The cars of the future are real electronic jewels on wheels, equipped with processors, sensors and automation that guides them without human intervention. All can be seen and admired at the Auto Show opened in Los Angeles, where car manufacturers brought a car that came close to two million dollars. The car manufacturers present at the Los Angeles Auto Show seem determined to make the drivers’ life more enjoyable. And longer, obviously. For example, the new Lexus puts to work its infrared sensors. “The alarm goes off and you hear a voice saying: ‘Hey, wake-up!’. The system is programmed to automatically stop the car if you forgot to step on the brake”, said Bill Kwong, representing Lexus.
The new Volkswagen spares us the ordeal of parking the car. It figures it out itself, if you just press a button. The future will reserve us another surprise. Sooner than we think, we will “drive” run an autonomous car. “By 2015 we will have partial autonomous cars and by 2020 cars will be completely autonomous”, says journalist Doug Newcomb.
Search engine giant Google uses vehicles without driver for road mapping, and this year managed to obtain authorization for cars equipped with the guidance system, to circulate legally in Nevada. So in terms of technology, manufacturers are ready. It remains to be seen how quickly we, the drivers, will accept to sit on the passenger seat. “Who is ready to sit at the wheel and look at how the car drives by itself? What legislator is ready to completely change the traffic rules and introduce other laws?” Analyst Brian Cooley wonders.
All eyes were on a fireball that you can’t see very often on the roads – the Zenvo ST1, with a price tag of $1.8 million, 1,250 horsepower, 375 kilometers per hour and only 15 copies available. “The rich want to differentiate themselves from the world, so they buy things produced in limited edition. Only three copies of this car will be made available for the U.S. market”, said Bobby Khan, CEO of Emporio Motor.