Autonomous cars are going to solve many of the world’s problems. There are more than 3,000 death from car crashes each day. This number won’t go to zero anytime soon, but it will be cut significantly as artificial intelligence take the wheel from drivers who can be sleepy, angry, and distracted.
Autonomous cars will also be less polluting than their petroleum based ancestors. This could help eliminate some of the conditions that worsen global warming, and save a lot of money in the process.
While these things are well and good, they make many a motor head wonder, “What happens to driving for the thrill of it?” There are many ways this could go, but here are some of the best guesses so far.
Hybrid Autonomy – It’s unlikely that every car will be made fully autonomous anytime soon. In some areas, cars will be more like shuttle services, showing up where they need to be and carting people around to a destination. But this won’t be everywhere. Many people will still want to enjoy driving as they always have, and in these cases it’s likely that autonomy will act as an aid. Autonomous driving assist technologies can already help people park, and in the near future they will be able to take over if a driver starts to nod off at the wheel or needs to take a phone call. Furthermore, these vehicles are likely going to be faster and sexier than the first generation Leaf. Speed and power don’t have to be sacrificed, necessarily, in an electric and autonomous future.
Driving Ranges and Roads – It’s very likely that in the next decade we’ll start to see roads where cars can not be driven by human drivers. These roads will start to operate much more like trains – Elon Musk’s Hyperloop comes to mind. There will likely be other roads and highways where drivers can drive just as they always have. It’s even possible that these will start to look more like Germany’s Autobahn, with much higher speed limits, as autonomy assist technologies are improved to help drivers minimise the behaviours that result in collisions, even at high speeds. Finally, it’s likely that we will see car tracks that offer experience days, where customers can come to drive faster and with more power than they ever could with a normal vehicle on a public roadway, even in the golden age of the automobile.
In the coming decades, we’re likely to see different customer needs take the automobile in several interesting directions, none of which is likely to completely replace what came before. We’ll have some customers who don’t even want to own a car, but will enjoy autonomous ride share services a la Uber but without the driver. Others will drive their own vehicles but will have driver assist to take over in key scenarios. Others will drive faster and harder than ever before, but only in certain roads and highways. The future of cars means more and better for everyone, not the more homogeneous situation we have now, with its many limitations.