There’s no question that self-driving cars are somewhere close on our horizon. There’s too much noise about the Google research tests to ignore, no smoke without fire as they say. But it also looks like we’re going to see a bunch of different technologies coming to market, to offer all sorts of interesting innovation in this area.
This self parking Nissan car for instance takes the technology to a whole new creepy level. The idea is you pull up at your local car parking area, and instead of handing the keys to a valet, you whip out your smartphone and hit the Park button on the screen. The car will then automatically drive off and locate a space and park itself in it.
Wow!
The video shows how close that technology is at the moment, and we’re betting that the biggest issues with bringing it to market revolve around legal liability. Who’s going to insure a self-parking vehicle until they’re sure it’s not going to go rogue and mow down a line of shoppers one day when no-one’s looking?
Anyway, for the moment, we’re freaky deaky on this, while at the same time hoping it comes to market sooner rather than later. Expect protests from the valet parking union (is there one?) and from animal activists if any pigeons get hit en route.
Interesting factoid from the video – on average people wait 10 minutes to get a parking spot in a shopping centre? Really? Or is that a spot nearest to the elevator, so they don’t have to walk too far?