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Ford is embracing the opportunity to drive fundamental change within the automotive industry. Quantum computing opens up a new way of processing, managing and storing information, with capabilities that surpass that of traditional computing. Ford is recognizing its potential and looking at automotive challenges from a new perspective, teaming up with NASA to help find solutions with quantum computing.
Solving Challenges with Quantum Computing
The first problem Ford and NASA will be looking to solve with quantum computing is that of how commercial fleet owners managing numerous vehicles can efficiently manage their energy consumption. Since 2018, the team has been working on this problem at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley. It is a problem that has stumped traditional computing.
In this scenario, a fleet of diesel delivery vehicles is used to make deliveries (a scenario common to couriers and commerce businesses). The challenge is that vehicles must be operating in optimal drive cycles in order to manage the engine’s particulate filters, to result in efficient vehicle operation and optimum environmental compliance. Traditional computers are able to model route mappings but only for a limited number of vehicles and locations.
With multiple complex factors that must be simultaneously taken into consideration, such as traffic flow patterns, speed changes, number of vehicles, relevant locations and potential routes, traditional computers fail to calculate the number of possible scenarios in order to find the most efficient route.
Advantages with Quantum Computing
Ford and NASA have identified that this sort of problem lends itself to quantum computing. The key difference between conventional computing and quantum computing is that conventional computers are linear. Their transistors can only process data as 1s or 0s and the information they receive is processed as distinct numbers through step-by-step processes. Therefore, there is a limit to the capacity of traditional computers’ processing power.
Quantum computers, on the other hand, run processes in parallel, and can represent information as anything from 1 to 0, information can be represented as odds, and in this way multiple scenarios can be processed simultaneously. Thus means that where traditional computing fails, quantum can pick up the slack.
In the context of fleet management, it is easy to see how the quantum method facilitates analysis in parallel of multiple scenarios, enabling it to understand what the most efficient route is, allowing for optimum environmental compliance.
It is not only Ford being instrumental in the advancement of this technology in the automotive industry. Other car manufacturers are currently working on similar projects, looking into how quantum computing can benefit all kinds of automotive challenges. For example, Volkswagen is looking at the technology to enable them to create batteries for electric vehicles that would make them more powerful.
One avenue to be explored is replacing the battery’s graphite cell anode with lithium. The trouble here being that lithium sheds when charging or discharging, and the particles interact with the electrolytes. Quantum computing can be used to predict how these atoms would likely interact, in order to help develop a lithium anode alternative that would produce more power.
Conclusion
The route mapping problem is the first of many scenarios in which Ford is hoping to use quantum computing. This sort of technology is still in its infancy, with experts in all industries working to figure out the extent of its possible applications. Therefore, as the technology develops we expect to see it being used to solve more problems in all sectors.
In the near future, Ford will be developing the use of quantum computing to help with tasks such as material development, manufacturing and optimization of battery chemistry. With other automotive giants also involved in furthering the use of quantum computing, we can expect this technology to develop rapidly as companies inside and outside of the automotive sector team up to explore its possibilities.
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