That hasn’t happened, and so you might find yourself feeling somewhat disappointed with the relative baby steps that the automobile industry has taken in that time. But don’t worry – huge innovation has occurred under the hood and things are only going to get more incredible in the years to come.
The cars we’ll be driving in 2050 will most likely make ‘flying cars’ seem boring and retro. Read on to see what those vehicles might look like and what technological progress has in store for the humble car...
Autopilot
By Nogwater
Autopilot – or self-driving cars – is almost certainly something we’re going to see more of in the coming years. This is an area that has already seen considerable progress with cars that can self-park (and sometimes under conditions where we couldn’t have done it ourselves), so it’s not a big stretch to think that in the future cars might be able to completely takeover and handle entire journeys. Just get in the car, type in your destination, and then relax until you reach your destination. And this also has some rather incredible implications. As if you’re not driving the car yourself, that would mean in theory that there’d be no need for driving lessons. You wouldn’t have people who couldn’t drive, as they’d just be able to sit back and relax (though this won’t come for a good while – having a human ‘backup’ will be highly advisable for the short term). That also means that whoever was ‘driving’ the car would be able to get on with work or just watching a film, and the trains and busses might become nearly obsolete.
In fact you wouldn’t even need a driver at all. If you wanted to send someone a piece of furniture then you could simply instruct your car to drive to their house and park outside, before returning home after it was unloaded. Again though this would be a long way off – particularly considering the multiple security issues this would pose.
In order for completely self-driven cars to work, they would need to be able to communicate with other cars on the road in order to know what was in front of them and what was behind. This ‘hive’ mentality between cars would then allow for some pretty amazing organisational feats as the autopilot would always be able to avoid jams and other problems. You’d never have anyone hogging the middle lane and accidents would be very rare. In short, the traffic would work like a well-oiled machine and you’d never end up queuing. In turn this would mean that estimated arrival times would be spot on and that we could get accurate predictions for how much fuel each journey would cost us. The only downside? There’d never be an excuse for being late again...
Think this is all too far fetched? Think again: already by last year self-driving cars from Google had completed over 300,000 miles of test drives in various conditions with zero incidences. Bearing in mind that the average human has an accident every 165,000 miles that’s a pretty significant result!
“Google’s embarrassed the car industry by getting out ahead on this and getting all the attention” says automotive analyst Roger Lanctot.
The cars we’ll be driving in 2050 will most likely make ‘flying cars’ seem boring and retro. Read on to see what those vehicles might look like and what technological progress has in store for the humble car...
Autopilot
By Nogwater
Autopilot – or self-driving cars – is almost certainly something we’re going to see more of in the coming years. This is an area that has already seen considerable progress with cars that can self-park (and sometimes under conditions where we couldn’t have done it ourselves), so it’s not a big stretch to think that in the future cars might be able to completely takeover and handle entire journeys. Just get in the car, type in your destination, and then relax until you reach your destination. And this also has some rather incredible implications. As if you’re not driving the car yourself, that would mean in theory that there’d be no need for driving lessons. You wouldn’t have people who couldn’t drive, as they’d just be able to sit back and relax (though this won’t come for a good while – having a human ‘backup’ will be highly advisable for the short term). That also means that whoever was ‘driving’ the car would be able to get on with work or just watching a film, and the trains and busses might become nearly obsolete.
In fact you wouldn’t even need a driver at all. If you wanted to send someone a piece of furniture then you could simply instruct your car to drive to their house and park outside, before returning home after it was unloaded. Again though this would be a long way off – particularly considering the multiple security issues this would pose.
In order for completely self-driven cars to work, they would need to be able to communicate with other cars on the road in order to know what was in front of them and what was behind. This ‘hive’ mentality between cars would then allow for some pretty amazing organisational feats as the autopilot would always be able to avoid jams and other problems. You’d never have anyone hogging the middle lane and accidents would be very rare. In short, the traffic would work like a well-oiled machine and you’d never end up queuing. In turn this would mean that estimated arrival times would be spot on and that we could get accurate predictions for how much fuel each journey would cost us. The only downside? There’d never be an excuse for being late again...
Think this is all too far fetched? Think again: already by last year self-driving cars from Google had completed over 300,000 miles of test drives in various conditions with zero incidences. Bearing in mind that the average human has an accident every 165,000 miles that’s a pretty significant result!
“Google’s embarrassed the car industry by getting out ahead on this and getting all the attention” says automotive analyst Roger Lanctot.
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