Driving Into the Future

How Apple is making self driving cars a reality

• Apple confirms its interest in automated car industry
• Self driving cars predicted to be commercially available by 2020
• Apple joins some of the leading names, Google, Volvo and Tesla in automotive car industry to make self driving technology a reality

Nobody knows what the future holds, but thanks to scientists and movie makers we’ve had a ball guessing how the world will look in a number of years.

Take the movie ‘Back to the Future’, you’d be lying if you told me that you never wanted one of those insanely cool hoverboards Marty was zipping around on throughout the whole film.

With technology growing everyday, it seems some of these futuristic devices that were so far from our reach only 10 years ago may be closer than we first thought.

Recently, Apple has thrown tech-heads into a spin, with a letter to the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) confirming its ambition to enter the car market.

For the first time after two years of rumours about the company’s interest in the automated car market, its previously secret initiative was confirmed in the letter and is sending waves through the tech community.

This news comes after recent reports that Apple’s self-driving car project: Project Titan was being wound down and that the company was reversing all of its car plans.

However, this new evidence will put Apple in competition will fellow innovative giants Google and Tesla who have already been working in the autonomous car market.

Although the letter demonstrates Apple’s interest in the car market, it focuses more on the self-driving technology rather than the car itself.

Until more evidence is provided, this potentially rules out the possibilities of having Apple branded cars on our roads but rather having Apple’s software and technology inside the shells of our existing cars.

Meanwhile, a number of diverse companies such as Volvo, Google and Uber, have already begun to conduct trials of self driving cars with test products already active and over 14 trials already underway in California.

So when will these extreme smart cars be available to the public you ask?

It has been predicted that all vehicles on Australian roads will be driverless by 2030.

While this might still sound like a while away, analysts are predicting that the devices will be commercially available as early as 2020 at a cost of $1000 US to fit the system into existing cars.

Imagine a world with driverless cars, no more waiting for taxis and Ubers or paying for vehicle repairs or insurance.

Technology is advancing, and it looks like self-driving cars will be our reality faster than we know it.

Welcome to the future everyone.