What if I were to tell you that widespread usage of self-driving cars isn't 50 years away, or even 20 years away....but that it could perhaps begin its implementation as early as 2020? Once thought of as science-fiction, fully autonomous vehicles are hurtling towards our streets at an unprecedented rate. Whereas in previous years there have been only a handful of companies who dabbled in autonomous technology, recent times have seen an explosion of involvement from almost every notable name in the automobile industry. It has been reported that there are presently around 30 companies investing and researching driverless technology, including well-known car manufactures such as Chevy, Audi, and BMW, as well as driver ferrying services such as Uber and Lyft. Uber and Volvo recently signed a 300 million dollar agreement to have fleets of fully autonomous vehicles on the road as soon as 2021, the same year Ford is expected to have their own versions on the road, which will not even be equipped with a steering wheel or pedals.
These semi-autonomous features are, appropriately enough, dubbed Autopilot. Though definitely a crucial step towards widespread autonomous driving, Autopilot still requires human intervention in certain instances, and encourages the driver to closely monitor road conditions at all times. However, if there's one thing to be said about Tesla, its that they are constantly rapidly accelerating their products. The cars can download software updates over the air that gives the vehicle brand new features, similarly to how your iPhone downloads new versions of iOS. The cars now have the ability to be remotely summoned from your cell phone, ready and waiting right outside your door; in addition to this, if parallel parking is an issue for you, the car is able to do so without any driver intervention whatsoever. The two Tesla models on the road right now, the S and X, can both be equipped with all aforementioned abilities; these, however, may pale to the features of its newest car, the Model 3. Tesla's founder, Elon Musk, went on public record as estimating fully autonomous technology to be available at the same time of the Model 3's release, sometime in the latter half of 2017. When asked about the company's progress on said technology, the tech mogul replied "What we've got will blow people's minds, it blows my mind...it'll come sooner than people think".
U.S. government has voiced it's support for autonomous technologies to not only be explored and developed, but implemented on a widespread scale. What was once a dream of science-fiction is now quickly becoming our reality, and all forecasts point to this being the case faster than ever thought possible. Get ready 2020's, because transportation as we know it is about to change.
