Where Does All the Computer Power Go?

"Electric cars: Wingless migration"
The Economist, November 1st 2007

This article deals with the creation of two new electric car companies in the United States, Tesla and Aptera, as well as new manufactures of electric cars in other countries. The article says:

One reason for the emergence of firms such as Aptera is that designing a new vehicle has become as much an exercise in software simulation as in metal (or even carbon-fibre) bashing. That enables the firm's engineers to do extensive development work—even things like crash-testing—on a computer. This is much cheaper than building endless prototypes and driving lots of them into walls. Another reason is the widespread availability of previously specialised components such as lithium-ion batteries. That means that an upstart such as Aptera can focus on the electronic brains of the vehicle and its final assembly, rather than having to make everything from scratch. It can thus, it believes, turn a profit without having to produce large volumes.

Of course, a lot of computer power is involved when you substitute computer aided design for old fashion design in hardware, computer simulation for crash testing, and computer based outsourcing for in-house manufacture. This is not the kind of computer power you get with your laptop!