What’s all the fuss about …
Over 1.2 million people are killed on the roads every year across the globe (40% are drink related), annually we waste light years, yes I said light years driving and mostly alone, never mind unconsciously chew up vast quantities of the earths natural resources (oil, the ozone, land etc) as we go about the business of life getting ourselves and our products from A to B
With the dawn of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and supercomputing, it’s no wonder that great minds spanning the digital giants (Google, Apple etc), car manufacturers (Mercedes, Audi etc), transport companies (you can bet Uber are in the game) and car/sensortech startup’s (too many to name, but Mobileye from Israel is a dominant player) are working furiously to develop the hardware and physical products, push the AI boundaries and are testing driverless cars on the road everyday in a frantic effort to seismically change transport as we know it today
And all to good cause given my opening comments but the broader impacts of this dawning technology (and I’m getting more and more assured it’s coming, and soon) are slowing being revealed and rationalised. If you have a few minutes, watch the YouTube clip below, issued in May 2014, which brings a very human and emotional context for how the driving experience could be revolutionised
And after you do, just stretch your mind for a few minutes on the broader reaching effects that a driverless world might have, which would include (but not exhaustive):
- car and energy industries (driverless cars are most likely to be electric)
- insurance – the bet and early indications is that this is a safer way to get around … it would need to be to be mass adopted and accepted (you’ll notice the soft and cuddly feature set of the google car)
- parking (why would you leave a driverless car in a car park when it could be transporting something else for you)
- drive-time entertainment and media consumption – in a driverless world, driving will become productive work, social or leisure time
- lending and ownership – why would you own a car when you might ‘uberlike’ just rent a driverless companion and transport becomes a service
- And why would this stop at people transport, what about freight
So I’m of the mindset that driverless world will surely be a very different one, but to give balance there is still a lot to be figured out, mainly focused around regulation, hacking, ethics (who’s responsible for the speeding ticket, or more dauntingly the accidents (manufacturer or owner)) and infrastructure
Hence there’s a lot of fuss to come …
