Since cars were invented in the late 1800s, people have used them to make traveling between destinations exceptionally easy. The majority of adults in the UK now own a driving license, and it’s unlikely that things are going to swing in a different direction anytime soon.
Of course, things have changed a lot since the automobile industry began, and they continue to adapt and transform to this day. There are a lot of trends that exist now, or which are currently in development, which are set to reshape the industry moving forward.
Eventually, they will alter everything that we’ve come to expect from driving. These are the eight trends that we’re talking about.
Autonomous Vehicles
When people think of the future of driving, their minds typically shoot straight to self-driving cars. What once seemed like the stuff of sci-fi movies continues to become more real by the day.
At the moment, we shouldn’t expect to see self-driving vehicles in homes for a lot of years. However, with technologies like artificial intelligence and LiDAR continuing to improve year after year, it’s only a matter of time before this becomes reality.
This advancement poses a lot of questions from an ethical standpoint, with developers forced to program the vehicles to make decisions over how a car should react in moral dilemmas. For drivers, though, it means the future of driving will require a lot less effort.
Car Share Services
Relying on other people to drive you somewhere is hardly a modern trend. For decades, people have carpooled to work with colleagues or used a taxi service to get to or from a night out.
It’s something that’s never lost its appeal, with recent years seeing companies like Uber thriving thanks to people’s desire to let someone else take the wheel.
From the sounds of it, it’s popularity is going to continue well into the future, albeit looking slightly different than what we’re used to now.
When self-driving vehicles become more prevalent, these services are expected to thrive because they’ll be seen as a cheaper, quicker alternative to actually owning a car.
Auto Locksmithing
Humans seem to possess a natural ability to lose things. Whether that’s their phone, keys, or something else, people never stop losing the stuff that they really need to keep hold of.
It used to be that misplacing something like your car keys would be a serious issue.
Now, though, locksmiths have come an incredibly long way in what they’re able to do for your vehicle.
From cutting and reprogramming new keys to disconnecting old ones, the fear of losing access to your car is now a thing of the past.
If you’re interested in this kind of service and perhaps need to utilise it yourself, you can learn more at 3D Autokeys.
As auto locksmith specialists, they know everything involved with providing replacement car keys, doing car key repairs, and so much more.
Electric Vehicles
Cars fuelled by electricity are another trend that’s hardly new to the automobile industry.
However, it’s also something that requires many years of work before it can really have an impact on how people drive.
The problem that drivers have had with electric vehicles so far is that their batteries haven’t been powerful enough to sustain long-range use.
This issue makes them far less reliable than standard cars, which means they’ve largely been ignored by the average driver.
However, with climate change prompting more people to consider alternative options, electric batteries growing in power, and charging stations becoming more common, it’s only a matter of time before the automobile industry becomes predominantly electric.
Online Research
It used to be that if you wanted to buy a car, you had to go into a dealership and see what was available.
For a lot of drivers, that wasn’t their favourite experience, because it was so easy to get roped in by one sales pitch or another.
Nowadays, it’s a lot easier to avoid that situation because you can research everything online. There are so many resources available on the internet that you never have to walk into a dealership clueless ever again.
What that means going forward is that dealers have to ensure that their online material is as informative and easy to use as possible, to ensure that customers are motivated to make a purchase with them.
Research suggests that most drivers want to start the car buying process online, which means that dealerships need to better accommodate their needs without any face-to-face engagement.
Tesla 101: Is Owning a Fully Electric, Self-Driving Car Worth It in 2020?
Connectivity
It’s quite incredible just how much the latest car models can achieve. Long gone are the days when a car was good for driving you where you wanted to go and nothing else.
Nowadays, these vehicles can serve as a Wi-Fi hotspot, they can alert you if you’re about to hit something, they have in-built sat-nav systems that are always up to date, and so much more.
This level of connectivity is perfect for the average person who’s familiar with technology and uses it in almost every aspect of their lives. As the younger generations become more prominent on the road and technology continues to develop, cars are only going to grow in functionality.
There may come a time when driving is merely a benefit of these vehicles, rather than their main purpose.
Hydrogen-Powered Vehicles
While electric cars are set to rise in popularity as a way to combat climate issues, it seems they’re not the only vehicles that could help the environment.
Work is also rapidly developing on hydrogen-powered cars, which are equally eco-friendly because the gas doesn’t pollute the atmosphere and it’s available in masses. What’s more, hydrogen-powered vehicles have the potential to fill niches that electric cars can’t.
However, this is one trend that we won’t expect to see having a major impact for a while now due to two very good reasons.
Firstly, hydrogen needs to be manufactured in order to be used as a fuel, something that demands a lot of electricity currently requires the use of fossil fuels.
Secondly, the gas is quite a volatile substance, so its explosive qualities raise a lot of questions over whether or not it’s truly safe to use in cars.
Artificially Intelligent Traffic Software
One of the issues with autonomous vehicles is that different manufacturers may have their own ideas about how a car should react in a difficult situation.
These differences in morality could cause chaos on the roads when self-driving vehicles are everywhere, which means there needs to be a system in place that controls everything. That’s where artificially intelligent traffic software comes in.
We may well see an overarching system that manages traffic to ensure everything continues to run smoothly when humans aren’t at the wheel.
It won’t be perfect, but there will need to be some management structure in place if the cars of the future are going to succeed.
The automobile industry has changed immensely over the last century, and we expect to see even more development over the next hundred years.
We’ve got a good idea of how that will look based on these trends, although you never know when a few surprises might come along and transform everything.
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