I never thought it’d be possible, but Mazda of all companies has embraced the inner geek inside me to make me want to run out and test drive one of their cars. Thankfully this is only a concept car for now, and my Honda is still running strong.

Designed for "net-savvy youngsters", the new concept hatchback, Mazda Sassou, ditches the traditional cylinder lock key system in favor of USB flash drives. In addition to starting the engine, the flash drives can be used to transfer driving directions for long trips along with the latest songs for the day to the Sassou’s internal hard drive.

 :arrow: Article @ Everything USB

 Sounds impressive to me! My uncle’s merc uses some kind of plastic key thing to run, but this is way cooler. I can just imagine people turning a usb into the ignition slot and vroom…or maybe it’ll be some electronic engine in the future that makes no sound…just slowly floats off into oblivion?

Still very cool step into the future, I expect we’ll be seeing more then just USB pens as cars rapidly advance to keep up with the computing age. Stuff like onboard computers, which already exist – just not as advanced as they really should be. Harddrives, Cars connected via some kinda amazing WiFi to your home network which you have preprogrammed to take you to certain destinations. Maybe we’ll rename cars and be done with it.

Intelligence: Behold the All-Seeing, Self-Parking, Safety-Enforcing, Networked Automobile
Radar, lasers, wireless radio networks and other embedded tech will enable our cars to sense faraway traffic and stop accidents before they happen. But who will be in the driver’s seat?

Well again we seem to have heard it all, films that are based in the future like Minority report and iRobot seem to focus on such things as the future of the car. In iRobot you see that Will Smith has to put the car in ovveride to take control of it himself, and that the speed is amazingly enhanced then the petrol motorbike which he later uses. Minority report has developed on the idea of having motorways with cars simply following simple routes and all of course automatically directed by something like a more advanced GPS system. Well this article from Popular Science describes in detail how the future of the car has already started to be developed:

 Flash back five months: I’m at a test track at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, in a Lexus fitted with a pre-crash safety system. I drive down the track at about 40 mph toward a rubber post. Instinct and education make it hard to keep my foot off the brake, but a group of earnest engineers insist that I aim their $70-grand sedan straight for the post. At the last fraction of a second, when the car’s radar sensors and microprocessors have determined that the idiot at the wheel really isn’t going to steer around the obstacle, the safety system shoots into action. Seatbelt pre-tensioners cinch up, and the front and rear suspension dampers stiffen. As soon as I touch the brake pedal—better late than never—the car’s brake-assist tugs them on at max effort. It isn’t enough to avoid the crash, but the impact speed is about half what it would have been without the new system.

Read the article