Why Not Autonomous

One of the biggest questions during SXSW this year was if the technology exists why are auto makers slow to adapt? This was directed at many things with autonomous being the top of the list. During the Connected Car Pavilion auto makers explained. So why does Google work towards progress and why do automakers fall behind? Well Google wants to be the first in technology and auto makers want to be the safest. Auto makers are slower to adapt to these technologies because they have to go through rigorous testing and pass high safety standards. The technology might exist right now but it has to go throw a lot of testing before it can be street legal. We are pretty excited for the day of autonomous driving! What would you do during that hour commute? Read a book? Catch up on the news?

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Fuelcaster SXSW

Lots of great travel apps and services popped up during SXSW this year but one of the coolest things we saw was at the Esurance charging booth. They had several pop up spots around town to get SXSW attendees fueled up and energized for the day. One of the things they were promoting was Fuelcaster which could tell you info about local gas prices and when to buy. It goes by the zip code or GPS location and tells you the prices of the different gas stations in your area and tells you if the prices are predicted to go up or down. How cool would that be to know when prices will drop or rise? We just tried it out today and it says WAIT we predict prices will drop tomorrow! Check it out here and give it a try in your area!
http://fuelcaster.com/#splash

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SXSW Autonomous Cars

This past week we were out at SXSW Interactive learning about the future of automotive technology, autonomous cars, and connected cars. We saw a lot of crazy car wraps and promotional vehicles driving around town and even rode on a boat bus...yes it was as crazy as it sounds! Did we mention the boat bus was hosted by the one and only Grumpy Cat?

Saturday the Connected Car Pavilion opened and we heard from engineers, law makers, and the Mayor of Austin about how these future vehicles will curb our safety issues and traffic problems on the road. Cars today already have autonomous features like self parking capabilities, blind spot monitoring, and cruise control, but the future cars will be able to drive themselves and prevent many accidents due to human error. Autonomous cars can read the road ahead and prevent pile up accidents as well as avoid causing traffic due to unnecessary braking. When you reduce human error you reduce accidents which reduces traffic. We only need 10% of the vehicles on the road to be autonomous before we will see the benefits

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