Driverless tow cars

My passion is enjoying driving, including towing and now it seems to me that these driver less car people want to end my pleasure. So far as I can tell the electric car brigade haven't produced a decent tow car yet and all existing engines seem to be getting smaller. So does this mean that our hobby is under threat ? Maybe an electric aeroplane is the future, I see Airbus is already starting with a hybrid BAE 146 maybe 10 years away.

I will be surprised that if in the lifetime of most CT members you are not allowed to actually drive a car....

There is clearly a difference between a car that is capable of driving itself, and an enthusiast actually choosing to drive their own car...

Whilst the pace of change is fast, I dont think it is that fast....

Towing trailers will not be complicated. It will be a piece of cake for the manufacturers to work out the dynamics etc and program this into driverless cars. Already cars with stability control recognise if they are towing and take this into account, and some cars reversing facilities take into account a trailer. They will just be coupled with some 'intelligence' in the trailer/caravan too. Probably unbraked/unintelligent trailers will be disallowed on the roads, and no bad thing too in my opinion.

Caravans are of course of prime interest to us on this forum, but they are only one example of trailers that it is vital to continue the use of on a variety of tow vehicles - so in actual fact the facility will be solved maily for commerical reasons, and caravanning will benefit.

I guess most of us enjoy the experience of driving, our own choice of cars and their difference characteristics, are all elements of interest to us. And we enjoy towing too. But eventually this will become as arcane a skill as riding a hosr (or driving a horse and carriage).

A big part of the impact on us (I mean the general driving populace) will be that cars become available as utilities, part of the reason for this will be, akin to the Windows operating system - you will not want (or be allowed to be) too many steps behind the 'latest cersion', this will mean a huge hike in motoring costs for us, but that will be OK (in the opinion of the industry) because we will be able to afford them through endless/lifetime PCP schemes! These are all elements the car industry is getting ready for.

Cars will either go two ways: (1) designed and manufactured to NOT LAST, i.e. to pretty much self-destruct asfter three or four years (becuae the self-driving tech will be out of date) or (2) upgradable in terms of the driving tech/satnavs etc so they can keep up with standards. I personally think it will be the dumbed-down approach that industry will prefer to take in order to keep the (robot-staffed) factories busy!

Another aspect will be that driving, since it will become an arcane skill, will make it a specialism pretty much just for the military and police (like riding cavalry horse for ceremonial duties).

Whatever happens - not in my lifetime !

Not even going to waste my time thinking about it .

Hmm, the PCP lending schemes are already being brought into question due to mounting debts in the motor industry, similar to the mortgage bubble that took us to the brink.

Driver less tow cars, yes when suitable tow bars can be fitted to EV frames.

I can only see one advantage of a driverless towcar. That would be when the outfit needs to reverse. From what we see on campsites, few drivers have learned to reverse their outfits  properly and give up on this task as it's too skilled for them, they resort to unhitching and having the caravan pushed into the pitch either manually or mechanically.  

K 

wasn't that what the motor mover was designed for. I am sure that you never made 1 mistake when you first towed. everyone's an expert and everyone's a learner at sometime. some can only learn when onsite but please don't have a go at them for trying. some of us cannot take a towing course due to personal circumstances at home. 

I cannot help but think that the driverless vehicle, in terms of being the norm on our roads, are a fantasy which will not happen for many reasons.  The very last sentence (above) rather sums it up.                   Talk to anyone who does believe in them, and they don't want to listen if you mention system failures which could cause such a vehicle to "go awol".   No matter how good is the quality control in the assembly of the vehicles, it is impossible to achieve absolute certainty that a fault will not occur whilst the vehicle is under way, and the last thing we need on our roads are vehicles that might become 'robot killers'.

Think about the frequent happenings where most of us have had to act to avoid a collision by another driver behaving badly.  Imagine trying to write a program for every situation that might occur, and every conceivable reaction likely to be taken by a driver trying to avoid a rogue driverless vehicle.

If you were riding "watchman" in a driverless vehicle, and a driven vehicle put you on a collision course with your vehicle, could you simply sit and watch your driverless vehicle "do its stuff" without automatically taking control yourself?   Doubt that I could!

Can’t see it in my lifetime apart from anything else there would be thousands of miles of roads to technically upgrade.  If driverless vehicles were limited to motorways then that counts out Norfolk

It will need a complete rethink in terms of rules of the road, much as Tinny has said. Mixing smart technology with some pretty stupid human beings is never going to be a winner, you only have to look at automatic train barriers to realise the potential for disasters! A lot of cars are already way too smart for a lot of their owners, and some aspects, if used incorrectly, can actually kill. Poor young Anton Yeltsin who played Checkov in the Star Trek movies was killed in such a manner, awful tragedy.