What technology are we still waiting for ?

[Craikeybaby]

ging84 said:

kambites said:

Removing wing mirrors would be of significant benefit to aerodynamics and hence fuel economy.

I looked into this
and it wouldn't they are too small and close the the body to make almost any difference if they have been design with even a small amount of streamlining.
if it would make a differnce, then it would have been done long ago

It makes enough difference for manufacturers to be seriously investigating replacing them.

[DuraAce]

Tablets that still work properly after they are a few years old and have had a couple of updates.

My scabby old laptop works fine shame my fancy ipad doesn't.

[ADEuk]

A driverless car with a sport button.

[hman]

isnt that a taxi with an extra £20 waved at them for nailing it?

[Toltec]

Schermerhorn said:

Time Travel - if such a thing can ever be invented

If it can exist then it has.

[anonymous-user]

Sixpackpert said:

How about auto fog lights. They go on when they should and go off when they should. PH's retina's would be saved!

TBH, it's about time we stopped fitting fog lamps to cars. They were useful 40 years ago, when all you had was a couple of dim 5w rear marker lamps. Now, when most cars have a massive array of super bright LEDs across the back they are pointless imo, and just help to "hide" the action of the brake lamps. I literally cannot think of a single case in probably 10 years where i have sen just a cars fog lamps and not the normal tail lamps ??

[crosseyedlion]

kambites said:

hornetrider said:

kambites said:

I almost always enter my home through my (remote opening) garage door anyway.

One presumes you must suffer the tedium of inserting a physical key into the internal door?

Why would I lock the internal door?

It gets locked once or twice a year when we go away on holiday; otherwise it stays open.

Garage door openers are extremely easy to scan and copy, even from a distance. In fact, as there would be no forced entry required, surely that's the same as them having a key? When you're out of the house, I didn't think you're normally covered if they don't force entry? For the sake of a world of pain arguing that point with the insurance when the worst happens. Why not just...I don't know...lock it?

[kambites]

crosseyedlion said:

Garage door openers are extremely easy to scan and copy, even from a distance. In fact, as there would be no forced entry required, surely that's the same as them having a key? When you're out of the house, I didn't think you're normally covered if they don't force entry? For the sake of a world of pain arguing that point with the insurance when the worst happens. Why not just...I don't know...lock it?

My insurance company simply has a clause saying "the house must be secured", I asked them what that meant and they said the garage door counted (not all do, only certain models). There would be absolutely no security benefit in locking a door between my garage and the house because if they can get into the garage, they can not only spend as long as they want in complete privacy opening the internal door, but have a garage full of tools to do it.

I've got tools which could cut a hole through the wall in less than a minute even if the door wasn't there.

Edited by kambites on Tuesday 23 December 11:34

[xRIEx]

crosseyedlion said:

kambites said:

hornetrider said:

kambites said:

I almost always enter my home through my (remote opening) garage door anyway.

One presumes you must suffer the tedium of inserting a physical key into the internal door?

Why would I lock the internal door?

It gets locked once or twice a year when we go away on holiday; otherwise it stays open.

Garage door openers are extremely easy to scan and copy, even from a distance. In fact, as there would be no forced entry required, surely that's the same as them having a key? When you're out of the house, I didn't think you're normally covered if they don't force entry? For the sake of a world of pain arguing that point with the insurance when the worst happens. Why not just...I don't know...lock it?

Correct, the wording is usually something like, "forcible and violent entry or exit."

The garage door will be classed as a final exit door so they should have asked details of all final exit doors and locks used. If they accepted that (or didn't ask the question) then fine, but theft cover still won't apply if burglars don't break anything on their way in or out.

[Clivey]

jonah35 said:

The average home to catch up with the average car.

Heated sofa, automatically opening and closing doors and setting alarm, your phone to work via the home electronic system etc.

I mean, a key to open your home?! Yet a £2k mondeo has a fob. I know homes have it but most don't.

Completely agree!

xRIEx said:

...but theft cover still won't apply if burglars don't break anything on their way in or out.

I can think of quite a few ways to break into the average UK house without damaging anything. What about if they use lockpicks on a normal door? Not covered?

[crosseyedlion]

Clivey said:

I can think of quite a few ways to break into the average UK house without damaging anything. What about if they use lockpicks on a normal door? Not covered?

Bit different to having what would effectively be a copied key. It would be operating the garage door using the conventional means.

