Those Darned Orcs!

…they’re so wacky!

The Doclopedia #2,428

Game Changers: Genius Cars

In our world of 2022, a self driving car is still pretty much an experimental thing that you can’t buy and that many people don’t trust anyway. But we do have Uber and Lyft and other sort of taxi services that people do use often.

On Earth A-20, they have genius cars, which are self driving, own-able or just hire-able , and they are way nicer than even a limousine.

Genius cars, which are fully sentient and autonomous robots, were developed in 2018 by a team of engineering students. They built and programmed three prototypes: a small coupe for running around town, a delivery van, and a small RV. The interiors of the coup was luxury vehicle quality. The delivery van had a recliner instead of a driver’s seat, and the RV was built for comfort and partying.

And unlike driverless cars, which were legal almost everywhere, but still had a good many bugs to work out, genius cars possessed no steering where or other diver controls. In test drives, they proved to be far safer than both driverless cars and human operated vehicles.

Genius cars were quickly approved by first the United States, then 30 other countries.

But Genius Cars Unlimited, the company the students formed, did not make the cars. They licensed out the tech, along with stringent quality controls, to 10 automakers around the world. They got a thousand dollars off each car made. The first year, that came to $175,000,000.00 and change. By the end of year five, each of the fifteen students was on track to be a billionaire.

So how were genius cars a game changer? Well, right off, traffic deaths plummeted. No drivers means no drunk/stoned/distracted/stupid drivers. Hospital emergency rooms became a good deal less crowded.

There was also an even greater drop in traffic and speeding tickets. This hit many police departments very hard. It hit state troopers and highway patrols even harder.

On that earth, electric cars were already killing gas powered cars, and since all genius cars were electric, it pretty much knocked the petroleum industry out, as far as fuel for cars and other vehicles went. The environment got even cleaner.

Public transportation had another huge growth spurt, since genius cars could service rural areas much cheaper and easier that ever before.

And finally, many people would have much more relaxing vacations because nobody had to dive, so everyone could just hang out in what was essentially a self driving small house.