双语:The Future of the Car: Clean, Safe and It Drives Itself
发布时间:2018年06月27日
发布人:nanyuzi  

The Future of the Car: Clean, Safe and It Drives Itself

汽车的未来:环保、安全、自动驾驶

 

Cars have already changed the way we live. They are likely to do so again

汽车可能再次改变我们的生活方式

 

Some inventions, like some species, seem to make periodic leaps in progress. The car is one of them. Twenty-five years elapsed between Karl Benz beginning small-scale production of his original Motorwagen and the breakthrough, by Henry Ford and his engineers in 1913, that turned the car into the ubiquitous, mass-market item that has defined the modern urban landscape. By putting production of the Model T on moving assembly lines set into the floor of his factory in Detroit, Ford drastically cut the time needed to build it, and hence its cost. Thus began a revolution in personal mobility. Almost a billion cars now roll along the world's highways.

 

有些发明,就像某些物种一样,在其发展过程中似乎会发生周期性的革命。汽车既是如此。从卡尔·本茨开始小批量生产最初的“动力马车”开始,到亨利·福特和他的工程师在1913年实现突破,让汽车变成当代城市景观所特有的无处不在的大众产品为止,这期间一共用去了25年的时间。通过将T型车的生产放到设在底特律厂房中的流水线上进行,福特大大缩短了生产汽车所需要的时间,因而成本也随之下降。于是,一场个人出行能力的革命从此拉开了帷幕。到目前为止,穿梭在世界各国高速公路上的汽车已经接近10亿辆。

 

Today the car seems poised for another burst of evolution. One way in which it is changing relates to its emissions. As emerging markets grow richer, legions of new consumers are clamouring for their first set of wheels. For the whole world to catch up with American levels of car ownership, the global fleet would have to quadruple. Even a fraction of that growth would present fearsome challenges, from congestion and the price of fuel to pollution and global warming.

 

如今,汽车似乎已经为新一轮演进做好了准备。汽车正在发生的变化同其尾气排放方式有关。随着新兴市场的腰包越来越鼓,那里的新消费者“军团”正在为他们的首辆汽车而喧嚣。只要世界各国能够赶上美国的汽车保有量水平,这支汽车舰队的规模将会增长四倍。这个目标哪怕是只有一部分能够得以实现,我们也必将面临从拥堵和汽油价格到污染和全球变暖等艰巨的挑战。

 

Yet, as our special report this week argues, stricter regulations and smarter technology are making cars cleaner, more fuel-efficient and safer than ever before. China, its cities choked in smog, is following Europe in imposing curbs on emissions of noxious nitrogen oxides and fine soot particles. Regulators in most big car markets are demanding deep cuts in the carbon dioxide emitted from car exhausts. And carmakers are being remarkably inventive in finding ways to comply.

 

然而,正如我们在本周的专题报道中所揭示的那样,随着监管的加强和技术智能化水平的提高,汽车正在变得更加环保,它们的燃油效率正在提高,安全性也得以加强。在对有毒氮氧化物和煤烟粉尘的排放实施限制方面,其城市在烟雾中喘息的中国正在向欧洲看齐;在降低汽车尾气中的二氧化碳含量这一问题上,多数的市场监管者正在逐步提高要求;在寻求适应方式方面,汽车制造厂家正表现出十足的创新性。

 

Granted, battery-powered cars have disappointed. They remain expensive, lack range and are sometimes dirtier than they look – for example, if they run on electricity from coal-fired power stations. But car companies are investing heavily in other clean technologies. Future motorists will have a widening choice of super-efficient petrol and diesel cars, hybrids (which switch between batteries and an internal-combustion engine) and models that run on natural gas or hydrogen. As for the purely electric car, its time will doubtless come.