Not saying its the insurances standpoint, but my worry would be they could argue a level of negligence if there was a door to the garage that could could have been locked but wasn't.

[xRIEx]

Clivey said:

xRIEx said:

...but theft cover still won't apply if burglars don't break anything on their way in or out.

I can think of quite a few ways to break into the average UK house without damaging anything. What about if they use lockpicks on a normal door? Not covered?

I'm fairly sure it's classed as forcible entry. To clarify, I think the intention is to place the onus on the policyholder to ensure the house is secured (no particular reason why an electronic lock wouldn't count, there). However, part of the issue is what can be proven - picking a lock may leave scratches or something that indicates the lock was picked; a cloned electronic key (or physical key for that matter) may not be so easy to detect. There could be parallels with how insurers dealt with the BMWs stolen with cloned keys.

[anonymous-user]

T0MMY said:

While it would be nice for me to sleep in the back of my car while it whisked me along on my 90 minute commute, I'd be extremely worried that the natural end point of self driving cars will be that humans are no longer allowed to drive at all.

You're not wrong, but having seen the dreadful driving standards of your average motorists I might be willing to accept that on all major roads if we could still have some fun on the B roads that those knob ends are too scared to use anyway.

[anonymous-user]

kambites said:

My insurance company simply has a clause saying "the house must be secured", I asked them what that meant and they said the garage door counted (not all do, only certain models). There would be absolutely no security benefit in locking a door between my garage and the house because if they can get into the garage, they can not only spend as long as they want in complete privacy opening the internal door, but have a garage full of tools to do it.

I've got tools which could cut a hole through the wall in less than a minute even if the door wasn't there.

Edited by kambites on Tuesday 23 December 11:34

I agree totally with your thinking, it reminds me of a chap I knew that never bothered with offsite data backups but kept his backup tapes at the far end of his warehouse to the servers. His reasoning is that if both ends of the building had burned down he was fked anyway and would be taking early retirement so it wasn't worth his effort to take tapes offsite.

[plfrench]

Muddle238 said:

Boeing 787 window shades are electrochromatic jobbies I believe, in 20 years we will probably see this technology applied to the tops of windscreens and side windows as a replacement for the sun visor.

Ferrari used this tech in the 575 Superamerica's glass roof, allowing a selectable tint.

[kambites]

Don't lots of manufacturers offer electrochromatic sunroofs these days?

[SpeedyDave]

rovermorris999 said:

Cheap, high-capacity batteries for electric cars. Until we do, electric cars are literally not going very far.

Tesla Gigafactory will be running within a couple of years and will produce more batteries than the rest of the world's li-ion production combined, ultimately scaling up to many times existing worldwide production capacity.

Expected to drive the cost of the batteries down at least 30% and I expect there will be performance improvements there too.

Their cars do pretty well already, 250 mile range, charge 80% in 40min at their fast charge stations and you're filling completely for free forever.

Battery swap system isn't being deployed but its been demonstrated that could change the battery twice in the time it takes to fill a petrol tank.

[rovermorris999]

SpeedyDave said:

Tesla Gigafactory will be running within a couple of years and will produce more batteries than the rest of the world's li-ion production combined, ultimately scaling up to many times existing worldwide production capacity.

Expected to drive the cost of the batteries down at least 30% and I expect there will be performance improvements there too.

Their cars do pretty well already, 250 mile range, charge 80% in 40min at their fast charge stations and you're filling completely for free forever.

Battery swap system isn't being deployed but its been demonstrated that could change the battery twice in the time it takes to fill a petrol tank.

Lots of 'could' and 'will' in there. We'll see.

[dave_s13]

rovermorris999 said:

SpeedyDave said:

Tesla Gigafactory will be running within a couple of years and will produce more batteries than the rest of the world's li-ion production combined, ultimately scaling up to many times existing worldwide production capacity.

Expected to drive the cost of the batteries down at least 30% and I expect there will be performance improvements there too.

Their cars do pretty well already, 250 mile range, charge 80% in 40min at their fast charge stations and you're filling completely for free forever.

Battery swap system isn't being deployed but its been demonstrated that could change the battery twice in the time it takes to fill a petrol tank.

Lots of 'could' and 'will' in there. We'll see.

Well I've just bought and electric car (not a tesla sadly) so I think they're on to something.

[anonymous-user]

Matter transporter for nearly instant travel.

It may be the technology that's required for colonisation of other planets once the Earth is incapable of supporting life.