Driverless Cars: The Vehicles of Tomorrow
I recently read an article in the Fortune magazine that discussed the merging of both Detroit and Silicon Valley. Symbolically, a so-called “merging” of both places would mean a consolidation of both the technology and automotive industries. A massive trend that the automotive industry is facing is the transition from traditional vehicles to autonomous ones. What this means is that in the not-so-distant future, individuals will be able to just sit in their cars while the vehicles drive themselves automatically-no attention to the road needed (that sounds a bit sketch). American auto-companies have already to begun investing heavily in driverless software, and have also formed partnerships with tech companies from Silicon Valley to stay ahead of the game. Also, tech giants such as Alphabet (Google’s parent company), Uber, and Apple have even made moves to produce such vehicles in order to grab some of the future market share. If you think that we won’t see this vehicles until 2030 at the earliest, think again! Ford has issued a statement that it is on a timeline to bring driverless vehicles to the road as early as 2021.
Such a societal evolution is arriving faster than we think, but is the world ready for such a change? I think that we as human beings fear what we don’t quite understand. Personally, I feel like driverless vehicles may not be what the world is ready for but what it needs. Statistics show that the world is experiencing a large trend in urbanization and from what I can see, our future is a future of cities. Driverless cars can allow for ride-sharing, where people can use their own vehicles as taxis that drive themselves while they are busy doing something else. Also, such vehicles can increase overall productivity so that the driver can do other activities in the car such as reading, work, etc. That’s hours of productivity per week if you really think about it. These are just a couple of the many reasons why I believe driverless vehicles will be beneficial to the future of mankind. Let me know what your thoughts are!