The Future of Driving?

     Unless you live under a rock, chances are you've heard of the recent developments in autonomous or "self-driving" cars. Many companies are taking a swing at creating a car that drives itself and many are succeeding in doing just that. One auto manufacturer, Tesla, has done a surprisingly great job at creating the perfect mixture of normal and future. See for yourself, most self driving cars look like this:

complete with scary exposed cameras & lasers!

While Tesla's "Model S" with an autopilot function, looks like this:

There isn't much that needs to be said about the look of the Model S, it just looks good.

Now, to be fair, the Model S technically isn't self driving. You can't simply type in an address and watch the magic happen. It does have an autopilot function though. This means that it can park itself, stop itself in the event of an emergency, switch lanes, and it can drive itself completely while on the highway. This means that, once you're on the road you need to be on, you can sit back, relax, and let the nice robot car do all the work. On top of that, according to Tesla's website, it also has a "summon" feature which "lets you 'call' your car from your phone so it can come greet you at the front door in the morning." That. Is. Awesome. 

This picture serves no purpose. But who doesn't like seeing dogs drive cars?

This advance in technology comes with many critics. Accidents have happened involving Tesla's autopilot software and one such accident was fatal. In each accident, it is somewhat unclear as to whether or not it is the car's fault. In any case, drivers probably shouldn't put all of their trust in a somewhat experimental autopilot system just yet. Not having to pay attention all the time on a road trip would be awesome, but the technology is simply too new to be perfect yet. Building software that can handle the chaotic environment of the road is a real challenge. 

Tesla's Model S may not be completely autonomous or completely without flaw, but the company has made great strides in making this advanced technology more available to people. Self-driving cars still have a long way to go before they are commonplace in the world. It is hard to tell when the self-driving car will be perfected, but because of recent advancements made by auto manufacturers, it may happen much earlier than we think.