The future, hopefully far off.

[JohnK]

When I read this, because I'm really interested in things that have to do with a car's handling, it made me think of the different high-end models (Honda, Audi, Porsche, ...) that have electronically controlled limited slip differentials, and electronic control giving dynamic partitioning of torque between the front and rear wheels in four wheel drive cars. And then there are all the wealthy dentists, plastic surgeons, et ala. who, with several orders of magnitude difference between their bank accounts and their driving abilities, can safely drive about in sporty cars of all sorts that have well in excess of 500 horsepower without managing to become a grease-spot on the side of some building when they happen to tap the throttle and not be paying attention where they're aimed. Automobile had a good article this month on just that subject with a consideration of cars having too much power.

 

Since I'm a scientist by training and disposition (and with my experience tuning engines with computer control) I have no doubt that this leveraging of technology by the automobile industry has just started and that the benefits will be amazing as things are developed for the masses. (DARPA has developed all sorts of incredible devices for NASA and Defence that are just waiting for some entrepreneur to turn into the next big thing - there's no way Jobs et ala. could have built the i-Phone without all the fundamental discoveries in physics and electronics and created mechanisms that our tax dollars financed, making the technology that, say, allowed us to put Curiosity on Mars so perfectly) . Cars will deliver unbelievable driveability, not only with engine responsiveness and power, but with incredible balancing of traction, control and providing superb driver feedback. But when I think of all the fun I had getting my Ducati running and working some 50 years ago, I'm not gonna miss living in a world where all the adventure I've come to love about working with cars and learning how to drive them will be taken away by engineers, computer programmers, and the effectiveness of our capitalistic economic system. Or more simply, Genug ist genug, zu fiel ist ungezund (Enough is enough, too much is unhealty).

 

http://phys.org/news/2013-11-unconventional-car-transmission-differential.html

[IDreamOfChapman]

I'm waiting for GM to start selling their magnetic ride control shocks as an aftermarket kit. Having driven both corvettes and Cadillacs with them I can say they are super impressive. (They also license them to Ferrari).

Maybe not necessary on something as single purpose built as a Seven, but for practically any other car I can't see how they wouldn't be a huge upgrade.

[TomF]

My other stupid car is a GT-R, and that's about as techno-filled as you can get at the moment. Driving it is extremely fun because it's extremely safe - there is absolutely no reason not to pound on the pedals and turn the wheel as hard as you like - you won't spin or blow a clutch. About the only thing you can seriously cock up is to have too much speed into a corner, and then the ABS will cook the tires, you'll run wide in a predictable way while the diff does its best to slowly get you around the corner.

 

Of course, being safe doesn't mean you're fast - it is extremely easy to get this heavy car out of shape, and then you lurch from corner to corner burning tires, pads and fuel, feeling fast but just getting in the way of all the Miatas and E30s. So while it is a completely different driving experience to the Seven, there is still a lot of skill involved in balancing the car's massive performance envelope against the limits of physics and materials science.

 

The other skill - and I suspect this crowd will think this is a completely pointless one - is figuring out how to tell the computer what you want it to do. The computer isn't a mind reader - it can only guess from your inputs what you're up to. The difference between "I want a touch more oversteer" and "oh shit I forgot this corner tightens half-way through" is a subtle one, but they want the power at different ends of the car. Learning how to tell the computer which it is through the controls available to you is interesting, and it's something I'm still learning. I guess as a computer programmer, that sort of black-box reverse engineering is fun in a way many people won't find at all entertaining.

 

But of course that's why I have both cars. The contrast is fascinating. It's hard to say which I enjoy more. I think I understand the Seven better, and when you get it right, you really feel it in your gut. The GT-R is less physical and more cerebral - there are more hidden variables in play behind the scenes. But keep it calm and controlled, let the computer read your mind, and the magic torque vectoring appears and suddenly the corners don't seem as bendy as they used to.

[turboeric]

Tom, I can understand the intellectual appeal of what you say about the GT-R, and in a way it's parallel to trying to get an understeering car to turn in by using your inputs properly. Fool the equipment into doing what you want. It still doesn't appeal to me 'though. If I've just turned a really good lap on track, I like to think that I've driven really well, not that the software engineers were really smart. I've seen people at the track with Godzillas and M5's and STi's going really fast, without the driver having the least notion of what they're doing. This I find worrisome. And I see them coming in with their rear brakes smoking from the electronic "differential" burning up their brakes trying to keep wheelspin in check.

