As more technology invades our vehicles, the Consumer Electronics Show has become something of a window into the future of the automobile. More than just traditional automakers and automotive suppliers, consumer electronics companies continue to show an increasing interest in designing software and hardware for cars. In past years, we’ve seen a broad scope of ideas for the car of the future, but at this year’s show, everyone seemed to have the same ideas. With that kind of independent consensus, we get a pretty good idea what tomorrow’s cars will be like.
Two central, related themes quickly emerged from the show: mobility and seamless integration. The first is a catchall for every facet of future transportation. Not just your autonomous car but also ride-sharing, smart infrastructure, robotic exoskeletons, advanced wheelchairs, and last-mile implements such as scooters, skateboards, and bicycles to get you from the car to the door. The second refers to the ability to transfer your work or entertainment instantly from one device to another. You can take work from your laptop to your TV, from your phone to your car, or from your tablet to your work computer.
How do they relate? Time and money. First, there’s a lot of money to be made in software and hardware that allow cars to operate autonomously, not to mention all those other aspects of mobility. Once autonomous cars are a reality, people who previously couldn’t drive for age or physical reasons are suddenly independent again and able to become more active consumers. More important, once everyone’s riding around in autonomous cars, they’ll need something to occupy their time. Most people are going to turn to the internet, which opens up huge opportunities for advertisers, online retailers, and data miners to get at them. Be it Amazon, Netflix, or Google Ads, everyone wants to get content in front of you as often as possible. According to a study cited by Bosch, people with the worst commutes will have up to 95 hours of newfound free time once their cars are autonomous. Somewhat surprisingly, nearly every automaker, supplier, and electronics company had the same ideas about how to get to that point.
You can already see your car of the future taking shape. It’s going to be autonomous, and it’s going to have a high-speed internet connection and Wi-Fi, so you can watch movies and shop online en route. But we’re getting ahead of ourselves. Let’s start at the beginning.
You need to go somewhere. If you’re not at home, you’ll get on your electric scooter/bike/skateboard/unicycle and ride it to the parking lot, or at least to a convenient rendezvous point your car can be autonomously summoned to.
As you approach your car, you won’t reach for a key fob or even the door handle. A camera mounted on or near the door will read your face, recognize you, and unlock and open the door. Simultaneously, the car will load all of your preferences, from radio presets to seat position to lighting levels to temperature and more (assuming you haven’t made any changes or specific requests through your smartphone already).
If you haven’t already input a destination via your smartphone, the car will ask for one. Here, we find two approaches to the same solution. An artificial intelligence-based personal assistant will live in your car’s computer and handle all these tasks, but different automakers have different ideas about how you ought to interact with it. Some, such as BMW, envision it as a passive drone waiting for your commands or prompting you with simple yes-or-no, A-or-B questions. Others, such as Toyota, imagine a friendly personality that interacts with you, something akin to Iron Man’s Jarvis. Either way, the AI will always be watching and listening, learning your habits, wants, and needs. It will be ready with helpful suggestions on everything from music and entertainment selections to driving routes and retailers. It’ll listen to your conversations and phone calls, remember what you were watching or listening to last, know everything in your calendar, and read your mood via biometrics. It’ll be just as if you had a human personal assistant following you around every second.
Once you arrive, your car will drop you as close to the entrance as possible then shuffle off to park itself. There, it’ll wait patiently to be summoned again. If needed, it might even cruise over to the local wireless charger (if there isn’t already one embedded in the parking lot). That’s right, your future car will be electric. There are several reasons for this, from environmental to packaging, but it’s going to happen.
With a relatively small motor tucked away between the wheels and the battery out of the way under the floor, you’ll have plenty more space for people and stuff. Because you won’t need to focus on driving, the interior is going to become a very big deal. You’ll need space to stretch out, so the steering wheel will retract into the dash (so long as you still have one) and your seat will move back (assuming you’re not already riding in the back). Big screens built into the dash and the seat backs will let you watch streaming video or surf the internet. Augmented reality combined with head-up displays on the windows will allow you to get information on anything around the vehicle just by looking or pointing at it. Or electrically tinting windows will darken to block it all out. Directed audio and noise-canceling technologies will create zones around individual passengers, so sound from your movie doesn’t bleed over to another passenger’s Pandora station. With biometrics, the car will know exactly who is in each seat and will be able to set their individual preferences for entertainment, climate, and seat position.
Your car might be driving itself while you’re checking Instagram, but it won’t be doing it alone. Sure, every car could be an island unto itself, navigating the world based only on what its radar, lidar, ultrasonic sensors, and cameras can see, but why not share information when we have the capability to do so? Your car will talk to other cars around it, sharing information about where it’s going and when it’s going to change lanes or make a turn so the others can plan accordingly. It’ll also talk to a central data center, sharing information about traffic, weather, road conditions, and more, all of which will be fed out to every other car on the road. Where local governments are willing and able, your car will talk to the stoplights and other smart infrastructure, allowing it to adjust its speed to hit as many green lights as possible.
The big, open question: What will your car look like? For most people, the answer is likely to be some kind of box. City dwellers might want a small car, so they’d get a hatchback. Families need more space, so they’d get a van or crossover. Why different-sized boxes? They’re the most efficient use of space. The more square the vehicle is, the more room there is for you to stretch out, for additional passengers, and for your stuff. The vision is the same no matter whom you ask: Your car will be a mobile living room, and nobody’s living room is shaped like the inside of a coupe or sedan.
Your car’s interior might be inspired by a lounge or living room, but it won’t look like one for quite some time, and you have physics to thank for that. Automakers like to imagine seats that swivel around sideways and backward or fold down into beds like first-class airline seats. Someday, when every car is autonomous and none ever crashes, that might be possible. Until then, you’re going to need to be facing forward or backward and in no more than a reclined position so the seat belts and airbags can still do their jobs. It’s unlikely you’ll even be able to switch from front- to rear-facing while the car is in motion.
There’s one more question to consider: Will you own your car? With enough autonomous cars on the road, especially in cities, there might not be a reason to. Ride-hailing services such as Uber and Lyft already allow you to summon a car to any location, and both are preparing to introduce autonomous cars to their fleet. According to research from Honda, your car spends 96 percent of its life sitting. Why drop tens of thousands of dollars on one if you can rent or share one and have it delivered to your door? If you do choose to own, you could also rent it out when you’re not using it. Make it available, accept a booking request, take payment online, and automatically dispatch the car and an encrypted key to allow the renter to access it. Create a geo fence to limit how far it can travel or how long it can be used.
How many of these ideas will come to pass? Given the industry consensus, it’s likely most, if not all, will. But when? Level 4-5 autonomous cars, which require little to no driver intervention, are still many years away, and they’re the gatekeepers to many of these other ideas. Electric vehicles are here now, but prices are just starting to come down while ranges and chargers are just starting to go up, so it’ll be a few more years. AI-based personal assistants already exist, but it’s an emerging field, and nobody is quite ready to turn over their lives to Siri, Cortana, Alexa, or any other quite yet. Some of these technologies are already in automobiles, and others will make their debut soon. Expect them to slowly advance over the next decade as costs come down, AIs get smarter, and consumers get comfortable with the idea of computer-driven cars that know their favorite bands and TV shows.
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