Paving the Road to Savings with GPS - Book Report/Review Example

of the Engineering and Construction of the Concerned 12 April Paving the Road to Savings with GPS-Summary GPS is the only ubiquitous navigation satellite system. Businesses using GPs technology have reported massive savings in terms of distance travelled, fuel costs and travel time. In fact GPS enabled traffic advisory system is being used on a model basis in the US already at I-95. Some Internet vendors are offering GPS jammers online to bypass such systems. However FCC has come real tough on such vendors.

The future of transportation is GPS. Car companies like BMW and Chrysler are already planning to build internet connectivity and Wi-Fi connectivity within their cars by 2009. Customers today prefer to have portable multimedia automobile dashboards that take care of their entertainment and connectivity requirements. Thereby, car makers are vying with each other to create such platforms on their cars. Voice activation is the latest feature in the AI system that allows the drivers to manage their multimedia dashboards through voice commands.

In addition some companies are working to provide hotspots and full routing capabilities on cars. This has given way to a big demand for automobile integrated circuits and onboard storage devices. Intel is already contriving a low power platform that could sync in multimedia AI platforms from varied vendors at one portal. Efforts are on to set up Highway Communication Systems to reduce accidents and congestions by allowing drivers to communicate with each other and the roadside stations. Developers are already looking into an array of technologies that could go into the making of such Communication Systems.

The confusion is as to whether the automobiles are made communication capable first or does one need to set the roadside communication stations first. The demand for cheap and clean fuel has turned the public and industry attention to hydrogen cars. The automakers intend to sell hydrogen cars even before arrangements are made for hydrogen vending. Owing to the imminent technical and economic hurdles, it will take some time before the cleaner cars come to the market. The need to cut on emissions by 2050 is turning the market in favor of hydrogen and electric cars.

However, both the hydrogen and electric cars are being favored on the basis of a big assumption that fuel for them will come from clean and affordable sources. Some model versions of such cars have already entered the market. Honda has launched Honda Clarity an electric car. However, the company does need to make it more affordable and durable to make it a viable option. BMW has launched Hydrogen 7, a hybrid that runs both on gasoline and liquid hydrogen. The scarce storage space for the liquid hydrogen is one big lacuna with this car, making it somewhat impractical.

The costly super insulated tank designed to store liquid hydrogen is one other hurdle here. The usage of hydrogen as a cleaner fuel is marked by many challenges. Lack of existence of a hydrogen vending infrastructure that could meet the practical needs of the consumers is one major setback to the usage of hydrogen as a fuel. The car companies are also facing much challenge as far as the task of contriving workable hydrogen driven fuel cells is concerned. Besides, these fuel cells are not only technology intensive, but are also very costly, requiring precious metals like platinum.

Hydrogen drive cars are also not very durable yet. So far as the electric cars are concerned, the creation of an effective electric power infrastructure is a big challenge. Many technological and logistic issues are marring the creation of a nationwide electric power infrastructure for electric cars.