Automated Automobiles

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.
This is "Junior," a self-driving Volkswagen Passat, at Stanford University in 2009.

Dr. Shiouji: Say, haven't you too ever been put in a tizzy by that horrible term -- automobile? What's so auto about it? If you want it to be mobile, you've still got to pump and grip and be in the highest state of awareness. Surely a classic example of misplaced exertion. The technology is incomplete. The technology is a no-no-noying. Why is it the case that's the case? Now if I were in charge, there are certain things that I would do. In fact, I've already done them. Behold... my perfection! The Full-Auto-Mobil--
Excel: (Karate chops Shiouji in the head.) You dare even attempt to utter that line?!

—Excel Saga, volume 5.

This trope refers to the operation of vehicles - not just cars - on public highways, where the vehicle has no human operating it. Might require Advanced Phlebotinum to explain how they can get away with it. This trope would not include vehicles operated by video remote control unless it can operate without the person running the screen, nor would it usually include a vehicle running automated on a test track. The trope is more about driverless vehicles on public highways.

This may be the norm in a story set in the future, but it's just as likely to be played for horror. Imagine yourself being trapped in an automated vehicle that is trying to kill you, gets hacked by the bad guys, or just goes haywire. This fear will probably delay any attempts to implement it in Real Life.

Not really Truth in Television, but science is getting closer and closer—for example, some cities use guided buses which, instead of being guided by a rail, are guided by a camera that follows white lines painted in the tarmac. The DARPA challenge is bringing this trope even closer to reality.

At the extreme end, this trope overlaps with Sentient Vehicle.

Examples of Automated Automobiles include:

Advertising

  • An ad for car insurance illustrated the unpredictability of advances in motoring technology with a rather cool shot of a large intersection with automated cars interweaving every which way.

Anime and Manga

  • There's an anime called éX-Driver, where everyone uses automated cars - unfortunately the AI in them occasionally goes nuts and the car goes out of control, at which point it's up to a squad of people (called eX-Drivers) who still know how to drive manual-control cars to chase them down and bring them to a halt with their driving skills and some fancy battools (specifically, a gadget that drops sticky chaff onto the runaway vehicle to prevent GPS signals from reaching its onboard GPS, and revolvers that fire some sticky-cement substance for blacking out the machine's sensors). It is very, very cool. And theme songs by JAM Project!
  • Implied in Serial Experiments Lain. First, a speeding car almost hits Lain while standing in the middle of the road. Later, we hear a news report that says the guidance system somehow went haywire.
  • The page quote comes from a story in the Excel Saga manga, where Excel accidentally gets trapped in Mad Scientist Dr. Shiouji's robotic car, which has a crush on its creator and wants to Murder what it thinks is the Hypotenuse.
  • Used as a device in the Bubblegum Crisis episode Revenge Road where the Knight Sabres end up having to rescue a couple from a car that has incapacitated its driver and taken over.
    • Also, the Knight Sabres' motoroids might qualify as they are capable of acting independently under their own AI.
  • Digimon Frontier (as well as the comics}} had the digital world populated by machine digimon called Trailmon, who were sentient trains who carried their passengers to certain locations. Many of the trailmon had different looks, voices, and personalities, some even resembling mechanized animals, a kettle, and Frankenstein.

Film

  • All the cars in Minority Report ... although at least some models seem to have a 'manual mode' they seem to do most of their travelling under computer control, apparently from some kind of central traffic control system. There is a chase scene in which the hero must escape from his automated car, which the police can easily track while it's in motion and have programed to bring him to the nearest station.
  • The automated 18-wheelers in Solar Crisis. They put a motorcycle on the road to try to stop one and the truck just runs right over it, but when one of them stands out in the path of the next one that comes along, this truck does stop. The truck has a fail-safe to prevent it from running over people.
  • Johnny Cab from Total Recall.
  • The Batmobile in The Dark Knight.
    • Played with in Batman Beyond: Return of the Joker. The Batmobile is being chased through a glut of cars by a Kill Sat beam. Batman escapes, but untold numbers of cars are blown up. In the commentary the creators joke that those are all robot cars, so nobody died. (Oh, and they were driving through the abandoned building district, too.)
  • In the Inspector Gadget movie, the Gadgetmobile became an automated talking car.
  • The movie Cars is all about this, they're anthropomorphic automobiles as they're people. Adam Sessler from X-Play plays with this in his review of the game.
  • Quite a few Transformers have car altmodes, so they qualify. This was played with in The Movie, where Bumblebee conveniently "breaks down" at a Make-Out Point while carrying Sam and Michaela. The motorcycle-former Prowl of Transformers Animated uses his holographic projector to make it seem he's avoiding this trope.
    • Transformers Armada Sideways does this, but slightly differently. Instead of a hologram, the combined and disguised form of his minicons Rook and Crosswise "drives" him.
  • Benny the Cab from Who Framed Roger Rabbit?. "No, I'll drive, I'm the cab!" After being injured by some Dip, he/it ends up driving a car.
  • The Hardwired I Robot movie has Spooner taking a snooze while his automated Audi drives itself. Later in the movie after he's involved in an accident caused by a lorry load of robotic assassins he's chewed out for driving manually at high speed, implying it's unusual (as part of his technophobic ways) that he drives manually.
    • He was also going in excess of 100 mph. It's assumed that machines have quick enough reactions to avoid accidents. Humans aren't that quick.
  • The cars in Demolition Man have an auto-drive mode. It becomes a plot point when one of the cops is the only one that can drive a stick-shift (but not well), because she watches a lot of old movies.
  • In The 6th Day Adam Gibson (Arnold Schwarzenegger) and his friend have a chat to each other while their car drives itself. The car then asks if he wants to switch to manual mode as they near the heliport where they work, which Arnie does.
  • In The Love Bug movies, Herbie goes exactly where it wants to, sometimes with helpless passengers trapped inside.
  • The Car (1977) is about a car that goes on a killing spree. Presumably being possessed by a demon rather than just driven by one brings it within this trope.
  • Time Cop has futuristic looking government cars with computers taking you to your destination (In the year 2004!). Van Damme's character demonstrates this by initializing the system and the computer asks for his destination. He replied, "home."
  • The "Glory Days" flashback sequence in The Incredibles briefly shows the Incredicar driving itself while Mr. Incredible changes into costume.
  • At the end of the song "Worthless" from The Brave Little Toaster, one of the junkyard cars actually commits suicide by driving into the car crusher!

