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The Coming Golden Age of Automobiles — Sleeper Cars
I started this post because I read a lot about self-driving cars. It strikes me in my reading that very often the writers immediately jump to a future when we won’t own cars. They say things like ‘Generation Z (born 2001–2020) will be the last generation that owns a car.’
The consensus seems to be that we won’t need to own a car because these self-driving cars will be like Ubers — you push a button on your phone and one shows up in a minute or two to take you wherever you want to go, drops you off, and then the Uber goes off to pick up someone else. And all this may be true in an urban setting. Who am I to question all these experts?
But I think there’s a possibility of a coming ‘Golden Age of Automobiles.’ Another one! I say that in this sense: I believe we will do more long-distance traveling at night while we sleep. These cars will perhaps be the size of a modern-day van. They will be outfitted with beds for (at least) a couple and two children and maybe the dog. This is my pet thing, and maybe I’m just a dreamer, but wouldn’t it be great?
Just think: we can get into our car in Atlanta at 10:00 o’clock at night and sleep while our car drives us to Chicago where we will arrive, bright-eyed and bushy-tailed at 9:00 AM. Or, in the same amount of time, we can get from Washington DC to Atlanta. Add an hour…
