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Auto Makers finally Get It
By Roger Neumann
Now, here is a comparison of two giant industries, autos and computers; of Intel, Bill Gates, and leaping technology advancement. What finally drove auto makers to build more fuel efficiency into their cars ?
In the late 1970's and early 80's my Subaru fuel mileage got about 38 mpg on the highway. Now here we are 30 years later and I see television ads raving about cars with 30 mpg. There are exceptions like the new hybrids like the Prius with 50-60 mpg but basically we have seen very little progress. The auto makers were tickled pink with their tremendous profits on huge vehicles. Now we suddenly see slumping auto sales and they are trying to retool to smaller more efficient vechicles. During the last 30 years since the first upgrade in fuel standards under President Jimmy Carter-Congress has done almost nothing. Now let me tell a tale of computers.
In 1983-4, a team I worked on was evaluating hard drives for a company P.C. The highest capacity at that time was 160 megabytes. I saw electronic retailer ads this past Sunday for home computers with 180 to 320 gigabytes hard drive capacity. The prices for external drives are surprising low. The unofficial mantra at my company was to build the next generation of minicomputers with the same performance for 1/2 the price or twice the performance for the same price. Also while I was there the competitive product business cycle shrank from 24 months to almost 12 months.
Please consider that the internal combustion engine is over 100 years old and that we have auto drive trains still using the same basic operation as then. Tubes, transistors, and the first Univac computers are in museums.What will it take to finally revolutionize our personal transportation ?
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Contributor's Note
Toyota shut down its Tundra truck plant for two months here in San Antonio. Auto sales ads are full of deep discounts. Europe and China have 200 mph magnetic trains. Why are we so far behind ?
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This intel was contributed by rnalamo
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May, 2012
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