{"id":30891,"date":"2018-02-12T10:28:40","date_gmt":"2018-02-12T15:28:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30891"},"modified":"2018-02-12T10:28:40","modified_gmt":"2018-02-12T15:28:40","slug":"keep-on-trucking-no-keep-on-platooning","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/?p=30891","title":{"rendered":"Keep on trucking? No, Keep on Platooning!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Keep on trucking? No, Keep on Platooning!<\/a><\/h3>\n
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The concept of “platooning” involves electronically connected trucks running close to each other. It is a much more innovative idea than that of self-driven private cars and it has the potential of revolutionizing road transport by drastically reducing costs. <\/i>(image from scania.com<\/a>). <\/i><\/div>\n

Self-driving cars (or “automated vehicles,” AVs) are all the rage in the debate. In most cases, we have a lot of hype and little evidence but it is also true that such cars are not impossible. So, what can we say about this idea?<\/p>\n

I often say that technological progress is subjected to the golden rule <\/a>that it\u00a0 generates more problems than it solves. So, not unsurprisingly, the way AVs are normally proposed today, they would solve no important existing problem but would\u00a0 bring new ones.<\/p>\n

In most AVs schemes, you are still supposed to own a car, use it to commute to your job, take your family to a vacation – the only difference with AVs is that you are relieved of the drudgery of having to keep your hands on the wheel and your eyes on the road. But a recent study<\/a> reports that, in equivalent conditions of owning a driverless car, people tend to log in more miles and keep their cars circling around rather than bothering about finding a parking space. Not exactly the way to reduce traffic congestion and pollution.<\/p>\n

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\nBut there is a different application of AVs which may qualify as a true technological breakthrough. It is “platooning<\/i><\/a>.” (Image from The Business Times<\/a>). At first sight, it doesn’t look like a big innovation. Trucks running close to each other? Didn’t that already exist under the name of “trailers”?<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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…click on the above link to read the rest of the article…<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Keep on trucking? No, Keep on Platooning! The concept of “platooning” involves electronically connected trucks running close to each other. It is a much more innovative idea than that of self-driven private cars and it has the potential of revolutionizing road transport by drastically reducing costs. (image from scania.com). Self-driving cars (or “automated vehicles,” AVs) […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,4],"tags":[18501,10777,18500,2692],"class_list":["post-30891","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-energy-2","category-environment","tag-automated-vehicles","tag-cassandras-legacy","tag-self-driving-vehicles","tag-ugo-bardi"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30891","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=30891"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30891\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30892,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30891\/revisions\/30892"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=30891"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=30891"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/olduvai.ca\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=30891"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}