Everyone talks about how advanced cars have become and how consumers can now do practically everything from their car. Sure, being able to surf the Internet, watch TV and text your best friend all while driving down the highway at 80 MPH is great, but TV and movies have promised us so much more. To that end, here are seven futuristic car enhancements that could make your current ride look like the car from The Flintstones.
7. Hover Pads
If there’s one car accessory we’ve been promised for years, only to be disappointed again and again, it’s the hover pad. From Back to the Future to The Jetsons, we’ve been shown that in the future streets are totally lame and that flying your car around town is the way to go. You wouldn’t even need to buy a new car; just slap some hover pads under your current auto and you’re good to go. Yet some mysterious force keeps this technology just out of grasp. The government? The Illuminati? Bigfoot? We’ll likely never know.
6. Drink Dispensers
Why stop off at the local fast food joint for a soda when you could grab a fountain drink right from dashboard? The built-in soda and coffee dispenser seems like a natural advancement for the car of the future, but for some reason no one has stepped up to the plate to deliver such a miraculous invention. Sure, it would probably lead to a few stains, burns and possible fires, but isn’t that a small price to pay to not have to wait in line for a drink?
5. Ejector Seat
If you ask me, it’s insulting that car buyers don’t have the option to install ejector seats in their cars. I don’t know about you, but if I’m about to hit a semi going 70 MPH, I’d rather just fly out of there than trust my life to a cheap bag of air. Plus, you’ll look like a secret agent as you gently float to the ground via parachute. How many accessories can make you look cool AND keep you safe?
4. Sound Proof Bubble
In The Simpsons, Homer’s car of the future ended up being a huge flop. But the one accessory he was dead right about was the sound proof bubble. I don’t want to hear kids or belligerently drunk friends of mine blather on in the back seat; I wanna jam quietly to the smooth sounds of Enya. And imagine how many accidents could be avoided if the driver’s seat was completely separated from the annoying sounds of children screaming, wives nagging and coworkers awkwardly singing along to One Direction.
3. TV Screen Windshield
People complained that LCD screens being installed in the steering wheel would lead to deadly accidents. My only complaint is that they aren’t big enough! Imagine having you whole windshield turn into a massive TV screen at the flip of a button. Watch Maury tell someone they aren’t the father, and then switch to taking out bad guys in the latest FPS game. And it would obviously be safer than the LCD screens they install in your dash. At least this way, your eyes are still technically on the road. Just don’t play any racing games on it. That would probably get confusing.
2. Autopilot
It’s a crazy world we live in where almost everyone is allowed to drive a car, but only pilots with special training are allowed to fly a plane. I mean, planes have autopilot; a feature that cars have been lacking for years. While those lazy jerks can just hit a button and relax while the plane flies itself, we poor folks on the ground have to steer our cars like idiots. We already have cruise control to take care of hitting the gas for us; how much harder can it be to invent something to navigate the roads for us too?
1. Sentience
The sad truth is that some people in the world are lonely. And while the lucky among us may have a special someone to keep us company on long road trips, the loners out their will inevitably end up talking to their car. So wouldn’t it be nice if it could talk back? A completely sentient automobile like KITT or Bumblebee that can respond to your every command. Of course, this would probably eventually lead to automobiles taking over the earth and making the human race into their slaves, so perhaps sentience is a function best left unimplemented.