CNN is running a story about
RUF the Futuristic Robotic Cars that could drive you
to work someday. Well sort of. It's an electric car that you drive to a rail station. Then the car gets itself onto a rail and
drives itself to
the end of the rail and then you drive it away. RUF is the astronomically witty acronym for Rapid, Urban, Flexible. The RUF is a
neat concept that even I've thought of before, yawn, but could this really be our future?
CNN
story on RUF
the Robotic Cars I'm a little sceptical about it for a few
reasons. Being electric, the RUF has all the problems of
electric cars. It can't go very far so forget it driving you across
country while you sleep. It only has a top speed of around
60mph or so which seems a lot slower than today's hectic traffic except
during rush hour. I'm also wondering what sort of
safety gadgets this thing has if someone's car ahead of you runs out of
go-go juice? If you went to sleep would your car just
crash into it? One last thing I'm wondering is will there be
multiple entrance and exit points or will it only have one long rail
where you can only get on at one end and off the other?
Seems
like the guy is doing a lot of campaigning for this device. I guess
we'll have to wait for the future to see if the idea takes off or
not.