Transportation speculation

One recent 2008 trend tied to speculative fiction is the future of the automobile. There have been plenty of books and movies featuring designs and technologies for future personalized transportation. However, the automotive science world has been hot lately in publications.

Wired magazine is full of stories this month for example. They talk about the Smart car and changing face of the SUV. The best article from a future perspective is The Race to Build the 100-MPG Car which is centered around the X-Prize. There is a car company named Aptera which has a pretty wild looking model...definitely looks futuristic.

The Wall Street Journal also recently published this article about future car technologies. Their focus, however, is not on fuel efficiency but automated driving technologies. Tearing a page from Lexus' parallel parking car, GM is seeking to build a self-driving automobile.

This is fascinating stuff. In my speculative fiction book Darwin's Orphans, I featured a car that automatically stopped when a dog jumped across the driver's path. Personally, I'd like to take drives out in the country at twilight without fearing a deer will leap out in front of me. A little radar to detect such things and initiate instant reactions would be a really cool feature. I'm not, however, looking forward to a car driving entirely. Sometimes it's actually fun to be behind the wheel.