Autoblog claims to have an inside scoop on some electric car development by VW and Audi. They call it “Inside Volkswagen’s electronic toy store”

Even more exciting than VW’s work with EVs is the research that it’s doing with autonomous cars, that is, driverless cars. After taking second place in DARPA’s Urban Challenge in 2007, the Stanford-VW team came up with the idea of racing an Audi TT up Pike’s Peak this year. Audi has kept the results of this effort hush-hush, but is going to make a public announcement any day now. Interestingly, the cost of the electronics in the DARPA car was around $250,000. But for the Pike’s Peak run the cost was slashed to somewhere between $25,000 and $50,000. That’s a rate of improvement that smashes through Moore’s Law!

I’m going to guess it was at the high end of that rather large price range but they must have picked the low end for a reason. Maybe it’s $25K without the automation? The automation angle is really cool, but I still would like to see a hybrid-diesel as it seems to have the most appropriate power-range metrics for American roads.

Photos are available too.

Mahindra once said they would deliver light diesel-powered pickup trucks to America at the end of 2009. Then they went silent. Now they have written to say the trucks may still come early next year if they can get through the EPA process, find enough parts, and have any left over from domestic sales. Why does this import/export situation seem backwards to me? It used to be Detroit telling the world they might have to wait:

While I cannot give you a firm answer on timing, I can tell you in my estimation, trucks will arrive in the spring of 2011.

Mahindra has applied for and received their EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) certificate, which means the vehicles have passed emission requirements. They also filed with (NHTSA) National Highway Safety Administration, which handles US standards for safety.

With these hurdles completed, it would seem production is imminent, but other factors may hinder the US launch. India’s car sales are on a dramatic trajectory upward. The sales pace combined with an industry wide parts shortage is impacting home market sales, which will have an affect on the United States introduction.

The truck specification sheet can be downloaded from the Mahindra site. The sheet boasts 236 ft/lb of torque while still getting “somewhere around 30 mpg”. This means payload capacity is not only higher than Chevy, Dodge, Ford, Nissan and Toyota but the engine will not struggle under load. A Ford Ranger, for example, puts out only 154 ft/lb torque in their most efficient engine.

So clearly it puts American small pickup trucks to shame on paper in terms of power and efficiency, and Mahindra is rated as one of the “Top 200 Forbes most reputable companies” but it is still up in the air if and when we will be able to test one. That is why for now I have to call it the Naan-Truck.

Update 2023: Oh, India, why must you be so plain awful?

IBM has posted an online simulation game called CityOne, where you can try and make a city as disgusting and dirty…ahem, I mean as clean and efficient as possible:

Think you know what it takes to make the energy systems that serve a city more efficient? Given the opportunity, could you make the city’s water cleaner and more plentiful, its banks more robust and customer-centric and its retail stores more innovative?

Changes you make affect sensors in the game. You are meant to “evolve” four industries: retail, banking, energy and water.

You have to sign in and agree to store information on IBM servers before you can play. I could not help but notice the incongruity here. Do you see a “submit” button?

Does this mean I am not bound by the terms because I clicked continue instead? The game has not even started and I have found a decision flaw.

This reminds me of games I used to play to solve the Middle East conflict. Although it is fun to choose from a limited set of options, after a while it becomes clear that someone has an agenda and you are just learning how to follow along.

The start of the IBM game, for example, gives you three water options based only on technology (that presumably that IBM sells): desalination, smart water meters, and separate water systems. I could not find the option for deregulation, issuing fines, or invading a neighboring state and seizing their water supplies. The “water consultants” in other words give the sort of advice you might expect if IBM placed a consultant in your city.

There is no city jester and no military/security consultant to offset the industry consultants who just seem to want to spend money on IBM.

Don’t ask why a CEO is said to be in charge of a city, instead of an elected official, let alone why this CEO only has four consultants and they are all working on industry. Just play along now.

The San Francisco Chronicle says five families sue PG&E after the San Bruno fire:

The suits say the pipe was a “ticking time bomb” that PG&E ignored. They attack the utility for not having automatic shutoff valves on the line, which could have reduced the time it took to cut off the flow of gas that fed the inferno.

“This wasn’t an accident. This was a foreseeable consequence of ignoring safety measures,” said Frank Pitre, a Burlingame attorney representing the families. He said he would file cases on behalf of about two dozen more families in the next two weeks.

Richard Clarke cited this disaster in his keynote at RSA Europe last week. Here is my problem with his use of it as an example: he first said how simple it is to blow up a gas-line and cause massive destruction, then he said how complicated it is to design and deploy an attack on a utility (e.g. Stuxnet).

I asked him afterward about this apparent contradiction — easy to cause a disaster yet hard to cause a disaster. He said the sophisticated nature of “what they were trying to do” is what made Stuxnet different from the San Bruno explosion.

Ok, regardless of motive, which we can not really know anyway, let’s talk consequences.

Can we honestly say we are far more at risk from a “highly targeted” and “weaponized” and “highly sophisticated” attack like Stuxnet when it has had literally zero impact?

It seems to me that Clarke’s message about cybersecurity is weakened when he brings up examples of actual disasters and how easy they are — like a “ticking time bomb” instead of a bumbling virus.

His speech made me think the non-cyber environmental disasters (especially from energy companies) pose the more present danger (more likely, more severe) than anything he has to say about security. This is not to diminish the importance of security, but to keep it in perspective relative to things that the five families are describing in their lawsuit.