While exclusively autonomous cars haven’t hit the market yet, the idea of a flying car is on the cusp of coming to fruition. But, how do Americans feel about cars taking up airspace in the near future?
A new study reveals if Americans are ready for flying cars and what they think should go into getting a license to drive on. One of the most surprising finds? American’s think flying a driving cr should require four times more training than a commercial pilot’s license.
And with all of the talk of Uber releasing a flying car down the line, they asked Americans if they would participate in such a ride. Believe it or not, the study found that 20% of people would use a flying car for ridesharing.
Findings like these haven’t stopped developers from investing in flying cars. In fact, luxury automakers are racing to launch the flying car. Companies like Porsche, Daimler and Toyota are behind startups aiming at creating flying cars. Most recently Boeing and Porsche teamed up to create the first self-driving air taxi.
You may also wonder what the hold up is on launching the long-awaited autonomous cars, but there are a few hurdles that self-driving cars need to take to truly be safe on the road.
Predicting outside actions: Software is not great at envisioning what’s next. The idea that other cars or pedestrians will not follow predictable patterns and have human error is confusing to the machine.
Complex perception: When the software loses sight of something, it has trouble predicting behavior. This occurs when objects go into a blindspot, are blocked from view or get lost in harsh weather such as rain or snow.
Cybersecurity: A self-driving car being hacked is a nightmare scenario, but despite all safety precautions, it is possible that a determined hacker could control self-driving cars from the outside.
The evolution of these roadblocks for self-driving cars is something that many companies are working furiously on. The tech is complex, involving a variety of sensors, networking, and machine learning as well as hardware innovation.
As for how close we are to autonomous cars, it’s possible to look at the evolution of computerized services for cars in the last few years. Just in the past decade, many cars have started to have onboard computers as standard that have lane assistant, parallel park assist, blindspot, and breaking technologies. These are already the beginnings of cars taking on a part of your driving.
In a lengthy autonomous vehicle market report published by GreyB, they predict that autonomous that 25% of the total cars sold in 2035 are projected to be autonomous vehicles comprising 15% partially-autonomous vehicles and 10% fully autonomous cars.
And, with Porsche and Boeing reporting that flying cars will be on the market as soon as 2025, it appears as though we could experience increased air traffic within the next few years.
Would you like to experience riding in an autonomous vehicle or flying car?
Author Bio: Sarah is a Content Marketing Manager at Siege Media. She’s passionate about developing high-quality content for diverse industries ranging from startups to Fortune 500 companies. When she’s not creating content, she’s likely hiking a new trail or mapping out the next destination.