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Over the next 20 years, what will be the most unexpected technology?
That's a question I've been asked more than once recently, and my counter-intuitive answer is auto – and I'm not talking about autonomous vehicles. It is often the frequently used basic services for which the value proposition is already well established that are the most innovative. The car therefore has a distinct advantage over a Mars colony or a hyperloop.
The automotive experience has already improved considerably in recent years, mainly through carpooling, which allows new trips or helping people to work or talk on the phone when they would otherwise have driven.
Carpooling has been the biggest technological improvement in my standard of living since the smartphone, and the service benefits both drivers and non-drivers. Not surprisingly, two of this year's most publicized IPOs are Uber and Lyft, with a potential valuation of $ 90 billion.
And many have not even started using carpooling, which leaves a lot of room for the market to develop.
As a rule, the major initial innovations lead to further innovations. For example, carpooling already replaces some forms of public transportation. Carpooling will help maintain available transportation services where there are no bus or train lines, including for older people who no longer feel comfortable driving.
Margin of improvement
Another reality of the contemporary automobile is that Tesla has managed to rethink the entire design. The dashboard and the interior are reconfigured, the player is electric, the software is much more important and integrated in the design, voice recognition exploits many systems and automatic driving functions are also available. Whether or not you thought that Tesla, as a society, was going to succeed, his design work showed that there was still room for improvement.
You may object that cars have many negative characteristics – but that's where the potential for major transformation is high. Cars cause a lot of air pollution, but electric cars (or maybe even hydrogen cars) are on the way, and they will also reduce noise pollution, as hybrids already do.
Cars also create traffic jams, but their pricing can greatly reduce this problem, as has been the case in Singapore. As for the construction of new highways, Robert W. Poole Jr., a transportation analyst, says in his new book that the private sector toll concession model has many opportunities to expand, which will result in more roads and easier travel.
In other words, the two biggest problems of the automobile – pollution and traffic congestion – have gone from "impossible to solve" to the brink of manageability.
security
There is also the problem of safety because road accidents are a major cause of death. But software can help auto-braking, detecting threats and monitoring drunk or stoned drivers. Impact systems in the event of a collision can still become safer. If pedestrians die, smartphones could perhaps be improved to detect and prevent vehicle threats or improvements could be made on the vehicle side.
And if autonomous vehicles operate on a large scale, with the Wi-Fi and the nap in the back seat, the car will go even better. In the meantime, the proliferation of podcasts has made driving a lot more fun.
At present, vehicles belong to many people, even if their prices are quite high and require many hours. Basic infrastructure and legal frameworks are already in place. So, despite the current obsessions with robots and gene editing, it should be obvious that the biggest tangible changes in technology over the next 20 years are likely to occur in a relatively trivial area of life – namely life on the road.
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