 

不错,电动汽车的发展确实不尽如人意。它们的价格依旧昂贵,有效行驶里程仍然,至于其所谓的环保功能,更是时常为人所诟病——比如说,如果它们依靠火力发电厂生产的电力来运行的话。尽管如此,各汽车厂商却仍然没有放弃努力,他们将大量资金投入到其他一些环保技术中,因此未来驾车者的选择必将越来越多。以传统动力汽车而言,你可以选择燃油效率更高的车型;在新型动力汽车中,你既可以选择混合动力车(这种车可在使用电力和内燃机之间来回切换)也可以选择以天然气或氢气为动力的汽车。至于纯电动汽车,它的时代必将来临,这是谁也无法否认的。

 

Towards the driverless, near-crashless car

未来的发展趋势:无人驾驶,尽量避免撞车

 

Meanwhile, a variety of “driver assistance” technologies are appearing on new cars, which will not only take a lot of the stress out of driving in traffic but also prevent many accidents. More and more new cars can reverse-park, read traffic signs, maintain a safe distance in steady traffic and brake automatically to avoid crashes. Some carmakers are promising technology that detects pedestrians and cyclists, again overruling the driver and stopping the vehicle before it hits them. A number of firms, including Google, are busy trying to take driver assistance to its logical conclusion by creating cars that drive themselves to a chosen destination without a human at the controls. This is where it gets exciting.

 

与此同时,一系列“辅助驾驶”技术正被应用到新车上,这些技术不仅能大大缓解人们在交通拥挤时的驾车压力,并且还具备预防多数交通事故的功能。装备这些技术的新车将会越来越多,它们可以自动倒进停车位,它们能识别交通信号,能在稳定的车流中保持安全距离,而且还能自动刹车,从而避免交通事故的发生。有些汽车厂家向消费者承诺说,他们正在开发的技术能够探测到行人和骑车者,它不仅能代替驾驶员作出判断,而且还能够在车辆相撞之前将车停下来。包括谷歌在内的一些公司正在研制一种不需要人工控制就可以将自己开到某个制定地点的车辆。这种技术之所以让人们感到兴奋,其原因就在于,谷歌的做法正在将辅助技术带向其合乎逻辑的发展结果。

 

Sergey Brin, a co-founder of Google, predicts that driverless cars will be ready for sale to customers within five years. That may be optimistic, but the prototypes that Google already uses to ferry its staff (and a recent visitor from The Economist) along Californian freeways are impressive. Google is seeking to offer the world a driverless car built from scratch, but it is more likely to evolve, and be accepted by drivers, in stages.

 

作为谷歌公司的联合创始人之一,谢尔盖·布林预测说,他们准备在五年内将无人驾驶汽车推向市场。虽说他的这种说法有点乐观,但是这种早已被该公司用来在加州高速公路上运载职员(本刊记者也在前一段时间乘坐过这种车)的原型车还是给人们留下了深刻的印象。谷歌正力争将第一辆无人驾驶汽车推向市场,但这种汽车更可能在其不同的发展阶段产生突变,从而逐渐为驾车者所接受。

 

As sensors and assisted-driving software demonstrate their ability to cut accidents, regulators will move to make them compulsory for all new cars. Insurers are already pressing motorists to accept black boxes that measure how carefully they drive: these will provide a mass of data which is likely to show that putting the car on autopilot is often safer than driving it. Computers never drive drunk or while texting.

 

鉴于传感器和辅助驾驶软件已经证明了它们具有减少事故的能力,因此监管方会力争让它们成为所有新车的强制配件。保险公司已经在游说驾驶员,希望他们能够接受在车辆上安装黑匣子。这种黑匣子能够检测驾驶员的认真状态,由它们所搜集的大量数据可用来证明“让汽车出于自动驾驶状态比有人驾驶更安全”。计算机从不醉驾或者边开车边发短信。

 

If and when cars go completely driverless – for those who want this – the benefits will be enormous. Google gave a taste by putting a blind man in a prototype and filming him being driven off to buy takeaway tacos. Huge numbers of elderly and disabled people could regain their personal mobility. The young will not have to pay crippling motor insurance, because their reckless hands and feet will no longer touch the wheel or the accelerator. The colossal toll of deaths and injuries from road accidents – 1.2m killed a year worldwide, and 2m hospital visits a year in America alone – should tumble down, along with the costs to health systems and insurers.

