Choose one of the future car trends.
Read the corresponding text and prepare its summary
In groups discuss and evaluate* these trends according to the following criteria:
| flying cars | self-driving cars | V2V | |
| How useful is this trend? | |||
| How cost-effective is this trend? | |||
| How viable is this trend? |
* on a scale of 1 to 5
Text 1. SELF-DRIVING CARS
In California and Nevada, Google engineers have already tested self-driving cars on more than 200,000 miles (321,869 kilometers) of public highways and roads. Google's cars not only record images of the road, but their computerized maps view road signs, find alternative routes and see traffic lights before they are even visible to a person. By using lasers, radars and cameras, the cars can analyze and process information about their surroundings faster than a human can.
If self-driving cars do make it to mass production, we might have a little more time on our hands. Americans spend an average of 100 hours sitting in traffic every year. Cars that drive themselves would most likely have the option to engage in platooning *, where multiple cars drive very close to each and act as one unit. Some people believe platooning would decrease highway accidents because the cars would be communicating and reacting to each other simultaneously, without the on-going distractions that drivers face.
In some of Google's tests, the cars learned the details of a road by driving on it several times, and when it was time to drive itself, it was able to identify when there were pedestrians crossing and stopped to let them pass by. Self-driving cars could make transportation safer for all of us by eliminating the cause of 95 percent of today's accidents: human error.
*platoon
Present the information from your text to the group.
Pay attention to the following questions:
1. What problem is this trend going to solve?
2. How far has it been developed?
3. Which car manufacturers are working on it?
Text 2. CARS THAT COMMUNICATE WITH EACH OTHER AND THE ROAD
Car manufacturers are seriously looking into and researching two technologies that would enable future cars to communicate with each other and with objects around them.
Imagine approaching an intersection* as another car runs a red light. You don't see them at first, but your car gets a signal from the other car that it's directly in your path and warns you of the potential collision, or even hits the brakes automatically to avoid an accident. A developing technology called Vehicle-to-Vehicle communication, or V2V, is being tested by automotive manufacturers like Ford as a way to help reduce the amount of accidents on the road.
V2V works by using wireless signals to send information back and forth between cars about their location, speed and direction. The information is then communicated to the cars around it in order to provide information on how to keep the vehicles safe distances from each other.
But researchers aren't only considering V2V communication, vehicle-to-infrastructure communication, or V2I, is being tested as well. V2I would allow vehicles to communicate with things like road signs or traffic signals and provide information to the vehicle about safety issues. Incorporating V2I into vehicles, along with V2V systems, would reduce all target vehicle crashes by 81 percent.
intersection
