The fun will get squeezed out
The future is being driven by people who don’t much like cars. Their priorities – hard to argue with – are reducing pollution, reducing congestion and reducing accidents. But where’s the fun in that?
Speaker after speaker at the FT Future of the Car summit highlighted the trends that are shaping tomorrow’s cars. Clean power, connectivity (vehicles talking to one another and to roadside infrastructure) and car sharing were the hot topics.
The inal speaker of the day, McLaren CEO Mike Flewitt, swam against the tide by championing driving pleasure: ‘I don’t envisage a world that is ever fully autonomous. You can imagine downloading Fernando Alonso’s perfect lap around Silverstone, have the car drive you on that perfect lap automatically, so you can learn from that. And then you drive yourself.’
That’s a great use of new technology.