Yep, integrated
We’re witnessing a development in car driving that has yet unexplored consequences. It is an example of automation and it should lead to less cost for all, because computing power is dirt cheap and cars will be all electric and freely charged (because sunlight is free isn’t it?).
But an alternative scenario is more likely. It is one in which autonomous driving becomes a service you need to subscribe to. How to introduce it? Through the trusty tool of big everything : Fear.
Already some are comparing the safety of autonomous vehicles to those with drivers. As the security standards of driverless cars have to be higher than cars with drivers the safety argument will be used to push every car towards being autonomous. This opens up some possibilities.
First people will be told they are irresponsible if they drive their dangerous cars themselves, and slowly driving will become a thing of the past, everyone sitting in cars moving from A to B autonomously.
As this happens there will already be quality difference between one autonous car and another. Differences in acceleration, turning, routing, general speed and ability. This will develop in a competition between almost equal systems. This happens because fossil credit banking will create a competitive environment to load each competitor to the maximum with debt. A trick they use all the time.
Driver monitoring station, empty of course, what don’t you get about ‘autonomous’
Because of the ubiquity of wireless, autonomous cars will become centrally controlled by a big computer that models the movements of all cars. This allows predictive driving, anticipating roadblocks and adapting speed to allow optimal interweaving of traffic. All this requires a lot of computing power, in fact, it will be the question if what will be claimed is computed will actually be, because routing problems are NP complete, meaning the time to compute them explodes very quickly and real answers soon take more time to compute than there is left in our universe. Multiply that by a couple of billion cars.
So the centrally offered driving service will never be perfect, and will require real computing power (even if such is not delivered, meaning as a non driver you can no longer oversee whether the car drives a smart route or not). We’ll have bronze driving for suckers in the lowest cost electric cars, then silver driving for workers that need to be on time and feel rewarded, and gold driving for those that don’t need to be anywhere they don’t want to be. All subscription services, monthly fees.
If you don’t work hard to earn enough, your driving will SUCK
Result : Everyone will be paying for their car on a contiuous basis again. Autonomous cars turn out to be a gateway to totally dependent cars.
This scenario nicely demonstrates that it is possible to gain no freedom from automation, especially if it delivers a complex service we can’t perform ourselves. In the case of driving many will be scared away from driving themselves, hoping to live longer easier lives. But all will have to work to earn the money to drive somehow, just like today, while we are seeing a window open where we buy a car and never have to pay for fuel or driving again (Tesla being the most prominent).
There’s a lot more to say about the future mentioned above, but let’s see if the scenario painted actually materializes.