English: F.O. Stanley and his wife, Flora, drove an automobile to the top of Mount Washington to become the first humans to make this journey by car. Mount Washington is located in New Hampshire in the United States and is the highest mountain on the eastern seaboard of North America. The car was named the "Stanley Automobile". It traveled approximately 7.6 miles. Descending, the engine was put in low gear, and brakes were used extensively. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)  This last month Volvo began testing their self-driving system on roads and they join Volkswagen/Audi and Google in the race to make us crappy human drivers obsolete. While initially, thanks to existing laws, these systems will likely be used as smarter cruise controls eventually human drivers may be banned in cities and on freeways in order to improve safety and survivability. At that point there will be a lot of changes including how cars are designed, how they are powered, and even how is likely to own them. It’ll likely take about 20 to 30 years to make the transfer and the old folks then will tell the kids about the wild world where people actually steered and braked much like our grandparents (well those of us that are old folks today) told us about riding horses that were smart instead of driving cars that weren’t. In fact, in some weird way, if you think about it, it has taken over a century to create something that is both faster and as smart as a horse suggesting that somewhere down the line we didn’t quite get that in the process of making something that could travel at more lethal speeds removing the intelligence was likely a stupid oversight.  In any case let’s imagine what the future of self-driving cars is likely to look like. I’m guessing a lot like the 1800s before cars screwed things up.  If you go back to before the car the vehicles were two or four wheels and they used an engine that was powered naturally (from things you grew to feed the horses or just grew that they ate). Horses were smart, they knew to stay on the road and you could read or chat with someone behind you while looking at that person, and if you were the Lone Ranger you could even sit on them backwards while shooting. In fact, in looking at some of the old westerns, a stage coach could lose both drivers and the horses would go on for some time until they got to something like a cliff and there they would lose all sense and either jump off or use it as an opportunity to lose the coach. The point is that transportation was relatively environment friendly (the “exhaust” was a good fertilizer and a great reason to be aware where you were stepping), and it was relatively smart in that it could stay on roads and avoid obvious hazards.  Self-driving cars will lend themselves to solar charging because they can wonder off on their own to find a charger. They can drop you off and then go top off their batteries by hitting something like the Qualcomm Halo wireless charging solution. So change one is no longer worrying about parking likely no longer worrying about gas because the car will worry for you and will find a place to get more much like if you left your horse hobbled it would wonder around eating while you wondered into the saloon to shoot some scummy bad guys (I clearly have a twisted view of the wild west).  Stage coaches were designed more like trains so passengers could chat, or read, and glance out at the scenery going by. Looking forward and back you only see roadway, the real view is to the sides and if you aren’t driving why would you even need to face forward? Granted we have far more things to entertain us now Smartphones, Tablets, but think about the real estate for a big screen TV, or the chance to turn the windows into displays. Driving through Kansas with your dog Toto, digitally change the scenery to Hawaii, or Mars, or OZ just so you can pretend you are in Kansas anymore.  Now if you are having a great in the trip do you really need to drive that quickly? Clearly you could start work when you got into the car (assuming you even go to work anymore) and the difference in experience between a cruise ship and a plan is that a cruise ship is about the journey, the plane is about how much discomfort you can take for the longest period of time. Driving could become more about the destination and electric vehicles not only do better at slow speed, if you were to suddenly hit something, you are less likely to look like a squished bug at the end of the event if you are going slower. In short, except for long distance travel (where most of us still will use planes, or here in California they might learn how to make fast trains) speeds might drop back down to where horses used to take us. And in many ways it might still be faster because automated cars on an instrumented highway could be optimized for flow eliminating forever stop and go traffic. In those instances you might find that slower, because it is steadier, could also be faster as well as safer.  Finally, why would you even need to really own a car? Imagine apps where you can tell a service you need a vehicle and where you are going and for a small fee (no driver to pay) you’d be taken there and you could even share a ride for a reduced rate. There would be local charging, stand by, stations where cars would be waiting and these would be optimized over time based on regular use. Someone else handles the maintenance and suddenly just like many folks do that live in cities, car ownership for us who don’t live in cities because not only optional an unnecessary luxury, or even an unacceptable hassle.  Wrapping Up: Loss of Freedom?  In this future world you can imagine that self-driven cars would likely be banned because they would represent a threat to the automated vehicles which had become predominant and if self-driving were allowed it would only work on low traffic roads or until the system decided it was unsafe. While this may seem like a loss of freedom, it will also likely result in more kids living to be adults and in us finding other uses for time we used to spend sitting on freeways. Granted that could be watching back episodes of “Have Gun Will Travel” but it could also mean more productivity and higher quality time with those traveling with us.  Self-driving cars will bring huge changes, in many ways the world of 2080 may seem a lot more similar to 1880 without all of the Horse crap.
The coming world of self-driving cars may return us to a more sedate time where the journey becomes more important than the destination; our vehicles handle the stress of transit for us like horses did, and where the only lasting difference between 2080 and 1880 is far less horse crap.