While not perfect, the 2015 Tesla Model S is way ahead of its luxury-sedan competition in terms of design and style, says WSJ's Dan Neil.

A SMALL, self-governing island is on the verge of handing over its roads to driverless cars and experts believe Australia will follow suit within the next decade.

With a land mass about the size of Chicago and a population fewer than 90,000, the Isle of Man is already popular in the auto-world for its lack of speed limits and annual superbike race. Now, the island is about to become a hub for self-driving cars.

Transportation minister Phil Gawne is currently finalising discussions and working on incentives to attract tech giants and driverless car manufacturers to the island, which is nestled between England and Ireland.

“We like to be innovative on the island,” Mr Gawne told The Washington Post.

“We like also to be independent. This helps both those areas in terms of our international image and reputation.”

As the Isle of Man is self-governed, the process of changing legislation is a much quicker process than other larger countries. Mr Gawne said this will easily allow the government to tweak laws when driverless cars swarm the roads.

“We’re very keen. We can see a lot of potential advantages for the island,” he said. “It also helps in terms of the image of Isle of Man.”

Analyst at Navigant Research David Alexander agreed the island is the perfect location for the first large-scale public trials of fully autonomous vehicles.

“Things can be tried on an island that may not be practical in a city,” he said.

“On the mainland there will always be someone who wants to go beyond the range of the trial and will then proclaim how useless autonomous cars are.”

Autonomous-vehicle analyst Thilo Koslowski isn’t as enthusiastic about the plan, suggesting a busy mainland city would be better suited.

“That will be the proof in the pudding, to show these technologies are reliable in a real-world environment where most people would come to see those cars,” he said.

Historic driverless car trial Chris Griffith rides with SA Premier Jay Weatherill to witness the first driverless car travel on a public road

MANUFACTURERS PUSHING FOR DRIVERLESS CARS

There is about to be a huge shift in the way motorists take the road following a surge in driverless car technology.

Futurist and host of forthcoming television series Tomorrow’s World, Chris Riddell, said he has seen a surge in driverless car technology being showcased global consumer electronics tradeshows such as CES.

“Driverless cars are a hot topic right now with leading manufactures showcasing advancements in technology and innovation in the motoring space,” he told news.com.au.

“There hasn’t been such a large investment and focus on the automotive industry since cars were first introduced.”

This sentiment has been echoed by car manufactures and tech companies working with the new technology.

Nissan has promised to launch more than 10 vehicles with autonomous drive technology by 2020, Toyota has committed $1 billion for the development of artificial intelligence in driverless car and Ford is working on a sensor to allow autonomous cars to create a real-time 3D map of their surroundings.

This isn’t even to mention tech giants Google and Tesla, who have long been working to develop driverless cars for the market, which Lux Research estimates will be worth $87 billion worldwide by 2030.

Even Apple has begun working with the technology, despite not officially admitting this is the case.

Speaking with the BBC, Tesla boss Elon Musk said Apple’s development plans were an “open secret”.

“It’s quite hard to do, but I think companies like Apple will probably make a compelling electric car. It seems like the obvious thing to do,” he said.

“It’s pretty hard to hide something if you hire over 1,000 engineers to do it.”

Mr Riddell said he believes self-driving cars will be integrated into the Australian road by as soon 2020.

“Volvo has been testing its driverless cars on Aussie roads and there are also 69 driverless trucks in operation at the mines.”

WHAT’S THE HOLD UP?

With driverless car technology promising to reduce accidents and save lives, it’s hard to imagine why there isn’t a bigger push to have them legalised on Australian roads.

Mr Riddell said the biggest challenge standing in the way of getting driverless cars on the road was fear.

“The tech is already here and we could have the streets filled today, however we need to educate people about this new era of technology,” he said.

“At first it’s hard to resist instinct to reach for the steering wheel or the breaks, but once you do it a few times you get comfortable and realise driving is trickier in a normal car.”

Mr Riddell said while he expects driverless cars to one day be the norm, there will likely be a transition period, which will see automated cars and standard vehicles sharing the road.

“At the moment there is a focus on the changing the legislation to get automated vehicles on the road, but in the future we will be looking at why we are still allowing people to drive manually,” he said.

“The tech is there and once driverless cars can communicate with each other, traffic lights and infrastructure, road tolls will be down to zero.”

However, The Federalist’s Dan McLaughlin doesn’t agree. He believes there are too many components at play for driverless cars to completely eradicate accidents.

“A truly driverless road would not be accident-free, given the number of accidents that would still be caused by mechanical and computer errors, weather conditions, pedestrians, bicyclists, motorcyclists and sheer random chance,” he wrote.

“But it would make the now-routine loss of life and limb on the roads far rarer.”

WHAT DOES THE FUTURE HOLD?

With the expenses of owning and maintaining a vehicle becoming increasingly expensive, Mr Riddell believes the future of driving will be an app based model similar to Uber.

“There is a trend of car ownership decreasing with millennials and I expect to see that continuing,” he said.

“I think people will just use an app to organise a driverless car to drop them where they need to go.”

This is a view shared by Uber chief executive Travis Kalanick.

During an appearance on The Late Show with Stephen Colbert, Mr Kalanick described what he envisioned the inevitable future of his company would be.

“Google’s doing the driverless thing. Tesla’s doing the driverless thing. Apple’s doing the driverless thing. The question for a tech company is do you want to be part of the future or do you want to resist the future? In many ways we don’t want to be part of the taxi industry before us, so that’s how we think about it.”

The entrepreneur later told reporters at a conference that driverless car technology would make travelling by Uber the cheaper alternative.

“When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle. Even if you want to go on a road trip, it would just be cheaper,” he said, according to re/code.

“The magic there is that you bring the cost down below the cost of ownership, for everybody, and then car ownership goes away.”