Self-driving cars are a hot menu item for big corporations like Google, Tesla, Apple, and even unicorns like Uber. And even big auto makers are jumping on the bandwagon. You know what? Alibaba is joining the club of self-driving cars. Simply put, self-driving cars are operated by computers, whereas cars are made to be driven by a human being
So what are we going to get from self-driving cars in the end? You can commute without bothering to drive because your car will be driven by a computer and you will sit in a back seat or a passenger seat and enjoy your coffee, reading newspapers, playing your favorite game, exchanging text messages with your friends and trying to catch up with your postponed chores. You may even catch up with the sleep you missed. Car pool bans might be a good idea for commuters headed for the same destination.
And while you are in your self-driving car, you will enjoy a perfect freedom from driving and be able to focus on something else. Now you will say a utopia of self-driving cars is on the way. Is that right?
Some skeptics tend to remind other people that all that glitter is not gold. The world of IoT sets in, the driverless cars and even human-driven cars may be subject to hacking. Another question is whether the self-driving can ultimately address the top issue of road transportation: traffic congestion.
There was one incident, in which Google's self-driving car was pulled over by a cop because it was running slow at the speed of 24 mph or so, while other cars were going at 40 mph.
Flying cars may be a lot better solution to traffic congestion than self-driving cars. However, flying cars were allegedly under development 60 years ago from now, but still far away from hitting a critical mass. In that sense, self-driving cars may have a better chance of getting deployed on the roads.
It is still hard to tell whether self-driving cars will remain to be a hot topic in another five years from now. Likewise, it is unpredictable to see whether flying cars will be commercially available in another five years from now.
