What you can expect in cars of the future

With technology moving as fast as it does, we all wonder what future automobiles will be like. Television and movies provide a lot of different visuals from flying spaceship-like vehicles to cars that run on plutonium and can travel through time. So what is really in store for future automobiles? 

Based on current testing, there is a lot of exciting technology on the horizon. Some of it will help keep us safe, some will give us information like never before and some will let us kick back and just enjoy the ride.

Enhanced GPS

Right now many of us use GPS and other in-car displays for getting us from point A to point B, but in the future, vehicles will have Augmented Reality (AR) dashboards that will be able to identify objects in front of a vehicle and tell the driver how far they are away from the object. The AR display will overlay information on top of what a driver is seeing in real life. So if you’re approaching a vehicle too quickly, a red box would appear on the car you’re approaching along with arrows to show you how to maneuver into the next lane before you collide. 

An augmented reality GPS system could highlight the actual lane you need to be in and show you where you need to turn down the road without you ever having to take your eyes off the road.

Cars talk to each other

Imagine approaching an intersection as another car runs a red light. You don’t see the other vehicle at first, but it signals your vehicle that it’s directly in your path and warns you of the potential collision, or even brakes automatically to avoid an accident. A developing technology called Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication is being tested by automotive manufacturers like Ford as a way to help reduce the number of accidents on the road.

V2V works by using wireless signals to send information back and forth between vehicles about their location, speed and direction so that the vehicles are able to stay safe distances from each other, which could dramatically improve road safety. 

Self-driving cars

But what if we make transportation even safer by eliminating the cause of 95 per cent of today’s accidents, which you might be surprised to learn is human error. We’ve seen it on TV and in the movies, and now a truly self-driving vehicle may be closer to being a reality than you might think. In fact, based on current testing, some people believe there will be some sort of self-driving car in showrooms in the next decade.

Google engineers have been testing self-driving vehicles that not only record images of the road, but also their computerized maps view road signs, find alternative routes and see traffic lights before they’re even visible to a person. By using lasers, radars and cameras, the vehicles can analyse and process information about their surroundings faster than a human can.

In some of Google’s tests, the cars learned the details of a road by driving on it several times, and when it was time to drive itself, it was able to identify when there were pedestrians crossing and stopped to let them pass by.

While these technologies may be a ways off, it’s still fun to think about how different vehicles will be in generations. 

For info on automotive maintenance, contact Krishna King at Bermuda Motors: 292-0893 or [email protected].