Reinventing the wheel with the self-driving car
The 90s had a thing for fantasizing over cars that drive by themselves. People called it crazy back then, but turns out they predicted the future pretty well, as the idea of a driverless car isn’t a distant thought.
The moment self-driving cars come become widely available, a vast amount of potential is created; since the driver is no longer needed, people will be able to spend their time doing anything — from watching shows and shopping to eating and sleeping.
Arnold Schwarzenegger riding in a self-driving car (with an overzealous robot) in 1990s Total Recall had an experience that’ll be all-too-familiar with the great majority of us in not too long.
How Self-Driving Cars Began
From first use of the self-driving car in 2004 during the DARPA Grand Challenge to Waymo’s full-autonomous ride-hailing trials in December of 2018, it’s obvious that driverless vehicles do have a place in our future, as a liberator of freedom for those who don’t have access to cars, and a liberator of time to those who already do.
Granted, the self-driving car does still have a long way to go before everyone everywhere uses it for (mostly)everything: the technology still cannot recognize all driving situations, don’t have human intuition or courtesy often present in driving behaviours, and can’t operate in unique (read: extreme) driving conditions, among other things.
The advent of a car, that can move around the world without the need of a person paying attention, provides a rare opportunity to redesign the car from scratch.
The Car as we Know It
Ever since the first Model T roamed the roads in 1908, the world has been exposed to vehicles that are built around the driver. Everything from safety alert systems to the control dashboard and even the steering wheel and pedals have restricted manufacturers to develop cars that are a very specific interior design (which made sense because it was all about the driver).
The car hasn’t changed in a major way in the last 111 years. Go back and read that sentence again and let it sink in. What if you used your same phone (more or less) for 111 years. Or maybe don’t replace your laptop/iPad for the same time.
It’s ABSURD to think no drastic innovation has been implemented to a device that is used 1.2 billion times a day!!!
Enter, the self-driving car.
Out with the steering wheel, get rid of the pedals, and no need for the cheap-plasticy controls on the dash!
The moment we no longer need a driver, we are no longer restricted to the current designs of cars. And suddenly the whole interior can be completely redesigned.
Don’t stop me yet: the moment driverless cars become electric at a large scale (and THEY WILL), vehicles no longer need to maintain its typical exterior design.
You know what I’m talking about…the general three-rectangle-composite shape of a car for the hood, body and trunk.
The space for the engine under the hood? No need! (LoL GaS)
The steering and braking assembly, along with all of its components? Take it out!
If you think about it, all the basic components that define what a car is, are gone. No hood to keep the engine (the battery is under the floor in most cases), no vehicle control systems, and none of those cheap volume knobs (use the iPad-like screen) among other things. In fact, the seats don’t have to be forward facing, or in a 3–2 configuration.
Redesigning the Experience
Instead of the car being built around the driver, the car can be redesigned for optimal use by the passengers, and only the passengers.
Cars will be centred around the passenger experience while they are whisked away to their destination.
And when people don’t need to drive, the car really becomes a box on wheels that’ll take you wherever you want to go, and let you do anything inside.
A self-driving car is so much more than just a car without a driver; it’s a moving room that let’s you do anything inside
And so the implications of the vehicular redesign extend to retail and commerce (check out the newest Ikea sofas as your seats), leisure and relaxation (maybe take on a VR simulation that feels like you’re on the sandy beaches of Hawaii), entertainment and restaurants (taste test fine Italian cuisine or immerse yourself in a 4D Jurassic part-something experience).
The real question becomes, what does a human do to spend/waste their time getting to where they want to go? Shop. Watch. Experience. Play. Work. The list goes on (since we can basically inject any reasonable human activity into this room with four wheels).
A crucial aspect to reinventing the car, however, at least for humans to adapt on the short-term, is designing so people REALLY feel safe with a computer controlling your vehicle (the same computer that freezes from time to time on your laptop!?!?).
Trust is the name of the game
Airbnb, for example, has to somehow convince individuals to pay money to go into a stranger home, sleep on their bed, sit on their furniture and eat with their utensils. Yet 2 million people stay at an Airbnb on any given night!
Wealthsimple, a rather new player in Canadian fintech, has to convince a market that hasn’t seen a revolutionary new financial institution in over 70 years, to give them their life savings.
These companies use design elements to make people feel safe. The way their product looks and feels and how customers are treated using it is the make-or-break factor; no one ever thought one would take a ride in a strangers car (á la Uber).
It’s going to be an adventurous process figuring out what makes people okay with doing things a little iffy (at least at first).
Why Driverless Anyways
The case for self-driving technology is strong, nonetheless.
Save Lives + Time
Approximately 1.2 million people die every year due to automobile accidents around the world. 70% of this is caused by human error and can be instantly reduced the second a car with no driver lands on roads: cars don’t drink, text, talk, rage or anything else a human does (that they shouldn’t) in a car.
Not to mention, the time (all) people spend commuting in the United States alone is the equivalent of 162 lost lives, daily. (see below for all you nerds)
Save Space
The U.S. in the 70s fostered more than 48,000 miles of highways. Sure, the infrastructure made trade blossom, connected suburbs, and sparked the popularity of road trips. But urban highways — like in New York City and Los Angeles — torn apart neighbourhoods and catered to the highest-income class families, providing “ribbons of asphalt” to drive back home on.
There are 1.2 billion parking spots for cars in the US — equivalent to four for every one car. In contrast, the small town of Jackson, Wyoming, has ~27 parking spots per vehicle! I don’t mean to speak on behalf of somewhere I have no business in, but, WHY DO THEY NEED 27 PARKING SPOTS PER CAR.
This prompts two learnings (specific for the US):
- ~18 000 km² of parking space is available for cars that only use 4 500 km² of it at any given time.
- 95% of a vehicles life is spent not driving.
Inevitable, the advent of self-driving vehicles will mandate cities to change their policies and how they tackle congestion and climate change; not to mention how to transform the space one will save.
How will all of this work?
To gain a better understanding of the logistics of operations, it can be understood that there are two primary ways driverless cars enter the market:
- Ridesharing. You open an app on your phone (think Lyft), call a car to drive to you a specific destination, a car appears (albeit with no driver) and delivers you to your location; leaving to service yet another passenger. You don’t own the car, you don’t park the car, and you certainly don’t pay insurance on that thing. I strongly believe this will be available for the mass public in 5–10 years.
- Ownership. People like you and me buy a self-driving car and drive it just like a normal car (well, except for the driving part).
Do some see the futuristic world of robot cars everywhere as some form of a dystopia? Yes. But it really is hard to imagine what these vehicles will be used for and how they will be used once they become widely available.
But an alternate (and much more likely, in my opinion) utopian world does come into mind, where driverless cars not only save human lives, time and space but also blend with existing public transit infrastructure and remain competitively cost-effective for passengers, compared to owning a car.
Just the way the internet became, self-driving vehicles will to some extent exhibit unfavourable situations, but also drastically improve quality of life and cities in our world, as we know it.
