Technology Is Changing Our Daily Drive – Here’s How

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The art of driving has come a long way since 1885’s Benz Patent-Motorwagen. But the advances we’ve been making in the field over the past decade or so have been tremendous. We are, in general, advancing technologically at a faster rate than ever before, with more technology advances taking place in the last decade than in pretty much all of human history. It’s only going to get faster.

We’re going to focus squarely on the cool tech advances that are being made in the automobile industry, with a particular focus on the practical advances (there are loads of car gadgets out there that don’t really help drivers all that much; they’re just vanity technology).

Oh, and we’re going to do this without mentioning autonomous cars, because that’s too obvious.

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Immobilizing a stolen vehicle

This is what we’ve always wanted, right? The main problem with car theft is how quickly the criminals can get away. They do, after all, have a getaway ride immediately upon committing the crime; the object of their crime is their getaway. If you happen to be in the vicinity, then it’s without doubt a frustrating experience to simply watch your vehicle being driven away. There’s really very little you can do, unless you can run faster than your vehicle drives.Pixabay

This is why immobilizers are getting more and more popular. Immobilizers prevent cars from being hot wired – the process by which criminals bypass the car’s ignition interlock, which basically tricks the car into thinking the key has been inserted and turned. Immobilizers ensure that the car cannot be started unless the key has been inserted. They’ve been shown to reduce vehicle theft by about 40% in recent years. Here is a great infographic by Dryve which shows the future of autonomous cars.

Finding a parking space

Going from “preventing vehicle theft” to “finding a parking space” may seem a little odd; there’s certainly a pretty big reduction in intensity! But let’s face it: these problems are probably always in the top ten problems that drivers worry about on a frequent basis. Any technology that can help people find a parking space has got to be pretty heavily appreciated, right? Well, there is something that allows you to find parking spaces – and it doesn’t involve the installation of expensive gadgets to your vehicle. You just need Internet access.

Parkopedia has been described as the “Wikipedia of parking”. This isn’t just because of its wealth of information, but also because of the fact that it can be edited and updated by members of the Parkopedia community. You can either use the website or the smartphone app to find public spaces and their prices (if any), and even info on private driveways whose owners are hiring out to drivers.

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Better batteries

A dead battery is one of the (many, many) banes of a driver’s life. Thankfully, batteries are seeing big improvements as of late – which is pretty cool, seeing as they were basically being ignored for a long time so manufacturers could focus on advances in other parts of the vehicle! These days, it’s easier than ever to maintain a long-lasting battery and, with the ever-increasing power and availability of portable jump starters, easier to revive one that’s died. You can look up such gadgets as the Jump n Carry JNC660 on Tool Nerds if you haven’t invested in one yet. These things are getting more popular all the time – after all, they save you from having to call an expensive car service or try to hail a passerby for help.

Batteries are becoming more important than ever to the auto industry – this is, of course, thanks to the expansion of electrical vehicles, a technology we probably should ignore in an article such as this. Tesla have been dominating this field for a long time, but many other manufacturers are getting in on this technology. This means we’ll be seeing some very impressive advances in the next two or three years as increasing competition forces everyone to get more innovative – and, with any luck, it will also mean those electric vehicle will become much cheaper!

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Updates and alerts

Can’t stand to be away from your baby? (Which, if you feel this way about your car, is probably the precise word you use to describe it.) Don’t worry; there’s an app for that. A lot of people hate being away from their vehicles for too long, usually because they’re paranoid that something bad is going to happen. But many cars are being built with IoT technology that allows you to keep track of them using an app on your smartphone.

Hardware and software such as Land Rover’s InControl not only allows you to check how full your fuel tank is (as well as how far that fuel can take you) or whether your doors are locked; it also allows you to control certain aspects of your vehicle from afar. You can lock or unlock the vehicle, activate a silent alarm, start tracking its location if it’s stolen, etc. And, if you’ve forgotten where you parked it, you can use GPS to find it again.

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Lasers!

There a few words in the English language that excite people more than the word “lasers”. If we’re talking about awesome technological advances, then we have to bring lasers into the equation at some point. So how exactly are lasers going to change the automobile game? Unfortunately, we’re not developing cars that can shoot lasers for whatever purpose you desire, as many of you may have assumed. (Although maybe the government is actually secretly developing such a thing for some nefarious purpose.)

Lasers are being used to enhance the power and longevity of car headlamps. That probably sounds a lot less exciting that you imagined, but don’t underestimate how cool an advancement this is. Laster have incredible illuminating power. LEDs, which became a big thing in car lighting in recent years (and are still worth getting if you don’t have them) are already an extremely impressive lighting technology. Car lighting systems are now being developed that use lasers to create extremely powerful and sustainable beams of light that are then reflected out into the road in front of the car. So you’re not actually looking at a laser when you see these car lights. (Which is a good thing, trust me.)