Editing Platoon (automobile) (section)

=== Principle ===
In one scheme, the roadway has magnetized stainless-steel spikes driven one meter apart in its center.{{Citation needed|date=October 2007}} The car senses the spikes to measure its speed and locate the center of the [[lane]]. Furthermore, the spikes can have either magnetic north or magnetic south facing up. The roadway thus provides small amounts of digital data describing interchanges and recommended speeds.

The cars have [[power steering]] and automatic speed controls, which are controlled by a computer.

The cars organize themselves into platoons of 8 to 25 cars. The cars within a platoon drive themselves a meter apart, so that air resistance is minimized.  The distance between platoons is the conventional [[braking distance]].  If anything goes wrong, the maximum number of harmed cars should be one platoon.

An overview of platooning systems is given in Bergenhem [[wikt:et al.|et al.]]<ref>Carl Bergenhem, Henrik Pettersson, Erik Coelingh, Cristofer Englund, Steven Shladover, Sadayuki Tsugawa, "Overview of Platooning Systems", ITS World Congress, Vienna, 22–26 October 2012, https://publications.lib.chalmers.se/records/fulltext/174621/local_174621.pdf</ref>

Platooning of trucks has been proposed as a concept to reduce the energy consumption of semi-trucks and improve the feasibility of electric semi-trucks.<ref>{{Cite journal |doi = 10.1021/acsenergylett.7b01022|title = Evaluating the Potential of Platooning in Lowering the Required Performance Metrics of Li-Ion Batteries to Enable Practical Electric Semi-Trucks|journal = ACS Energy Letters|volume = 2|issue = 11|pages = 2642–2646|year = 2017|last1 = Guttenberg|first1 = Matthew|last2 = Sripad|first2 = Shashank|last3 = Viswanathan|first3 = Venkatasubramanian|doi-access = free}}</ref>