What Will Cars Be Like in 2050?

Please welcome Patrick Peterson to the 21st Century Tech blog. Patrick has been working with GoodCar for six years. In his previous employment he was a professional vehicle appraiser spending years inspecting used vehicles and evaluating post-accident damage.

Now, as an automobile enthusiast, content manager, and editor at GoodCar, he brings his hands-on experience into creating practical, data-backed content to help drivers avoid costly mistakes and make smarter car-buying decisions.

In his first contribution to the 21st Century Tech Blog, he writes about the shape of cars to come. Please enjoy the read, and feel free to comment on the technological innovations he envisions that will take cars into the mid-century.

The classic show The Jetsons introduced flying cars as a fanciful future technology. Set in the year 2062, this beloved cartoon featured vehicle-filled skies. But might flying cars become common much sooner than the show predicted? What about the other features we see in vehicles that appear in science fiction movies? 

World-altering car features are already appearing in vehicles today, with artificial intelligence (AI) analyzing driver habits and algorithms written to create partial to full autonomous driving.

Driverless non-polluting cars running on batteries, fuel cells, or hydrogen lie in our future. They will help us to tackle growing urbanization, road congestion, and climate change.

Companies are designing new technologies, and coming up with new applications that will transform today’s car into what we will see on the roads and in the air at mid-century.

So, what will the 2050 car be like? 

Flying Cars In Our Future

Several companies are working on flying cars. This is not a recent development. Engineers had been dreaming of flying cars as early as 1937 when the Waterman Arrowbile took its first flight. Recent efforts have improved on it but problems remain. Regulation and safety concerns still need to be addressed if flying cars become standard fare.

Among the companies working on flying cars are Alef, Aska, Terrafugia, and Doroni. They are testing concepts and models such as the ASKA A5 that can fly at speeds of nearly 240 kilometres (150 miles) per hour. Road-and-fly versions of vehicles like these should be available within the decade. The hurdles still to overcome include legal, insurance, regulatory and infrastructure.

Today, urban spaces aren’t equipped to deal with flying cars. From where will they take off, and where will they land and merge into ground traffic? Governments have a lot of work to do involving changes to existing air traffic management and control systems that will address altitude, airspace corridors and other safety issues. These changes will not come quickly, with the likely first adopters being commercial ride-sharing or taxi services rather than individual owners.

Autonomous Cars in 2050

Driving automation is defined by the Society of Automobile Engineers (SAE) using six levels of potential vehicle autonomy from L0 to L5. The levels correspond to how much human involvement is required to drive the vehicle. Current levels of autonomy fall between L1 and L2. L1 vehicles are capable of automatically managing speed and lane control. L2 vehicles make more driving decisions but still require a human driver at the steering wheel to take over. L3 vehicles control steering, acceleration, braking, lane changes, and navigation, permitting the human driver to take his or her hands off the wheel and eyes off the road while the system is engaged and notifying the driver in situations where it needs driver input.

Most people think of L4 when talking about autonomous vehicles. L4, or High Driving Automation, refers to a vehicle capable of fully autonomous operations within geofenced domains never requiring a person to sit in the driver seat or assume control. Geo-fencing refers to roads that have appropriate supported infrastructure including being well demarcated, having visible signage and access to GPS.

To reach L5, a vehicle performs all driving tasks under all conditions and environments where a human driver could manage, but without any human intervention. An L5 vehicle no longer requires a driver’s seat.

Leaping to each level requires significant advancements in technologies like Lidar (Laser-based radar), AI, and vehicle-to-everything wireless communication. It is difficult to predict when L5 will be reached. Both Deloitte and McKinsey predict explosive upticks in autonomous vehicle sales after 2030, leading to L5 being widely available in most markets by 2040.

The Evolution of Driving

It took less than two decades for Ford and other manufacturers’ automobiles to replace the horse and buggy. Will the shift from a driver behind the steering wheel to full autonomy take that long? Based on self-driving features found in cars today and how their safety continues to improve, I think the Deloitte and McKinsey predictions are spot on.

By 2050, the only time humans will take over the wheel, if one exists in a vehicle, will be for recreational purposes in the same way people go horseback riding today.

Will this be universal? No, because without a well-defined road infrastructure, L4 and L5 autonomy are impossible. So, areas of the planet, particularly in the Global South, will not see fully autonomous vehicles by mid-century.

Technologies That Will Be Standard in 2050 Vehicles

Cars with autonomous features get to know who drives them, track driving habits and recognize a driver’s “normal” state for safe operation. Today, a FOB provides keyless starting, entry, exit and security. The cars of 2050 will include far more. Some of those features are already appearing in vehicles today. By 2050, expect cars to feature in alphabetical order:

• Augmented Reality (AR) Displays – where the dashboard overlay, navigation, hazard alerts, and environmental information are projnected directly onto windshields to help drivers process complex information quickly and intuitively. The AR/VR automotive market are expected to grow to $673 billion in 2025, representing a 176% increase since 2018.
• Biometric Entry and Ignition – where the vehicle recognizes its owner employing fingerprint, voice, retinal and even palm vein recognition technology.
• Cognitive Assessment – where the vehicle’s AI algorithms analyze passenger behaviour and physiological data to assess cognitive load and stress to provide real-time feedback or intervention when it appears its human occupants are overwhelmed and need to stop and take a break.
• Emotion-Sensing Interiors – where the car’s AI will adapt lighting, seat position, music and more to provide an optimal experience to match the passenger’s emotional state.
• Health Monitoring – where the vehicle uses AI-powered cameras and sensors to detect drowsiness, fatigue, blood glucose levels, and signs of inebriation, where sensors embedded in seats and seatbelts monitor heart rhythm, pulse, respiration, and where the car communicates with wearables to facilitate real-time health data monitoring including sending information to medical professionals.
• Predictive AI using V2X Communication (Vehicle-to-Everything) – situational awareness where the car perceives its current environment and predicts actions of other road users. A hybrid version would combine data-driven learning with domain knowledge to enable it to anticipate potential hazards seconds in advance. With this feature, a car can plan safer routes and anticipate hidden dangers.
• Sensor fusion – where the car combines data from multiple sensor types such as radar, lidar, cameras, sonar, and GPS to build an accurate understanding of the environment around it, whether human or autonomous-driven.
• Shape-Shifting Body Frames and Self-Healing – where cars will be capable of altering appearances or repairing minor dents and cracks because of the materials being used to construct them. BMW currently offers models that can change their aerodynamic shape.