Beyond Self-Driving Cars
The coming of self-driving cars
The self-driving car appears to be next big thing. All the major car manufacturers have them in one form or another. Even Apple is building one. A recent McKinsey article claims the benefits include a reduction of cars on the roads by 80%, shorter travel times and safer roads - which are all good goods.
Actually I was expecting some ideas around how the car and our mobile devices will integrate to provide richer experiences but the benefits listed by McKinsey was mundane but seems good enough.
Beyond self-driving cars
To me, what’s interesting is imagining what happens when all cars are self driving. Perhaps the next logical step is an evolution of the car itself in a way such that it separates the transport mechanism and the passenger.
Passengers enter a pod which is attached to a “car”. These “cars” can exchange passenger pods on the roads to efficiently transfer and transport passengers to their destinations.
Imagine this: Tomorrow morning, you leave your front door and enter a pod. A vehicle comes along and picks up the pod which you are in and a number of pods containing your various neighbours. As the vehicle enters the main road, it syncs up with another vehicle. Once in sync, your pod gets detached from your current vehicle and re-attached to the other vehicle which collects people going to the same final destination. Along the way, you get detached and attached several more times. Finally you noticed your colleague who lives about 5 miles away is in the pod next to you and realize that you are almost at the office. The vehicle speeds ahead, picks up more passengers heading to the same building and once fully loaded, makes it way without further syncs and unloads all of you at the office. You fold up your pod and stash it away while the vehicle speeds away to make further pickup and delivery.