I agree with a lot of what is said, but I think the technology will develop long before our world sees something like this. Case in point, I’ve thought about this for years in fact, and I realized that you’d almost need a global network interfaced where every vehicle was on some sort of traffic control pattern, basically auto-pilot like someone said. You’d basically pretty much enter the coordinates of where you wanted to go and when you wanted to be there and you’d have a scheduled take off time, your car would bring you there. I don’t think it would need to be as complex as piloting a plane is now however, indeed I think we would eliminate the need for driving skills altogether and eliminate accidents as well (except for technology outages, which I think would need to be addressed by multiple redundancies before anything like that could gain traction). I also agree energy usage would be a big non starter for some people, so we’d need to be able to figure out a renewable cheap energy source to power these vehicles first.
When I used to think about this, I thought, how would you ever build the infrastructure to globally network all of this, but with GPS and smart phone technology and the internet being available basically over the airwaves everywhere now, the idea doesn’t seem so silly. Same with auto-pilot for a vehicle, used to seem like you’d still need a modicum of human control, but we already have cars that can friggin’ park themselves. I would imagine if we could take every car that exists today off the road and replace it with a new car, we could with today’s technology almost create an inter-connected autopilot system that would schedule driving for everyone and cars which could pilot themselves and never get into an accident. If we’re not there, we’re probably less than a decade from being there. The big problem with doing it with land based cars however is we have over 100 years legacy of vehicles still in operation, and you’re not going to get those off the streets. We would almost need a different physical plane in which to operate a system like this, hence it would make sense to implement flying cars only once we can make sure they are on the grid and have no chance of ever going off the grid (aka the grid has no chance of going down). We’re not stable enough to ensure 0 outages at this point, but give it a couple decades and I think we’ll be there.
Now the energy independence factor I think due to the politics surrounding it, will probably take 3 or 4 decades to finally achieve. So I think real scale model production of a pilot system could probably begin at that time. However politics is the real sticking point here, politics is what is going to keep us from achieving energy independence for this long, and once we get there, you have to realize that the whole infrastructure thing, who’s going to pay for what, setting up a public system, etc….this is all going to require Congressional action, and there will be big disagreements. The foes will fight it tooth and nail, your car companies aren’t going to want to make these transitions, it will be an uphill battle, and the costs will continue to rise as action fails to materialize.
I’ve seen a fight in my own home state of Minnesota, for 30 years people have been trying to get a mass transit rail system here, and just now is it finally taking shape. A few years ago the first line opened, so whereas other cities the size of Minneapolis/St. Paul have a robust system where you can get on at any number of points and go to virtually anywhere you’d want to go in the city by rail, here you can go to downtown Minneapolis, the VA hospital and the Mall of America. People fought this innovation tooth and nail and they’re still fighting the expansion. Business owners don’t want it to go down their streets. And every year the price tag gets bigger. Meanwhile roads get more and more congested. A city this size, we should not only be able to get on a train anywhere in the metro area and go wherever we want, but we should be connected to Chicago by now, and even that’s at least 7 years off.
So, I suspect that will delay it a couple more decades. Basically, my prediction would be that IF our entire system of governance and our whole economy doesn’t collapse, our coasts are not destroyed by global warming and terrorist don’t ultimately cripple our entire nation, we should see the first commercially available hover cars by 2075, and have transitioned almost entirely to flying cars by 2100.
