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Share. Don’t Drive. Repeat.

Last week, American manufacturer Ford released a 44-page document answering questions about self-driving cars, No one asked them to, no major development in this emergent segment of the automotive industry took place, no tragic incident involving autonomous vehicles (AV) was recorded. And yet, Ford thought best to shed some light on a subject that not all properly understand.
Scene from Minority Report wil Tom Cruise and self-driving cars 1 photo
Photo: 20th Century Fox
AVs are in essence cars that can drive themselves. There is a big number of them currently being developed by carmakers, IT and even transportation companies. Why? Because of the future.

Prophets say that probably during our lifetime AVs will become common place, fueled by the ride-sharing trend. As far as predictions go, in the near future few will actually own cars, and most will share them. Because of this, several important carmakers are beginning to create their own car sharing companies.

In their vision, these huge fleets of cars could and should be populated with AVS, creating some sort of driverless taxi service that can be summoned via an app. Equally important, fleets of delivery cars with no drivers could be created, cutting cost for companies and congestion for cities.

Until recently, getting from one place to the next by some motorized means was called transportation. Now, that process of being on the move is called mobility. Transportation implied oftentimes ownership of some object. Mobility, on the other hand, does not. It implies sharing.

FIRST, SHARING

There are two main reasons car sharing could become the future urban reality. First, there’s congestion, an increasingly difficult problem to solve. As most of the world’s existing infrastructure was built to accommodate far lower traffic levels, today’s huge number of cars on the streets cause serious problems.

A RAC Foundation 2002 report stated that as much as 30 percent of the real estate in city centers is devoted to parking. That’s because most of the cars seen at peak hour in traffic spend the rest of the time being idle.

Having one car serving as a means of trasnport for possibly a dozen people each day might help clear our roads. First, by taking cars off the streets. Then, by reducing the number and size of parking lots, and clearing up space for other uses.

Car sharing, an industry that is poised to worth possibly billions in the coming years, is a big part of the solution.

But why do these cars, already shared by million world wide, need to be driverless?

It all comes down to smart cities.

THEN, NOT DRIVING

The rate at which our technology progresses is so high that one could believe Steve Jobs and his kind reversed-engineered some piece of alien tech they found in a field somewhere. The increasingly connected world has opened up possibilities never dreamt before, including, or especially, for transportation.

For the auto industry, this evolution translates to connected cars, vehicles that can share information with each other, with traffic signs and ultimately with pedestrian hand-held devices.

Since computers are known to compute faster and better than humans, it’s perfectly feasible that a truly connected city will not only welcome AVs, but need them.

For passengers, AVs could mean not wasting time keeping eyes on the road en route to the destination and focusing on solving this or that problem while in motion. For companies, having AVs delivering goods could mean less logistics expenses.

BUT CAN WE TRUST THEM?

Yes. Not now, but soon. As with any emerging technology, there’s an embedded fear that AVs might kill people, intentionally or not. It’s the same fear that was onmipresent when planes first took to the skies or when drivers had to surrender control of their cars to automatic transmissions.

As per a report by research company Ipsos, released this February, 67 percent of Americans feel uncomfortable with the idea of riding in an entirely self-driving car. Globally, the percentage might be even higher.

For now, AV tech is in its beginnings, so unfortunate events like the one with the Uber-operated Volvo will probably happen again. Ultimately, the technology will become so fail-proof - something like airplane autopilots we all trust - that this fear will disappear.

WILL FUTURE GENERATIONS KNOW HOW TO DRIVE?

Probably not. Just as they will probably not be familiar with writing by hand, on pieces of paper.

If things go as planned and no major calamity ends the research into autonomous vehicles, or the world, driving as we know it today will disappear. It will become some type of vintage skill no one cares you have, or transform into a symbol of social status or some such.
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About the author: Daniel Patrascu
Daniel Patrascu profile photo

Daniel loves writing (or so he claims), and he uses this skill to offer readers a "behind the scenes" look at the automotive industry. He also enjoys talking about space exploration and robots, because in his view the only way forward for humanity is away from this planet, in metal bodies.
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