The future of the car, enabled by full fibre

It’s a question asked by many: what will the future of the car look like? Here at CityFibre, we’ve had a look at the latest technology to come from some of the world’s biggest car manufacturers, and we have a few predictions... The electric car There’s no doubt that the electric car was the first technological innovation in the automotive market to really capture people’s imagination. With the environmental impact of petrol and diesel cars being criticised more widely, investment in electric cars to offset greenhouse gas emissions will only continue to increase. Manufacturers, such as Tesla, are continuing to develop increasingly powerful electric cars which can travel further, last longer and charge faster. We’re expecting to see electric, or at least hybrid engines, entirely replace traditional combustion engines at some point in the future. The autonomous car This is one of the most interesting and exciting evolutions in car technology, in our opinion. Removing the driver from the car - initially removing foot controls, then steering controls and eventually all controls - is something that’s being worked on across the globe. Using a multitude of cameras, sensors and lasers, engineers are attempting to reproduce real-life environments in a 3D world, allowing the vehicle to make decisions about navigation , based on a set destination inputted by a driver. The connected car For the car of the future to make the right decisions, it must be able to exchange a variety of information with the outside world. Eventually, through various sensors, we’re predicting that futuristic cars will be able to communicate not only with other vehicles but also with the infrastructure of the smart cities it travels through. The idea behind the connected car is that it changes a real pain point of car travel currently, removing human intervention and leaving the ‘driver’ free to catch up on emails, enjoy some quality time watching a film, or skype a loved one. Advanced AI will be in all cars At the moment, cars have a variety of basic technology offerings which are designed to make the driver’s life easier. However, these technologies are generally just a far less effective version of what is available through a smartphone. Therefore, car manufacturers are focusing some attention on this too, and we predict that in the next decade alone, the AI in cars will begin to rival that of the smartphone, meaning the car of the future will be listening out for your commands, and it will be able to connect to your smart home in all of the same ways your phone now can. Whatever happens with car engineering in the future, one thing is clear. In order to enable these technological advancements, the car of the future will need to be connected to an always-on, high speed network allowing them to perform in the way they are designed to. The Gigabit City programme CityFibre is undertaking will create an infrastructure that will be future proofed and ready for these cars when they are released. You can find out more about our Gigabit City programme here: www.cityfibre.com/gigabit-cities/