[rss]

tom,

very interesting that you own both a gt-r and a seven. it's an unusual combination. i had several gt-r's in my run group at cota a while back, and they were amazingly fast. fast on the straights of course, but absurdly fast in the turns given their mass. faster than me in my seven in the turns, which was a bit demoralizing. i like to think that it was at least in part my suspension set up, but i know it was mostly my lack of skill. from all i've read i don't really think the gt-r is where it's at for me in a "stupid" car -- i go more for the visceral experience -- but i say that never having driven one. i'll have to drive one some day.

[JohnK]

A short while ago I finished reading Michael Collins' book, Carrying the Fire - about his experiences in the NASA mission and being an astronaut. He was the low-profile crew member of the mission that had Aldren and Armstrong land on the moon. Collins manned the orbiter and collected the two and brought everyone back home - twiddling his thumbs (kind of) while the other two were on the lunar surface.

Anyway he spoke of the same sort of duality as he went from being a fighter pilot then a test pilot and then a spacecraft pilot on the Gemini and Apollo missions - and questioned what sense it made for him to go from "flying" to sitting in a tin can pushing buttons on command to talk to the computer. TomF makes our point for us, namely that the driving experience has changed. Rather than depending on exquisitely developed sensitivities and being gifted with a superior nervous system, it's now about understanding the interface between you and the car - going fast efficiently is a matter of understanding the software. But rather than sitting stupidly in place at a display as things happen on a screen in front of you, you get to feel the g-forces and attitude of the car, and noise and smoke and fury as it happens. But the technology creates a new thing, and it's really different than the directly-connected experience of driving what most of us, 'specially older us's', call 'driving'. The world changes....

[JohnK]

I'm waiting for GM to start selling their magnetic ride control shocks as an aftermarket kit. Having driven both corvettes and Cadillacs with them I can say they are super impressive. (They also license them to Ferrari).

Maybe not necessary on something as single purpose built as a Seven, but for practically any other car I can't see how they wouldn't be a huge upgrade.

 

I agree but ... The only way you're going to realize benefit from being able to change the dampening characteristics is through software that has been optimized for whatever it is you're doing. Maybe someone out there knows the math+physics involved in optimizing the behavior of a vehicle as it goes around a corner, but TomF's description, and he's talking about a complete system that's been very highly integrated and developed and highly tailored, indicates that this remains a very complex problem. So bolting on a set of active suspension units - and the computer that controls them - is not likely to automatically deliver wonderful results. My experience tuning ECUs convinced me that most people taking this route end up making their engines work worse than than they did before, in spite of the obvious promise of the technology - and tuning an engine is a lot simpler than tuning a suspension. Hence my feeling is that the technology is taking us into a new place and all the hands-on, directly-involved fun is in the process of changing into something else. For an old git like me, it's probably time to be put out to pasture.

[Mondo]

The computer system on motogp bikes always amazes me... for traction control they have to consider lean angle, percent slippage to allow sliding the bike under power, wheelie control, up and down shift rev match etc...

[DeanG]

I like the story about the new"er" Cadillacs. Supposedly magazine testers were throwing them off track when the automatic shifted during at the limit turns. An engineer suggested programming the transmission to hold off shifting when the lateral G load was above a preset value. Management scoffed at the idea; to which the engineer stated that the cars already had a G sensor.

[TomF]

That's an idea many other cars already have (and it's a damn good one). And yes, pretty much every car has G-sensors these days, if only for the black-box accident recorders. A 3-axis G-sensor and 3-axis rotation sensor are pennies right now thanks to cell phone tech.

[JohnK]

That's an idea many other cars already have (and it's a damn good one). And yes, pretty much every car has G-sensors these days, if only for the black-box accident recorders. A 3-axis G-sensor and 3-axis rotation sensor are pennies right now thanks to cell phone tech.

 

Yup, the sensors are indeed cheap - however, there's the matter of the code needed in order to use them to create useful data FROM the sensor. Think for a bit about how you'd develop a wheel spin controller and how you'd plug it into the ECU and what you'd do to the engine to stop it from happening in a controllable manner ...

 

But the good news is that such algorithms are developed by folk with interests similar to ours and who are putting such things out there as Open Software so others can share in their discoveries - maybe even folk like NASA have such things out there which we can have access to.

 

But nett is that all this cool technology is far from simple - getting all the bits needed to develop a working system and then getting the system tuned so that it helps you rather than helps send you off into the weeds.