The Life of a Fully-Autonomous Car
There are a lot of questions for autonomous electric vehicles.
How will they recognize pedestrians? Who will be liable for accidents? What regulations need to be made?
All these questions will take time, energy, and a fair amount of legal wrangling to iron out, but what about the vehicles themselves? What will the daily life of an autonomous car actually look like and how could this affect our daily living?
Like the other questions, things are still very much in the air, but there are some interesting speculations on the life of a fully-autonomous car…
Picking Up Passengers
According to a report posted on Forbes.com, leaders at the ride-share website Uber have essentially said that if Tesla can create fully-autonomous cars (that are, of course, road-legal) by 2020, the site would like to buy all of them. This may be little more than early speculation and posturing by corporate leaders, but it’s a strong indication that an autonomous vehicle may spend its day driving from one location to another, moving multiple people throughout the day. In other words, most autonomous electric cars could act more like taxis than private vehicles.
Running Errands
Try to imagine how much time you spend driving for errands. The grocery store; the dry cleaning; the department store; the clothing store…even the gas station. With fully autonomous electric cars, most of these tasks will be handled by the vehicle itself, allowing you to work, study, or catch up on your reading.
If you need groceries, you could simply go online, place your order with the local grocery store, and send your autonomous vehicle to pick up the items. Employees at the store would then fill your order and load your vehicle. Then off it goes, back to your home loaded with all the food you requested, and without you having to leave the home.
Checking in at Charging Stations
Modern vehicles need to gas up, but autonomous electric cars will need to power up. This will create logistical issues for the daily life of an electric vehicle, affecting the schedules for all of these deliveries, pick-ups, and drop-offs. For example, an electric vehicle may be tasked with driving someone a significant distance, to a point where a power station is not available. In this case, the vehicle may need to check in at a power station, charge its batteries before leaving, then complete the long-distance task.
One of the ways engineers and developers will alleviate this restriction will be to gradually and continually give electric vehicles more distance in a single charge, reducing the amount of necessary stops.
