The 21st century seems like it's going to be the century of "smart". Every piece of tech today is getting the 'smart' prefix, it looks like. First we had smartphones and nearly a decade later, we have smart speakers, smart virtual assistants and even smart toasters!
As you can probably tell, many of these are just gimmicks aimed at getting consumers to spend more on the 'revolution', but there are some things which would actually make life a lot easier and could totally turn industries on their heads.
One such important area is automobiles, especially cars. Personal transportation is a huge industry and if our cars become smart cars, I think it would prove to be a re-invention of sorts, similar to how the iPhone was a re-invention of phones.
So, how could it happen and what are the things that would need to change for that to happen. Also, when are we likely to see this happen? Well, we are already witnessing it and it's just a matter of time when that becomes the "norm".
The Era of Smart Cars
You might think that I am going to talk about how cars will become autonomous and will be able to pick us up from anywhere without us having to do anything and that's what will make them smart cars. Well, of course such a car would be a very smart car but for the purposes of this post, I am going to talk about some of the finer details.
Take software for example. Today when you buy a smartphone, you get regular software updates which provide new and exciting features, for free! The same is going to happen to cars. In fact, Tesla cars already get OTA (over the air) software updates that provide not only new features but actually enhance the performance of the car itself.
A recent update increased the power output of the Model 3, which means faster acceleration and speed! That's like buying a phone, and it getting faster with just software updates. How cool is that?
Apart from the features that are specific to a car, I think we'll be getting things like Augmented Reality displays, content consumption inside the car (say, watching a movie on the windscreen), virtual assistant, self healing paint, ability to just sleep on a ride, and much more.
Remember, phones were invented to talk to people and now this feature is just an app on our smartphone's home screen. Will the same thing happen to the car, where the ability to take you from one point to another will be just another app in your car? That would be the era of smart cars.