Speaking at the annual Society of Automotive Engineers conference on Tuesday, Google exec Ray Kurzweil shared a few of his predictions about what the future may look like.
Most of the things he had to say weren’t really ‘breaking news’, as we’ve heard it all before – about autonomous driving, how many miles Google cars have done without incident, that some day a self-driving car will cause an accident and people will freak out and so on.
What we found to be more interesting what when he said that “People will still buy cars, but the Uber model with self-driving cars will become very popular. We should share our cars. I think that model will grow when we have autonomous cars.”
This is a fascinating concept for several reasons. First of all, think about your usual work day. Out of let’s say 12 hours of activity, you’re using your car for what, 3-4 hours tops? If that.
The rest of the time, the car does nothing – as it should, since you’re not driving KITT around. By the way, wouldn’t KITT have been the ultimate Uber driver? Just a thought.
So now what happens when you imagine the same work day, a decade or so into the future? If you own a 100% autonomous car, wouldn’t it make a lot of sense sending it out into traffic, helping other people go from point A to point B?
For you it would be like a second income, and it might not even cost you anything if by then the infrastructure will support fully electric cars.
This makes so much sense, it might actually happen. What do you guys think?
story references: gadgets.ndtv
PHOTOS
