The Monroe Street Journal

Issue date: 1/28/08 Section: News

Media Credit: Shankar Sundaram [Click to enlarge]

Will hydrogen ever fuel our automobiles, or will we all be driving electric cars in the future? And if the latter becomes the norm, how will the electric grid, which is already stressed, be able to support the increased demand? These are just some of the questions that arose during the FuturTech panel, "The Future of Sustainable Transportation."

This panel was one of the seven panel discussions that made up the very well orchestrated FuturTech 2008 Conference this past Friday. For those of you not in the know, FuturTech is a business and technology conference which brings students from Ross, the College of Engineering, and the School of Information together with industry leaders to grapple with the issues surrounding the intersection between the disciplines.

Sitting on the transportation panel was Roland Kibler, Manager/Technology Director at NextEnergy; Ian Sutherland, GM Fuel Cell Activities and Electric Vehicles; Dr. Peter Sweatman, UM Transportation Research Director; and Jonathan Krones, MIT Vehicle Design Summit. Each provided great perspective on the industry and engaged the audience for over an hour in a wide range of issues. The three subtopics that I really enjoyed were the discussions about the current research into driving habits, enabling digital technologies, and alternative fuels.

Did you know that roughly 50% of all trips in a vehicle are for distances that cover 5 miles or less? Dr. Sweatman introduced this fact and then went on to discuss his research into understanding how people use their vehicle or, as the PhD's call it, naturalistic driving habits. He then discussed the notion of matching a vehicle to a person's driving habits, which makes total sense but is something I have never considered. However if this trend does emerge, maybe this could be the role of the Smart car in your garage…

The panel then discussed the overall theme of the FuturTech Conference, "The Digital Provide". The discussion focused specifically on the enabling digital technologies which are mostly comprised of communicative sensors and which allow a vehicle to create a situational awareness about itself. Lane detection and radar cruise control are two technologies that encompass this space and are already offered in vehicles today.

Continued...

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