Driving

Over the past two months I've been learning how to drive. I bought my first car a couple of weeks ago in preparation for getting my driver's license. These recent developments have led me to a new train of thought: What do I want to get out of driving? What features do I want in my car in the future? I've known for some time that I've wanted to make an electric car, which influenced my eventual decision to buy a Toyota Celica (a light, sporty, hatchback(I like hatchbacks)). But what else can I get in my car... I suppose I want my car to speak to me... What about flying capability? Why not, just because it's funny and awesome, plug in a flux capacitor and have a time traveling car(If time travel were possible, and exactly like it is in Back to the Future)? And then I thought, what if everyone actually had these as options...

Electric Car

This is the least absurd idea and actually more reasonable than most people think. I'm not positive of the statistics now with the new Volt and Leaf electric cars on the road, but back when I first started reading up on how to convert a car to electric almost a year ago I learned that most electric cars on the road were home built conversions. So sure, this really is an option for anyone willing to make the change, but one downside is that battery technology still isn't good enough to warrant a major change from gasoline, which is more energy dense.

Knight Rider

I didn't grow up when the crime fighting car was actively airing on television but I am aware, through the magic of pop culture, of the amazing awesomeness that was KITT. When I say I want a car that speaks to me, I don't mean metaphorically, I mean literally, and when I say literally I don't mean like certain cars from the 90s that my Dad described to me that would loudly warn you with a human recording if you left the door open. I want a car with at least a simple artificial intelligence that can make small talk maybe or even help with driving. It may be a challenge for me but I plan to make it a reality some day. But what if everyone had cars like that? I'm sure some people would find it disconcerting, if not a bit creepy. I understand that a car that can play chess with its driver and responds to the name HAL isn't for everyone, but I still think it would be cool. Not really an option for me at this point, but in the future I think my car will have so many voices it will sound like it has a Multiple-Personality Disorder.

Flight

The Jetsons, Blade Runner, The Fifth Element, and tons of other Sci-Fi films and shows use the concept of flying cars. Those concepts all had varying understandings of what flying a car meant. For the Jetsons it didn't seem to be much of an issue, I can't recall ever seeing one of those crafts crashing (though that may be from ignorance of the show) and I remember seeing very little traffic unlike in the Fifth Element (or even the new Star Wars Movies) where there seemed to be millions of cars flying every which way. I feel like Blade Runner falls in between those two representations and may in fact be the most accurate vision. I'm not exactly sure if I'd want to have a flying car, but I think it would be fun to try it out, as long as I was assured I wouldn't be killed. Firstly, all the Sci-Fis seem to avoid talking about the mechanism of flight and just accept that it's possible (which is actually close to science fantasy, but whatever). This is probably because it's insanely difficult to make something that heavy just hover in the air, and it's also the reason why only crazy engineers (like me) are messing around with the idea. But just supposing that some easy mechanism is discovered making flying cars a reality for everyone, what would negative effects might we see? Just think of all of the people you know who drive... now how many of them are bad drivers? Now ask yourself, would you really want those people in control of a vehicle that can not only go left, right, forwards, and backwards, but also adds in a third dimension of up and down? I think not. Now of course there would be some sort of test like we have for driving already, but I feel like it's all just a waste of time. By the time we have flying car technology we might have some sort of teleportation, or some other crazy means of transportation, who knows. So, I think we ought to avoid flying cars, even if just to prevent five story traffic jams.

1.21 Jiggowatts

Now this is of course not possible, but I like to play devil's advocate, and so I'm saying "what if?" What if we could travel through time, and not only that but all of our time machines were in our cars? Now I'm sure a TARDIS could transform itself into a car rather easily, but changing a car into a time machine would be a challenge. Assuming you have to bend space-time or create a wormhole to do it for you, the amount of energy required would be far greater than I know how to or am willing to calculate for the sake of this post. A power source of this magnitude, even if we have the technology to build such a generator at this point in time, would certainly be bigger than a bread box, and definitely would not fit in a car. Buuuut, forgetting this issue and any others that I don't feel like addressing at this time I ask, what if we all had time traveling cars? This of course brings back the point about bad drivers. You thought giving them control in three dimensions was bad, what about four? Imagine for just a minute you're a bad driver. You start your day driving to work or whatever it is you drive to in the morning and BAM! You didn't just get T-boned pulling out of the drive way, you got inter-dimensionally-spliced with yourself from tomorrow morning because you were late and hit the wrong button. But even good drivers can make mistakes, especially if their driving at 88 mph and they don't have the luck of Marty McFly. Not only is time travel a bad idea when considering how many time machines would clog up the Universe trying to get to every point in time everywhere, but then just the ones that are driving, crashing into something because they didn't see it until they were inside of it... quite disastrous if you ask me. Ironically though, even if it's less safe than a flying car, I would still want a time traveling one, just because.

James