 

如果某一天汽车完全实现了无人驾驶——对于希望出现这种情况的人来说,这是必然的——那么,它必将给人们的生活带来巨大的便利。对此,谷歌曾做过一个测试并且用摄像机记录下了该实验的全部过程。在这个实验中,一位盲人乘坐着他们研制的无人驾驶汽车实现了出门购买玉米饼的愿望。如果“无人驾驶”梦想成真,对于不计其数的老年人和身体有残疾的人来说,这意味着他们能再次获得自主出行的能力;对于毛手毛脚的年轻人来说,他们可以因再也不用去亲自驾车而省下一大笔汽车保险费;居高不下的交通伤亡数字——每年全世界因交通事故而死亡的人数为120万。仅美国一个国家,每年就有200万人因交通事故而被送进医院——和医疗系统和保险公司因交通事故而产生的成本都应该会大幅下降。

 

Driverless cars should also ease congestion and save fuel. Computers brake faster than humans. And they can sense when cars ahead of them are braking. So driverless cars will be able to drive much closer to each other than humans safely can. On motorways they could form fuel-efficient “road trains”, gliding along in the slipstream of the vehicle in front. People who commute by car will gain hours each day to work, rest or read a newspaper.

 

无人驾驶汽车还能起到减少交通拥堵和节约燃油的作用。当需要刹车时,电脑的速度肯定比人类要快;当前方的车辆刹车时,电脑也能够感觉到。因此,在高速公路上行驶时,无人驾驶汽车可以拉近相互之间的安全距离,它们可以借助于前方车辆形成的气流而滑行前进,形成低油耗的“公路列车”。对于乘坐交通车出行的人们来说,他们可以把每天节省下来的数个小时用于工作、休息或者读书看报。

 

Roadblocks ahead

前路并非一帆风顺

 

Some carmakers think this vision of the future is (as Henry Ford once said of history) bunk. People will be too terrified to hurtle down the motorway in a vehicle they do not control: computers crash, don’t they? Carmakers whose self-driving technology is implicated in accidents might face ruinously expensive lawsuits, and be put off continuing to develop it.

 

在有些汽车厂家看来,这种未来图景(就像亨利·福特曾经谈论的历史一样)无异于痴人说梦。他们认为,人们会因为过于害怕而不敢坐在一辆不由他们控制的汽车中沿着高速公路飞驰:谁又能肯定计算机不会死机呢?当其自动驾驶技术同事故有牵连时,厂家可能会面临毁灭性的昂贵官司,并且还会被禁止继续开发这种技术。

 

Yet many people already travel, unwittingly, on planes and trains that no longer need human drivers. As with those technologies, the shift towards driverless cars is taking place gradually. The cars’ software will learn the tricks that humans use to avoid hazards: for example, braking when a ball bounces into the road, because a child may be chasing it. Google’s self-driving cars have already clocked up over 700,000km, more than many humans ever drive; and everything they learn will become available to every other car using the software. As for the liability issue, the law should be changed to make sure that when cases arise, the courts take into account the overall safety benefits of self-driving technology.

 

然而,许多人早就在不经意间乘坐过不再需要人工来控制的飞机和火车。有了这些技术做榜样,汽车向无人驾驶的转变也会逐渐成为现实。无人驾驶汽车上的软件将掌握人类用来避免事故的技巧。例如,当一个球滚到马路中间时,无人驾驶汽车就会自动刹车。因为,它知道可能有一位孩子正在后面追这个球。到目前为止,谷歌自动驾驶汽车的累计运行里程已经超过70万公里,这已经超过了大多数人驾驶;它们的经验必将为其他正在使用软件的汽车所利用。至于在认定交通事故的责任问题上,为了确保法庭能够将所有涉及自动驾驶技术是否安全的问题都考虑在内,各个国家应当对法律进行修改。

 

If the notion that the driverless car is round the corner sounds far-fetched, remember that TV and heavier-than-air flying machines once did, too. One day people may wonder why earlier generations ever entrusted machines as dangerous as cars to operators as fallible as humans.

 

如果说无人驾驶汽车就要变成现实的概念听起来还很遥远的话,那么就请你回想一下,那些曾经发生在电视和飞机身上的相同的例子。将来,人类总有一天会对下面这个问题感到迷惑不解: 既然前人认为汽车是一种危险的交通工具,那么他们为什么还要将这样危险的机器交给像人类这样不可靠的操作人员来操作呢?


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