Waymo, the autonomous car development company, recently made history by launching cars on public roads without any safety drivers behind the wheel. The tests aren’t limited to one or two routes, and the cars are able to go anywhere within a defined space, in this case, the space being Chandler in Arizona.

Driverless cars have the potential to completely transform the way we travel. In his most recent TED talk, even Elon Musk, co-founder of Tesla, said that “by the end of this year, an autonomous car will be able to leave a parking space in Los Angeles, navigate all the way across America, and park in a space in New York.” With this shift, there will also arrive a plethora of benefits; from reduced travel costs, to increased road safety and more efficient trips.

We all have, at some point of time in our lives, faced the nightmare of holiday traffic. Long weekends and holidays like Christmas and New Year’s are considered to be some of the most popular and busiest travel days of the year, with many travellers driving to their destinations by car. The advent of self-driving cars could reduce, if not fully eliminate, all this holiday traffic. Self-driving vehicles will be able to travel quickly, instead of being stuck in traffic on congested highways. They will be able to drive closer to the cars in front of them, at faster speeds, and navigate narrow lanes than are generally prone to human error.

Image source: EnergyKids

Self-driving cars may even help travellers plan ahead for increased efficiency. Once the vehicle knows the destination, it could suggest an alternate route based on the expected number of vehicles on the usual route. The car could then also recommend that travellers leave a day earlier or late, or even at two in the morning, to avoid getting stuck.

Autonomous cars could be a game-changer for the airline and rail industry as well. With increased efficiency and reduced costs, people may choose to travel by car than planes or trains. This, in turn, could drastically cut down flying costs, as the airline industry tries to keep up with the advent of this new technology and changing passenger demands. Additionally, self-driving cars allow for point-to-point transportation, which means no more wasted time travelling to a bus or train station or the airport.

Self-driving cars are all set to alter the landscape of mobility and revolutionize the automotive industry, public transport and swathes of the global population. While there is still a lot that needs to be sorted in terms of acceptance and readying our infrastructure for such cars, the excitement in the air is tangible with a faster and more efficient future of travel on the way.

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The internet is going crazy over this one tweet and Instagram post by legendary Elon Musk! The tweet showcases the Hyperloop pod run by team WARR, from Tech Univ Munich who have won the SpaceX Hyperloop Pod Competition.

The concept of Hyperloop was first envisaged by Elon Musk in 2013 in the form of high speed capsules that travel at the speed of the sound. Musk believes that Hyperloop will be the fifth mode of transport after planes, trains, cars and boats connecting cities that are ideally less than 1500km apart. When it becomes a reality, Hyperloop would replace the conventional railway system. with its medium-vacuum environment offered by the tube.

Hyperloop pod run by team WARR pic.twitter.com/ntaMsoxkZE

— Elon Musk (@elonmusk) August 28, 2017

The competition which was organized between 25-27 August in LA focussed on the highest speed possible in the 1.2 km SpaceX tube. The WARR pod won the prize with a top speed of 324km/hour. If they do travel at the speed of sounds,  Hyperloop pods could make your journey from Munich to Berlin inside 30 minutes.

The WARR Hyperloop team at the SpaceX competition

The WARR Hyperloop team of 30 students from the Technical University of Munich

Another player Hyperloop One has a distance to time saved calculator which shows that if you had to travel from Delhi to Agar you could actually reach in just 16 minutes.

Also read: Hyperloop Alpha white-paper, written in 2012

While you might still be drooling over the video of hyperloop pod run, we would leave you with this quote by Musk at the event:  “The reason I love these things is that it makes me excited to wake up in the world”. “There are a lot of problems in the world and if we don’t have things that inspire us, what’s the point of living?”

Also read: With its recent success, where is Hyperloop One headed now?

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