If you’re like me, you’ve heard a lot in your lifetime about futuristic cars that can drive themselves. It looks like it won’t be long before your next Chevrolet car will be able to do just that!
The Michigan International Speedway has become the new place to test some new vehicles with technology that can communicate with other vehicles and with the road as well. Some cars already have a precursor to this technology such as blind-spot detection and lane-departure warnings, but the new technology is going to go several steps further.
If automakers perfect this new technology, it’s going to greatly reduce (if not eliminate) vehicle collisions and, as a result, traffic congestion as well. In addition to that, the technology will make vehicles more efficient and make warranties more effective because cars will be able to transmit real-time data to manufacturers.
"I have never seen anything with quite the size of the carrot as exists when we’re talking about the connected vehicle and the highway and the different things that we can do," said Dave Cole, the chairman of Ann Arbor’s Center for Automotive Research. The new project will also create tens of thousands of jobs for Michigan if the state becomes the place where these cars will be manufactured.
Can you imagine going to your local Chevy dealer in the next few years and buying a new Chevrolet car that communicates with other cars and the road’s infrastructure? It might sound like Big Brother, but it also promises to reduce traffic-related deaths by thousands.
