Technokratos: Good Car-Ma

It seems that to ask for a normal car to be produced in this day and age, where we are surrounded by technological revolutions and endless reels of breakthroughs, is something laughable. These times are testing us and the only way we’re going to win the test is to succumb, and that means forking out a wallet the size of Arkansas just to gain new wheels, but the benefits are aplenty. What I’m more or less getting at is the sudden outburst of gadget cars.

A couple of months ago I posted an article on my unsightly old website about the Jaguar XJ. Back then this was by far the car with the most tech stuffed inside. Since then there’s been a few more out but to give you an idea of what the XJ boasted there was:

A virtual dashboard. On paper, a 12-inch display on which the kind of information you’d expect from a normal dashboard is displayed. Rev counter and speedometer included. That’s analogue dashboards dead and buried.
A two-way screen. When I saw this in a video review I was shocked and literally couldn’t believe it. While the driver sees one thing, the person in the passenger seat sees something else. Sat-nav for driver, TV for passenger, perhaps?
A 20-speaker B&W 7.1 surround sound system. And you thought your home hi-fi was impressive? Eat your heart out.
A hard disk. Yeah, even cars have those now. Stick a CD into the stereo and wait a few moments while the music is ripped off and stuck onto your car’s storage. Then you don’t need the CD again. Ever. If you don’t like the driver’s choice of music there are two pairs of wireless headphones included with the car.
A glove compartment which opens when you wave your hand in front of it. I know, I know, it sounds like overkill. But it’s one step closer towards the sliding doors us geeks are used to seeing in Star Trek. On a serious note it’s surprisingly useful. And you can show off of course.
The seats have a built in massage system and are heated. That’s literally the lap of luxury. Someone buy me an XJ please?

But now the XJ is more like a toy car than anything. As the tech world spins another car has popped up to strut its stuff. This time it’s not Jaguar. It’s Audi with the A8, which is more of a tech chariot than a car. Check out some of these features:

‘Pre-Sense’. The car looks around at the traffic surrounding you and if it detects that you’re about to crash it’ll apply the brakes. So it’s more or less sensing your surroundings. If that’s not impressive I don’t know what is.
In the unlikely event that you’re about the crash (change that to ‘likely’ if you’re female) the car will tighten your seatbelt and roll up all windows to save you from getting involved in too nasty an accident. Thanks car!
Touchscreen displays just won’t stop invading everything. They’ve been around in cars for ages but the A8’s packs a neat punch. Instead of typing an address you can squiggle it. Just don’t get carried away drawing pretty pictures.
3G comes as standard (as does everything else here). So you’re able to turn the car into a Wi-Fi hotspot. This feature happily shakes hands with GPS and satellite imagery from Google Earth, or even streaming music.
Speaking of music, there’s a 19-speaker B&O sound system. Use a Wi-Fi-enabled laptop or an iPod Touch or whatever to hook up to that sound system and play some tunes. Banging, innit, mush?
Night-vision detects hazards up to 300m away. The car also picks out human shapes and will alert you if it’s likely that they’re about to dart out into the middle of the road. Welcome to England.
Just when you thought the A8 couldn’t get any cleverer, it can even read the speed limit. Unfortunately, you won’t be able to say you didn’t see the speed limit sign in court anymore, because it’ll be displayed on your dashboard.

So there you go, two very technological cars. And they’re both very appealing to the eye as well. Cars will never be the same. That’s a good thing of course. I think so anyway. Now where did I leave my bulging wallet?