Here we will discuss the future of public and private transportation.
Automated (aka self-driving) cars will soon be a huge impact on society. They have been tested for years in various cities and through various companies, everyone trying to race towards being the first. It appears multiple companies will be the first ones on the market. Most will be some form of a taxi service to start out with, but companies like Tesla have announced they will make all of their cars have fully automated capabilities extremely soon. Other companies have created software and hardware that allows anyone to turn their car into a fully automated or partially automated car. the technology is about to explode and bring autonomous cars to the public discourse.
The challenges will be having people understand safety concerns, what to do about job displacement from current taxi drivers who won't have a job, and what the future will look like for non-autonomous vehicles once the autonomous vehicles become incredibly good and desired.
Will this technology also bring smaller and more versatile automated vehicles?
After decades of talk of the possibility of flying cars, we're finally seeing many companies bring their designs to production. In the coming years, we may see an explosion of this technology once it's shown to be safe, reliable, and affordable.
There are multiple companies working on many variations of flying vehicles, and multiple going through the motions of production and approvals for flight. It won't be long before we see many flying vehicles in our skies. Or there will be additional challenges that delay the progress further. Even if there are challenges, it will likely be an inivitble addition to the future of transportation.
The challenges that are faced should be obvious. Affordability may be difficult, leaving the ultra wealthy to be the only people who can afford continuous use of flying cars and vehicles. This could pose concerns for everyone who can't afford it, having to see and listen to the vehicles. But as technology improves, the sound might be able to be lessened.
Another large hurdle, is what to do about accidents. And insurance. It may end up being mandated to have only automated flying vehicles to minimize the chances of an accident. If one of these vehicles lost power or flight, imagine it crashing into a building or people or anything else. There may even need to be regulated flight paths to dramatically decrease the chances of issues. One such option would be to limit flight to only over major freeways and commercial airspace. Or approve certain flight paths for taxis to fly only to and from certain places. It will be an interesting debate to figure out what the best way to go about this new technology.
One of the most likely uses of flying vehicles will be for taxis. Just like airplanes, public transportation on a smaller scale will make flying vehicles less expensive to use. They will likely cost a lot more than a standard car for some time, which leads to less people personally owning them. So the most obvious answer is public sharing in the form of taxis. Many companies are forming their designs around this technology, looking into the future.
Space tourism is set to become a large industry in the future. It's quite inevitable that people will want to travel to the outer limits of our atmosphere, bordering space, or travel into space. We have the technology and enough desire, that it will continue to be a hot topic for decades to come.
There are numerous companies trying to lead the way in space tourism and flights, ranging from simple trips to the outer edges of our atmosphere, to faster flights around the world.
Here we will discuss the future of this technology. This will be updated soon!
Something that will change in the near future, is traffic. Automated cars will be able to talk to each other and therefore be able to maneuver more efficiently. The more of them on the road, the more efficient they will become and the less traffic there will be. Or will more people opt for cars over public transportation? Or will public transportation get so much better that they will cancel themselves out? Flying vehicles will also reduce traffic by taking some off the road. Though this will change to air traffic.
We may not be able to predict it yet, but all of the new technologies might actually lead to vastly different ways to travel, changing people's behaviors and patterns. We may see a completely different way of navigating the world and what our roads and airways look like.