cars — James Saye

Personal mobility and freedom is the ultimate for most people and I've been thinking recently about how people will get around our towns and cities of the future... and it's pretty exciting. Firstly let's throw away things like flying cars and personal jet packs - I'm fairly confident that we'll be keeping our feet firmly on the ground (other than the usual intercity, and maybe intracity, flights of course).

Looking at the current state of personal transport is probably a good thing to do first. The majority of people get around in a car, in fact in the UK there are 35 million registered cars on the road [1] and over 38 million people have a driving licence [2] which represents around 60% of the population. Even those that don't drive I'd say generally get around via friends and family and taxis.

Cars represent something that's quite intangible, they represent freedom and mobility on demand, for many they represent themselves, their wealth, personality, culture and so on. I can't see this feeling diminishing in the future. Due to this I do think that cars represent the future of personal transport.

However, we all know that cars are terrible economic decisions. The average car sits idle for about 95% of the time [3]. Think about it, you drive to work in the morning and back home in the evening - lets say each way is 30 minutes, then you drive to the shop in the evening, another 30 minutes both ways. That's 1.5 hours of use in a 24 hour period - little over 6%. The rest of the time this piece of metal and electronics (that you love) is sitting completely unused, yet you're still paying for it. Add to this that cars are dangerous and inefficient and you have to wonder why we use and love them so much (hint: look at the previous paragraph).

These are some big problems that the Millennial generation have realised. The number of young people getting driving licenses has fallen [4] [5] and people are driving fewer miles - 14% less in 2013 than 2002 [6]. In cities people are shunning the car altogether [7], helped along by the rise of technology giving us on demand mobility services like Uber, Lyft, and City Car Club where a selection of over 800 vehicles can be hired on demand from your smartphone on your door step (#nonspon). This gives us a glimpse in to the future of personal transport - on demand and non-ownership.

Within the next 10 years we're likely to start seeing autonomous cars on our roads, although a 'driver' will most definitely still be needed and in the next 20 years we could see fully autonomous, get in, press a button, fall asleep type cars available [8]. We already have cars such as the Tesla Model S that can drive autonomously on motorways (highways for the Americans) and we'll see this kind of technology trickle down in to the lower end of the market fairly soon as more driver assist technology is developed for the high end market. The trend for more and more autonomy can only continue.

So the combination of on-demand, non-ownership and autonomy gives a pretty exciting vision for the future of personal transport I think.

We may see the business models of car manufacturers change dramatically in the future - think something like mobile phone networks where you pay for a certain amount of data each month. I think we could be paying for a certain amount of miles each month in the future. The vision I see is cities of fully autonomous (electric) vehicles which can be hired on demand from your smartphone (or wrist, or whatever interface we have by then) just like you do now with Uber. You may have use of certain type of vehicle so you'll always get a BMW 1 Series or an Audi A4 or whatever it is you pay for - remember that for many cars represent themselves, but you won't actually own the car you'll just pay £x per month for y number of miles and when you're not using it someone else will be meaning utilisation will drastically increase.

Now that's a bit of a personal vision but given current trends I don't think it's too far off the mark, however, don't be expecting this too quickly given that truly autonomous cars won't be around for at least another 20 years or so.

References:

[1] https://www.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/302409/vls-2013.pdf

[2] http://data.gov.uk/dataset/driving-licence-data

[3] http://www.reinventingparking.org/2013/02/cars-are-parked-95-of-time-lets-check.html

[4] http://www.kpmg.com/US/en/IssuesAndInsights/ArticlesPublications/Documents/self-driving-cars-next-revolution.pdf

[5] http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2014/10/14/the-many-reasons-millennials-are-shunning-cars/

[6] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-28546589

[7] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-20671090

[8] http://www.zdnet.com/article/ford-ceo-fields-on-autonomous-cars-big-data-tesla/

Automation has been the theme of the last 10 years or so with many forms of manufacturing being automated, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) becoming the norm for the military and soon to become the norm in the civilian world. Cars, however, seem to have been rather slow in joining the technological band wagon. Cruise control as we know it came in to being in the late 1950s and early 60s and it is only in the last 10-15 years that further developments have taken place with Mercedes-Benz introducing adaptive cruise control in 1998. Again, since then progress has been slow. Automatic parking has only been available on production cars since around 2007 when BMW and VW debuted the systems. Compared to other sectors this progress seems painfully slow. There are still no car manufactures likely to introduce completely automated vehicles in the near future and actually, I don't think we're ready for them anyway. I believe that the entire concept of a car has to change for self-driving cars to really be popular. Interestingly, it is not a car manufacturer that is leading the way in self-driving cars. As I'm sure you're aware Google have been developing their very own car that can drive itself around on public roads with other cars around. Since May 2012 Google have been testing their driverless cars on the roads after several US states including Florida, Nevada and California introduced laws to allow these cars on the road.

This is all brilliant and is a massive step in the right direction but as I've said previously I think the whole idea of the 'car' needs to change for self-driving versions to really take off.

The whole concept of a traditional car revolves around a driver; there's a steering wheel, a gear stick, pedals, a huge dashboard etc. Why would a driverless car need all this?

For these kinds of new vehicles to be successful I think the whole concept of the car needs to change.

Rather than all the passengers facing forward why can't the front seats now face the other way making interaction with everyone else so much easier and nicer. There'd also be much more room if the traditional dashboard and centre console were removed. You could even fit in another seat in the front.

In terms of controlling the vehicle (entering destination etc) there could be a smaller control panel in the centre of the vehicle that any passenger could control.

Of course, for anything like this to ever happen the perceptions and thoughts of the users needs to change too. People need to realise that the traditional vehicle concept and layout would be unnecessary and useless. Travelling in a car could be so much more comfortable and interacting with passengers could be so much better.

The law needs to change too. Does there need to a person 'in charge' of the vehicle? What about insurance? The current system where an individual person is insured to drive a vehicle would need to change, instead I think the vehicle would need to be insured.

There's so many points to make and so many things need to change with governments, vehicle manufacturers and most importantly with users before any kind of driverless car becomes successful.

What do you think? Would you buy a self-driving car even though the layout and concept is still inefficient? What else needs to change for driverless cars to be successful? Please leave your comments below.