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The last decade alone has seen incredible progress. When the world decided to become a greener and cleaner place, the car industry created vehicles that offered the same power whilst burning less Co2. When governments told the industry to make their automobiles safer, the manufacturers answered by creating ABS brakes, blind spot warning signals, systems that awaken sleeping drivers and much more. When the customer asked for more power, they designed stronger more efficient engines. They gave us the Bugatti Veyron, the Koenigsegg CCX and even the Golf GTi.

Driverless cars

Although the idea of an autonomous car has been around since the 1930s it has never looked as imminent as it does now. BMW, Mercedes-Benz, Nissan, Toyota, Volvo, Audi, and even Google, have been working vigorously to get their self-drive technology and V2V (vehicle to vehicle) communication on the road.  BMW’s Herbert Diess (Member of the Management Board at BMW Group) recently stated that the companies autonomous driving project with Continental could be operational as soon as 2020.

BMW 5 Series autonomous driving system prototype.  Photo/BMW

If autonomous vehicles become widely available, popular, and affordable; our roads should become safer as they eliminate age limits for driving, drink-driving and even traffic congestion.

Using radar, GPS, sensors and computer vision, these vehicles can sense their immediate surroundings and make decisions as to where, how and when to drive. It’s incredible to think that if this technology is completely perfected these cars should be able to drive better than humans.

Self parking

Bringing us one step closer to driverless cars is Volvo’s new self-parking system. Imagine finding the perfect parking spot, but instead of struggling to manoeuvre your car back and forth, you simply press a button, sit back, and relax. The difference with Volvo’s new concept, which was demonstrated in June 2013, is that now you don’t even need to be in the car for it to do the parking. For anyone living in a big city, removing this difficulty, stress and uncertainty is very appealing.

According to Thomas Broberg, Senior Safety Advisor of Volvo Car Group, "Autonomous Parking is a concept technology that relieves the driver of the time-consuming task of finding a vacant parking space. The driver just drops the vehicle off at the entrance to the car park and picks it up in the same place later."

Safety

Manufacturers have to meet a certain standard to get their cars on our roads, but some companies really do excel in this area. Volvo’s current goal is that nobody will be killed or injured in one of their new cars from 2020. With an already excellent safety record, Volvo has pioneered some amazingly innovative technology which, on occasion, they have been known to share for the greater good (the three point seat belt).

One of the most innovative designs by Volvo is a system called ‘City Safety’. This technology can stop your car if it senses anybody or anything is in its way. Having personally tested this in a controlled environment, I can tell you it works. ‘City Safety’ senses anything within 6 metres directly in front of your vehicle, is effective up to 50kmph and is bringing Volvo ever closer to their 2020 vision.

Mercedes-Benz is also making terrific leaps in road safety. Of note, their ‘Car-To-X’ product which is part of its ‘Intelligent Drive’ strategy. ‘Car-to-X’ allows information to be communicated between cars and traffic infrastructure. With this, information about potential road dangers and incidents can be passed to oncoming cars at an early stage so appropriate action can be taken in time. Effectively what will happen is that cars will talk to each other, to traffic lights and even to emergency service vehicles. 

Car-To-X’ concept

Looking forward to the future

This is only the tip of the iceberg. There is so much outstanding technology out there that praise should go towards the amazing inventiveness of our car manufacturers. The future will be amazing, with brilliant and promising technologies on the way from Mercedes-Benz, Volvo, General Motors, BMW and the rest. I look forward to seeing these companies continue to design the ultimate driving experience. I don’t think we fully understand just how intelligent the vehicles we drive are. The best part is, there is much more to come.

This article originally appeared in Newstalk Magazine for iPad in July, for more details go here.