Tomorrow's cars run on electricity and drive themselves

By Dick Pelletier

      

    Imagine making the 275-mile trip from Las Vegas to Los Angeles in tomorrow's driverless car. "You hop in, voice your destination and off you go. With speeds up to 200 mph, you lay back, watch TV, browse the Web, or take a nap. In a couple of hours, you arrive in LA relaxed and ready for a great day."

    Despite world car population approaching one billion, the economy has devastated the auto industry. To reverse this trend, carmakers are going electric and adding a wide variety of automation features. Experts predict that by 2020, 4 million electric vehicles will be on the road, and by 2050, all cars will run on electricity, which will end America's century-old dependency on gasoline.

    Tomorrow's electric cars will be different from today's versions that require frequent stops to recharge batteries. In the decades ahead, highway guardrails will transmit radio waves to coils inside electric cars that charge batteries continuously, eliminating the need for recharging breaks.

    Other innovations will include electric motors in each wheel, which eliminates the drive shaft and creates better traction for safer maneuvering; and car bodies coated with nanomaterials that can change shape and color on command, and if damaged, allow the vehicle to pop back into its original condition.

    35,000 Americans died in traffic accidents last year, which Volvo Safety and Strategy manager Jan Ivarsson considers an unacceptable statistic. Ivarsson believes his company can eliminate all deaths and serious injuries in its vehicles by 2020. This prediction seems bold at a time when Toyota, the world's largest car maker is struggling with floor mats and sticking accelerator pedals.

    But Ivarsson reasons that by adding automation features such as those that detect pedestrians in the vehicle's path and bring the car to a stop if the driver does not respond, along with other automatic braking and steering programs; nearly all injury crashes could be prevented.

    However, according to Pentagon officials who recently sponsored competition for robot cars to travel through city streets without human help, the ultimate in vehicle safety will be the driverless car, which many experts predict could become the most popular way of scurrying people about by as early as the 2020s.

    Self-driving cars are possible on current roadways using technology that could be in place within a decade, said GM executive researcher Larry Burns at a recent Consumer Electronics Show.

    Driverless cars calculate steering, braking, speed and road conditions; and employ "natural voice" speech-recognition. Programmed with the right personality, experts say, you and your computerized car could become good friends. Advantages of auto-drive cars include higher speeds, less traffic congestion, and increased passenger safety.

    Driverless technologies utilize emerging cognitive science aimed at a "taxi-like" experience. On a trip to the market, your computer-driven car drops you at the store entrance, auto-parks itself, then picks you up when you've finished shopping.

    Barriers to this technology are mainly social, not technical. Today, most people might place more faith in their own driving skills than a computer; but as artificial intelligence advances through the years, it will become clear that auto-drive vehicles are safer. By mid-2020s, experts predict, most Americans will prefer electric-driverless cars for their commutes and errands.

This article appeared in various print publications and on-line blogs. Comments always welcome.