There’s still a shining future for self-driving cars, says Gadget Show host

The sci-fi from my eighties youth is here! Virtual reality, artificial intelligence, self-driving vehicles! Ok, so we’re not quite fully immersed in the 24/7 Metaverse just yet and that AI created portrait I requested has 14 fingers, and the Dubai drone taxi I saw on YouTube is a few orders of magnitude less cool than the Spinners of Bladerunner, but you get my point – we’re so very nearly living with the gadgets and tech promised by films like Total Recall, Back to the Future and Star Trek.

But when it comes to a future filled with Johnny Cabs, Knight Rider’s KITT and Sandra Bullocks police Ultralite in 1990’s Demolition Man, we, the tech obsessed denizens of 2024 are very nearly at the shiny vision of self-driving cars our pop culture has promised.

I remember it was around ten years ago when I was invited to drive one of the first Tesla Model S’s to make it to UK shores. In actual fact, I was driven by the car itself, up the A1 north of London. I know this happened because I got a colleague to photograph me in the driver seat with my hands off the steering wheel – only for the pic to be sanctioned by Tesla people. You see, back then, as is often the case for brand new technology categories, there was little in the way of legislation to stop me engaging full or partial driver assist. I often say at the AI and Innovation keynotes I now deliver, exponential growth is like the swell, coming into a bay – the water will eventually touch all parts of the coastline, but before that, it reaches different parts of the coast at different times, by which I mean, the tech for a rudimentary self-driving Tesla was in place a lot earlier than the legislation required to run it freely and for all drivers. And we are still, to a certain extent at that point, but rest assured the swell is coming and very soon we’ll be swamped by all manner of vehicles that can drive ever-so more efficiently and safely than any human at the wheel could ever aspire to.

So, beyond the very cool sci-fi movie-like scenario where you and the kids can play Scrabble while your family car whisks you up North, how significant is a near future where an array of sensors, interconnected road and vehicle datasets, and smart AI traffic algorithms make it possible for any vehicle to take to the roads, unassisted by a human?

My mind jumps immediately to high streets, those throwbacks to Roman, Medieval and Victorian social and commercial habits. In 2024, you don’t need to be an economics expert to know that high streets are suffering, you can see it in the changing faces of the shops. Once proud department stores are almost all gone along with so many other trading spaces, those that existed as large warehouses with a till at the front, replaced by or endangered by the rise of the online shopping goliaths. In an age where you can order something from an app and, depending on where you live, receive it quite possibly the same day, high streets need to offer experiences. But just how much flexibility do they have, stretched as they are around clogged up, polluted streets and bus lanes. Enter the self-driving vehicle.

Question: if a vehicle can drive itself, why does it need to be stored in a large concrete car park in the centre of town?

Does it not make more sense that having dropped off its human cargo the robot car heads off to either pick up another passenger, or go wait and charge out of town, in a repurposed old airfield for example, joining all the other ‘AI cars’, chatting and goofing off like Mater and Lightning McQueen? And if we agree with this idea, can we also consider the concept that roads in towns could be uprooted and converted to lush, green spaces, ready for the performance retail and experiential shopping that the highstreet desperately needs to usher in, if indeed it is to survive? Add to this a more flexible approach to town planning and shoppers’ expectations that includes access for driverless delivery vehicles through the night as well as mobile shops capable of taking the shopping experience to the customer, and the self-driving revolution isn’t just going to feel super sci-fi, it might just shift our backwards highstreets into an exciting new future.

After 20 years of the television show, Jason Bradbury has reunited with Suzi Perry to launch The Gadget Show Podcast, together they cover the latest technologies and gadgets.

Listen to it here: 

Apple: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-gadget-show-podcast/id1736697212

Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/show/3tq2iidwGUY9NhJC0QcW7T?si=b29910c62f064e4a