Comment Re:Credibility to rumors? (Score 1) 196
This might allow a competitor such as apple to completely end run the industry because all those years making gas driven drive trains
You mean, like Tesla already did?
complexities in making a great steering system all vanish in this transition.
Wait, you're talking self-driving cars with *no* manual override? Okay, that's going to be permitted first thing, in the year 2047...
a legacy of factories not suitable for modern materials
A widespread transition to composites (which I really, really hope for) could do that, in a way that a switch to aluminum or other metals couldn't (working with aluminum isn't the same as steel, but you still have the basic principles of stamping, cutting, molding, welding etc, which all get thrown out the door when working with composites). But someone needs to find a way to make the composites competitive in a mass-manufacturing, non-niche environment. And preferably when I say "composites" we're not talking single layer E-glass and polyester here.... at the very least it needs to be foam or honeycomb cored with a vinyl ester resin to give the strength and longevity desired. Carbon fiber and epoxy would of course be even better if a good price point can be met. And hopefully in the future we'll be able to affordably get rid of more and more of those hydrogens in the structure... reinforced graphene/ta-C would probably be pretty close to the ultimate manufacturing material one could get, combining the highest known tensile strength with the highest known hardness and compressive strengths.