The Future of Car Technology
Interestingly enough, when we talk about cars, things tend to get a bit stale. We advance in all the other fields of technology, but we are making our ways through vehicle manufacturing at a bit of slower pace. Yet there are certain things that we can hardly live without now. Take parking sensors for example. Can you imagine parking without them nowadays? If you are a hardcore driver, you probably would have no problem with it, but even now statistics show that most people struggle with parallel parking, and some even have problems with 90-degree parking as well. And no matter how much we whine about certain aspects of these technologies, they have undoubtedly helped many people with their driving. So let’s take a look at some other innovations in cars that are about to come or are already here.
Have you heard about HUDs? HUD means head-up display and many sci-fi writers have foreseen this. Remember that Google Glass project? Well, think about the same thing but with your whole windshield being the glass. GPS arrows, comprehensive information on road conditions (if a street is closed for roadwork, accident, etc.), general driving tips even and more detailed information coming straight from the parking sensors, like how far you currently are from another car, how much you have to turn the steering wheel and so on.There are many other possibilities as well, but only time will tell.
And what about health monitoring? There are options to implement different sensors that will tell you if you need to stop for a rest, if your heart is pounding a bit too much, if you are at a risk of losing concentration and so on. These sensors can be implemented in the seatbelt and the steering wheel. There are also similar implementation, where if both of your hands aren’t on the wheel, it won’t let you start the car and later it won’t let you exceed a certain speed. We will see how these things will fare in the future, but there are many things to still be considered.
We are also seeing a bit of shift in demands. Casual cars were all the rage a few years ago, with many people opting for sedans and hatchbacks, but things are now going towards smaller SUVs. Thus we see that most of the technology is focused on overcoming rough terrain and with SUVs getting more prominent, we can also expect them to lower in fuel consumption and so on. So a nice bit there for sure.
Another interesting, but a bit controversial piece of technology is the remote automatic shutdown of the vehicle. It can be implemented so that a stolen vehicle could easily be shut down from a remote location and then tracked via GPS. No more police chases and so on. However, some people seem to take issue with the fact that they have to virtually give control of their vehicle to a third party. What happens if criminals take over these controls and suddenly shutdown all the cars? Mayhem, some say.
But no matter how controversial some technological advancements may be, we are still headed straight to automation and this may not be such a bad thing. After all, you may not even need parking sensors in the future, as your car will park itself. Handy, is it not?