New car technology has entered a whole different world – Check it out
The automotive industry has been using technology as a complementary element pretty much since the beginning, but it seems that technology is not exactly happy being just an addendum, and wants to run the show, or at least to have a leading role. Not so long ago, autonomous vehicles were just a distant dream, but given the advancements in the tech industry, the autonomous future might not be so far away anymore. New car technology has entered a whole different world – here’s what’s happening.
Augmented Reality
One of the most important aspects of in-car technology is the way it communicates with us. Even the best technology can become inefficient if it is not implemented properly and interaction with it is non-intuitive. Luckily, car manufacturers understood this, so modern cars come with multiple LCDs in the dashboard and instrument panel areas. Manufacturers are starting to implement holographic displays that project information on the windshield directly, but some are experiencing with something even more interesting: augmented reality. If you ever watched a science-fiction movie such as Iron Man or Terminator, you know what that’s about – looking at an object and seeing information about said object displayed instantly. That’s what augmented reality intends to bring to modern cars. Imagine your car being able to identify a road sign and display info about it directly in front of you so you don’t miss it, or identifying a danger on the road ahead. Imagine your GPS highlighting the lane you need to take, and so on. The possibilities are endless.
Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication
It’s not all about the way our vehicles talk to us – the future is about how they talk to each other as well. With the Internet of Things growing in popularity, it’s only a matter of time before it finds its use in cars, allowing them to “talk” to each other and exchange valuable information such as traffic status, potential hazards and other useful information that can improve any commute. Car manufacturers are already experimenting with vehicle-to-vehicle communication, as it is not only a tool used to improve driving, but it’s a core element for autonomous cars.
Autonomous Vehicles
Autonomous vehicles are the dream, and it’s a dream that’s coming closer and closer to reality, thanks to concentrated efforts from multiple car manufacturers and tech giants. Starting from the common parking sensor, up to the cruise control, up to modern auto pilot systems – everything had a contribution to what will be the autonomous vehicle of the future. Companies such as BMW, Ford and others experimented with self-parking cars for quite a while, and autonomous parking systems are already available on some models, but it was a brand new automaker that started to push harder towards autonomous vehicles – Tesla.
The company was mainly focused on building electric vehicles, but its streak of innovations was not about to end there, so once the company had a good selling vehicle in its portfolio, in the shape of the Model S, the company started impressing people by adding various autonomous-driving features to the vehicle via over-the-air software updates. That not only demonstrated how upgrades will work for the cars of the future, but also paved the way to the actual cars of the future.
Recently, the car manufacturer just announced that all its cars built moving forward will have all the innards needed for autonomous driving built into them, ready for activation once the time is right.
Electric Vehicles
Tesla may also be one of the biggest names in the field of electric vehicles, but it’s certainly not the only one. Other manufacturers have joined the race, some of them being there even before Tesla even existed, but a possibly surprising fact is that a potential revolution in the field of electric vehicles is likely to come from a car maker that had little to do with electric vehicles so far – Porsche.
The renowned car maker is working on an all-electric car, the Mission E, but more important than the car itself is the underlying technology, which aims to drop charging times to a mere 15 minutes, thus removing one of the main downsides of using an electric car.
Before the fully-electric Porsche arrives, the company is also working on improving hybrid technology, a technology that’s already present on some of its models, and the current star of its hybrid line is the Porsche 919 track car. The car contains some experimental systems that should significantly improve the performance of hybrid vehicles once they hit mass production, and they will, thanks to Porsche’s “Tech Transfer” program, which is set to deliver racing-class technology to the masses. You can expect to see those systems in the Porsche parts catalogue soon.
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