Where's my flying car, right? They're working on it, but even by 2026 traffic won't be ready for take-off. Cars will be more autonomous and more connected than ever before, but they won't have gained in altitude.
Instead they'll have picked up some advanced social skills. Such as, knowing where you want to go and what time you need to leave; suggesting you bus or train it instead because the traffic's bad; reminding you to pick up some milk on the way home.
The car industry will change more in the next five to 10 years than it has in the past 50, driven by the convergence of connectivity, electrification and changing customer needs says Mary Barra, chairman and CEO of General Motors. A vehicle won't be just a tool to get you to your destination, though it will still be that. It will be a "mobile rolling device", she says. And it will understand you to an extent that won't seem so uncanny by then.
Cars will be fully integrated with our digital lives and synced with our calendars and social media. They will know our plans before we get in, as well as our habits, preferred service stations, fast food outlets, taste in podcasts and even driving mood via our playlist choice. "Once you start unlocking access to the vehicle via connectivity, you get a bunch of services like never before," says George Parthimos, CEO of Connexion, a Melbourne-based company that makes software for internet-connected cars.
"Hands-off" technology will be more widely available, but cars won't be driving themselves, other than for long enough to, say, make a video call or compose an email. As Techradar reports, the latest BMW 7 series already lets you take your hands off the wheel for up to 15 seconds, and stays centred in a lane at high speeds. But it will be 10 to 20 years before you can expect a car to drive you safely from door to door, Parthimos says. Safety and security is a "massive area", and "they want to make sure they get that right. You don't want hackers to take control of your car," he says.
When integrated into the "Internet of Things" ecosystem, cars will be able to "understand the requirements of your home" and so provide individualised service. "They almost become your butler," says Parthimos.
That's another level on from apps such as Toyota Link, which gives drivers directions, weather information and real-time advice on where to find cheap fuel. It lets them search accommodation, restaurants and businesses in their area while listening to their choice of playlist through the internet music streaming service Pandora, all through the vehicle's audio unit, using Bluetooth and a compatible smartphone.
By 2026 cars will communicate with each other and share information about traffic flow, mishaps, speed and road and weather conditions. If a car stops suddenly or is in danger of hitting another vehicle, all the cars around it will instantly know. They'll be alert and alarmed, with some able to take partial control of the brakes or steering to help avoid a collision.
They'll also be connected to road infrastructure like smart highways and traffic lights, so they can not only self-correct if straying from their lanes, but propose a change of plan en route based on real-time conditions. They'll feed us information via augmented-reality, videogame-style smart displays that blur the distinction between road and screen.
And cars will also have to engage with government-imposed measures to try to address congestion.
"You can't build a city out of congestion," says Chinh Ho, a senior researcher from Sydney University's Institute of Transport and Logistic Studies. "In order to reduce congestion you have to target people who use cars at the moment and get them out of their cars. The only way is to increase the cost and provide more affordable public transport.
To this end, governments continue to examine ways in which motorists might be charged according to how far and when they travel – on all roads, not just dedicated tollways. The Turnbull government is looking at a system of road pricing for heavy vehicles, which would more closely link vehicle charges to their driving kilometres. And, ambitiously perhaps, the federal government has said it will investigate the "potential next steps of options to introduce cost-reflective road pricing for all vehicles".
There'll also be more ride-sharing, and more vehicles powered by electricity. The vehicle fleet will be a mix of combustion, electric and hybrid.
Elon Musk's Tesla Motors is basking in the caressing spotlight reserved for disruptors while burning through investors' cash. But it's the mainstream car companies that will set the future of the car over the next decade, as Bloomberg argues. VW intends spending $US11.2 billion on electric cars with the expectation that up to 25 per cent of its unit sales will be electric by 2025.
By 2026, battery life will have extended so electric vehicles can range up to 800km instead of the current 500km, and batteries will have come down in price. As that happens, the advantages over combustion engines will be more prominent: less maintenance, better air quality, smoother driving, faster acceleration. Logic will be on their side, as Bloomberg notes, because electric vehicles are a vastly superior platform for all the things we expect of cars: autonomous driving, infotainment, connected vehicle and transport-as-a-service technologies. "It simply makes no sense to have an inherently analogue power unit – vibrating, volatile-liquid-consuming, hot-polluting-exhaust-producing – at the heart of a fully digital, sensor-pervaded, solid-state-electronics-controlled system."
Source: the future
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