How Would You Spend Your Time In An Autonomous Car?

June 20th, 2018 by Nicolas Zart

I can answer that question easily, but you would be surprised at how some people respond.

But the question is, how would you use your time in an autonomous vehicle (AV) in a typical daily work commute?

If I Had An AV, I Tell You What I’d Do…

And for those who know Mercury Blues (aka Mercury Boogie), you can continue reading the rest of the article to this tune.

Statista.com asked 130,000 car owners across 9 countries, using Ipsos/GenPop, how they would spend their time in an AV. It’s good news for the most part — all continents report people would still spend most of their time watching the road in an AV. Phew! Dodged a scary one with that point. (Whether those responses are accurate is a different story.)

Overall, if the commute is about an hour, commuters would spend 5 minutes of that time in an AV reading. In theory. In an ever-online world, communication with relatives and friends took a big part of the commute time. And music to the ears of online retailers, people said they would do some online shopping.

Where the study gets interesting is that it divides answers into three different continents — Asia, Europe, and North America. For example, more people in Asia would sleep than in North America, Europeans ranking the least amount of snooze time.

The report can be downloaded here and makes for an interesting read.

What Would CleanTechnica Readers Do In An AV?

As a reader, I know I want a car that is obviously appealing to the eye, unique, drives like a dream, handles flawlessly, and at the site of any traffic turns into an AV. I can imagine carving canyons for lunch and getting back into traffic to be more productive with online meetings, writing, reading, etc.

The reality is that we probably won’t have that perfect, ideal AV. Profitability negates certain features and products that would otherwise revolutionize industries. Most likely our AV will be quaint pods with train-like features that will be hyper-efficient compared to modern day gasoline cars.

We are sure the first true AVs will strike the perfect balance between manually drivable and fully autonomous. But we also feel they will lead to fleets of pods conveniently showing up at your front door to drop you anywhere. What would you do in such EVs … other than read CleanTechnica?

I Kinda Do Sorta Want My AV … Kinda

I want my AV, but I want it my way. My way isn’t to everyone’s taste — that much I know. But at the very least I would hope to have choice, quality, affordability, and flexibility. I am a natural entity, not a financial slot machine.









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