Technology can feel surreal to me.
In the near future, self driving cars will leverage blockchain technology to redefine the automotive world. One of the most intriguing and exciting possibilities to parallel these advancements in technology, is the idea of automated car sharing and it's potential for passive income.
What if your car made money for you anytime you weren't using it?
With automated car sharing, your self driving car would go to work for you. As I understand it, anyone could reserve your car for an allotted amount of time, and your car would use it's gps and mind blowing technology to drive to wherever that person is, pick them up, drive them around, and then drop them off and continue on to the next person, for as long as you'd like, until finally it drove itself back to you.
The following is an excerpt from the recently updated "Master Plan" for Tesla, which describes it like this:
You will also be able to add your car to the Tesla shared fleet just by tapping a button on the Tesla phone app and have it generate income for you while you're at work or on vacation, significantly offsetting and at times potentially exceeding the monthly loan or lease cost. This dramatically lowers the true cost of ownership to the point where almost anyone could own a Tesla. Since most cars are only in use by their owner for 5% to 10% of the day, the fundamental economic utility of a true self-driving car is likely to be several times that of a car which is not.
How cool is that!?
And Tesla isn't the only one getting in on the action. Google is close to releasing it's own self driving cars, and Nissan, Honda, and Toyota are also expected to be producing and selling them in the next few years as well. I've even read that Amazon and Microsoft have begun working on self driving cars of their own. By using a plethora of technological advancements, cars may be not only driving themselves, but also communicating with each other, and potentially cutting down on the amount of traffic and accidents that we see today.
Self driving cars and the blockchain
The beauty of the blockchain is it's ability to complete transactions that are completely trustless and transparent. Payments and micro-payments will be a necessity of the automated car sharing revolution for multiple reasons. Not only will transactions need to be made as the car completes it's routes and continues on to the next person, but additional micro-payments will likely be necessary for the car to safely transport people where they are going. They may need to pay tolls, connect to wifi hotspots, etc., to complete the trip.
Micro-payments require low (or zero) transaction fees
The Steem blockchain differentiates itself from other cryptocurrencies and fiat payment systems by offering zero transaction fees. In my opinion this is one of the best features of our beloved currency, and something that could position Steem as one of the leading cryptos to leverage automated car sharing, and other micro-payment possibilities in the future.
Imagine going to work and watching your Steem balance on the rise all day long as your car is driving people around the city?
Of course we're probably a year or five away from seeing automated car sharing become a reality, but as technology continues to improve and car sharing becomes more prevalent, the need of owning a car will decrease and we will see this concept grow exponentially.
Which means if we blog, curate, mine, and marketplace our way to enough SP/Steem dollars, we can sit back and enjoy the ride of daily passive income forever. It's a pretty badass concept, and yes I'm probably being overly optimistic, but they say your thoughts create your reality, right?
Driverless cars will bring a unique combination of vital improvements and unknown challenges to the world, and a scalable blockchain with zero transaction fees would play a crucial role in this evolving landscape.
Despite all the positives I've talked about so far, there are some unsolved moral issues as well. One of the most compelling questions I've read on this topic is from writer, Olivia Goldhill, who asked:
"Should driverless cars kill their passengers to save a pedestrian?"
I'm not sure how we answer a question like that, but fortunately, for now, we don't have to.
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*All images are from Pixabay and free of copyrights*
While the new tech that is fast aproaching will allow us to give away some of our more tedious tasks to machines. I will be reluctant to give up controll of my car to another machine. The hard truths and conquences that will have to be chosen In loose loose situations is a lot to ask of a computer even more so when it involves the lives of my family. the choice to pick the lesser of two evils is a hard one to make.. When faced with the serious injury of a jaywalker V's the car chooseing to collide with a light pole instead putting my family at risk is a tough one to put into code.. And even tougher to live with the conquences of the releaseing of that responsabality to a computer.
I agree, self driving cars suck.
You make a great point, and I agree with anyone else in the car besides myself I would be reluctant to give up any control over the wheel. I suppose as we get closer to this reality we will have more information and data on how safe self driving cars are and I don't think many people will be kicking back to watch a movie while in the car anytime soon.
Great post. I'm also extremely excited about the possibility of self-driving cars. There are many arguments to be made about how they can reduce traffic jams, and also how they can reduce the cost of transportation to a fraction of what we pay for Uber today, making car ownership unnecessary for many of us.
I think these trolley problems are so rare that they are basically non-existent. I don't recall ever having a conversation with a human about that kind of situation, so it's not really a primary concern. Even if it were, we'd have to assume that a well-developed computer program would be able to respond faster and reduce the chance of injury to anyone involved.
You make a great point, I'm probably over analyzing a situation that would be extremely rare.
I just read another article that Volvo has a self driving truck being tested currently, so it seems that most or all manufacturers will be moving toward this at some point.
The future is bright. And I love your optimism! :)
Thank you! I'm hoping all this optimism comes to fruition sooner than later. I'd love to see this happen in the next few years.
Me too, after I build up my SP :)
Same here haha, I'd love to power down my SP right into a new Tesla.
That will be easy once Elon starts accepting STEEM. :)