Pitch
Autonomous vehicles and cheap islandwide connectivity lead to people living in two homes: one stationary, and one mobile
Description
Make life easier/more difficult for Singapore?
Easier
Describe the change
People need to travel to fulfill their needs. If they do not travel, someone else travels on their behalf. The more people you have, the greater their travel needs. This is the incontrovertible truth.
As the population continues to grow, public transit frequency increases until it can increase no more, and still the trains and stations are fully crowded during peak hours, and the bus stops overflow with waiting people. The number of vehicle breakdowns increase with the growing number of vehicles on the road and tracks. Congestion during peak hours worsens as increasing affluence leads people to travel more.
However, people come to accept this reality more readily than expected. Autonomous vehicles become more widespread and public transport eventually provides free connectivity and basic amenities, allowing people to do more while in transit. The autonomous vehicle increasingly becomes a second home for people.
How will this change impact Smart Nation Singapore in 2030?
As electric vehicles start to increase in numbers, advances in solar cell technology can enable vehicles to produce a significant amount of their own power consumption through embedded solar cells. Car makers, mobile estate agents and interior designers may find themselves in a curious alliance.
With rising home prices, young couples aim for a small, 2-room studio apartment and a luxurious home-vehicle. Vehicle renovation, cheaper than home renovation, becomes increasingly popular: the mobile estate industry is born.
Roadside wifi access points provide the fabric for islandwide cameras and traffic control. Optimisation for reduced accident rates results in the occasional accident or breakdown causing traffic to halt for hours until a recovery vehicle arrives. Autonomous driving algorithms converge too much, causing amplified traffic behaviour: a road may be heavily congested one moment, and suddenly almost empty the next moment as navigational AIs switch to the next best route en masse.
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