The self-driving is going to usher in a significant cultural shift. Today's roads are a hellish mess of potholes, errant pedestrians (and drivers), and other such terrors. There are those who love driving and dream of long, winding road, a powerful engine at their fingertips and the wind in their hair. For everyone else, the car is not that appealing and they'd rather be driven than take the wheel.
With the advent of the self-driving car, all that will change. Driving will cease to be a necessity, and might very well evolve into the new form of public transport. When it comes to driving, we are the weak link in the chain.
Putting a puny, petulant human in charge of a couple of tonnes of steel that hurtles around the Earth at 70km/hr is not such a good idea and the statistics bear that out. The last time we checked, 1.2 million people died in road accidents over a period of a year. Cars are getting safer, yes, but that doesn't mean that accidents are less dangerous to pedestrians and the like.
Google's self-driving cars on the other hand, are actually less safe than the average American driver (1 accident in 74000 for the car vs. 1 in 230,000 for an American) and they still have a ways to go. That said, the Google self-driving car hasn't been involved in any kind of accident that can be considered serious and they're getting better and better.
With electric vehicle and self-driving vehicles now taking centre-stage, cars are finally set to evolve into the next generation of transport. Self-driving cars promise a world where driving is a lost art, where travel might just be a click away (Smart, self-driving cars?).
When the horse-drawn carriage was introduced as a mode of transport, it was revolutionary. The horse was faster, more efficient and could carry greater loads over greater distances. At the peak of its popularity, that very same carriage was seen as a nightmare. Cities were inundated with horse dung and gutters were overflowing; horses started to seem like a real menace. As Top Gear's James May put it, the car, with it's little puffs of blue smoke was a saviour. It brought succor to this world that smelled only of dung and resounded with the buzzing of flies.
Today, the car is noisy, polluting and it's everywhere. The self-driving car, nay, the electric self-driving car will change all of that, and maybe a little more. Right now, the self-driving car is still, well, a car.
When the first, true self-driving car is realised, there will be no need for windows, no need for a dashboard and no need for everyone to face forwards. An electric car doesn't need a large engine and all the paraphernalia that it entails. No engine, no bonnet, no fuss.
An electric car chassis
Wouldn't personal comfort be more important than high-speed and large engines? How would you like to spend a two hour journey with your feet on a settee (or equivalent), sipping tea and contemplating the workings of the universe? Imagine a world with no traffic stops, no pestiferous traffic cops and best of all, no traffic jams. A smart, self-driving car will do all of this and more.
The vehicle you'll use will only be a car by the strictest definition of the word.
Tags: Electric car, Electric Cars, Google, Self Driving cars, transportation
Source: Elon Musk and Google will make cars obsolete
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