites of sleeper hovercraft? Brainy science guys are working on this as we speak!
Since many short haul flights are used to connect to longer flights at an airline hub, I doubt they are going anywhere.
Having looked into mm wave radar and the other sensor technologies for self driving cars, I really don’t see the technology ready for hands off driving in the next decade or so for general purpose roads. The technology may work 99+% of the time, but that less than 1% can be a killer.
Whether people get comfortable with self-driving vehicles with no one behind the wheel or steering mechanism to take over if something goes wrong is problematic. The same notion applies to pilotless commercial aircraft. Most people know that nothing is 100 percent fail safe. They will insist on being able to take over when the control mechanisms fail. And they will fail.
ttrraaffiicc has a gloomy chrystal ball. listing of your posts
- Huron Central Railway to end operations in December in General Discussion.
- Intermodal swan song in General Discussion.
- Goodbye to autoracks? in General Discussion.
- Put those containers away in General Discussion.
- CN Leaving Ottawa in General Discussion.
- Pessimism is the only accurate outlook in General Discussion.
- Bill Stephens’s blog post about History suggests rail traffic won’t fully rebound after recession in Observation Tower.
- The Final Decade in General Discussion.
- CN is reported to be mothballing the middle portion of the former BCR in General Discussion.
He’s quite the shill.
Seems he is in the grips of a great clinical depression.
I read the link and it doesn’t make much sense. It may be efficient but it is only usable for sleeping, which is a large capital outlay for occasional use. Also, for a family vehicle, it would have to be very large for all the lay-flat room.
I’m still waiting for the flying cars that PM and PS promised us by 1970.
These cars aren’t purchased, they are hired. You would pay a fare, much like an airline or Amtrak. The difference is that this is cheaper and takes you door to door.
While technology is rapidly changing the groundrules, even faster than experts can imagine, this application seems like a real stretch.
Why would it be cheaper? Just like a one-way rental in a car or truck, certain destinations cost much more.
Why fly in an hour when you can take a 10 hour car trip?
I’m old. I’m traditional. I have a fear of closed-in spaces.
I can’t imagine lying down in a coffin-like vehicle, and letting it run down the Interstate at 75 mph while I am sleeping.
For some reason, I could sleep in an airplane with the autopilot engaged flying 500 mph and not think twice about it.
But this thing on the Interstate? No. Maybe if it wasn’t so closed-in and small.
In almost all of his threads, the OP seems to have an absolute faith in self-driving technology. This latest iteration may give a new definition to dying in your sleep.
This is something that is very obvious but many overlook or ignore it. Confinement to one vehicle or train car for 10-40 hours is much worse than a two-four hour flight and moving to different modes at the end points for a few hours.
I think Hyperloop would have a better chance of succeeding than this one.
https://virginhyperloop.com/
In practice I have thought that what you’re thinking is right; the technology implies vehicles of relatively restricted height even if built to ELF standards, so use of those ‘business-class sleeper chairs’ would be sensible, and the lack of a nonsynthesized ‘view’ much less debilitating. You might need assistants like the stewards on a Pickwick Nite Coach … or some sort of telpher to move stuff to and from passengers at their seats, like something out of The Machine Stops.
Not that it offers something I can’t get better, safer, and far more cost-effectively from an augmented version of zunum…
Time to bring back trebuchets!