Literature

  • Used in a novel by Christopher Stasheff, the robot brain eventually becomes the property of Rod Gallowglass's family, and Rod's faithful servant, Fess.
  • Stephen King's short story Trucks does this with anything automotive, and they don't like humans any more...
    • Trucks was later turned into a movie, Maximum Overdrive, which also features a rather unpleasantly homicidal pop machine.
    • Speaking of Stephen King, the titular car in Christine also has a rather nasty mind of her own...
  • In the sci-fi novel (part of the Nights Dawn trilogy) by Peter F. Hamilton The Neutronium Alchemist the intelligence agents pursuing Dr Alkad Mzu have to switch to manual driving when the electronic-warfare abilities of the possessed glitch their vehicles.
  • The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny takes this to an extreme, with people joyriding in the things by repeatedly changing the destination before they arrive, sometimes with the windows blacked out.
  • In Larry Niven's Known Space universe, it's illegal (and in fact a capital offense) on Earth to operate a car on manual within city limits. Considering how some people drive and the fact that they're all flying cars...
  • Isaac Asimov wrote one short story revolving around robotic cars.
  • Technology like this appears to exist in Honor Harrington. When investigating a character's death by aircar collision, the examiners have a discussion which implies that it's the standard mode for aircars, at least in Haven, and that switching over to manual mode requires the user to pass a blood-alcohol test.
  • These had just been invented in Remnants when the rock hit. It mentions that the legal driving age was reduced to twelve if you're driving an automated car.
  • The Auto M8s in Daemon. They perform incredible feats of maneuvering (for example, while traveling at 100+MPH, a group of them drives in a circle around a protected vehicle in an "interlocking slalom") and can target and kill humans handily.
  • In the Harry Potter universe, Mr. Weasley's enchanted Ford Anglia becomes one of these.
  • In Bujold's A Civil Campaign, Miles' armsman/chauffeur, after the third vehicular near-miss of the week, inquires when Vorbarr Sultana would be getting its municipal traffic control system installed. Miles responds that priority was being given to the automated air traffic control in light of increased lightflyer fatalities.
    • Brothers in Arms and Cryoburn describe in passing the use of automated ground vehicles in London (Earth) and Northbridge (Kibou-Daini), respectively.
  • The Eoin Colfer novel The Supernaturalist takes place in the near future where almost all cars use plastic treads instead of tires and lock into grooves on the roads while driving, though not all roads have this track system and are used for drag racing.
  • Robert Heinlein used the trope more than once. His Future History novel Methuselah's Children opens with a character settling back for a nap while her car drives her to her destination, before resuming manual control when she reaches the back roads. In his later novel Job: A Comedy of Justice, his protagonists—who are being involuntarily dumped from one parallel world to another—wind up in a relatively higher-tech universe and are picked up by a guy in a very slick automated automobile. (Both protagonists are stark naked at the time; also, the guy who gives them a ride later turns out to be Satan.)
  • In Harry Harrison's Homeworld (the first novel of the To the Stars trilogy), cars of the upper classes in most of the developed world can drive themselves provided they're on roads that have special wires under them. At the beginning of the novel, the protagonist is coming home from an inspection of a factory in another city. Upset, he gets drunk and then tries to drive. The car "smells" alcohol and refuses to allow him to drive manually until he's almost home. Later on, when he's trying to find out how the lower classes live in this Nineteen Eighty-Four-esque world, he has to leave his car a few blocks away from the end of the "wire" territory, so as not to arouse Security's suspicions.

Live-Action TV

  • KITT from Knight Rider.
  • An episode of FX the Series featured the Vindicator, an automated 4x4 capable of arresting criminals. It was a Show Within a Show, and the vehicle was in fact remote-controlled.
  • The titular Wonder-Bug (a magical dune buggy) from the Krofft Supershow.
  • Angel, Gunn and Spike are taken to a Hell dimension by one in the Angel episode "Underneath". Although unlike most examples on this page, it is driven by magic, rather than technology.
  • On Top Gear, Jeremy supervises an fully automated BMW 330i after it has "learned" the test track, noting that if you really want to terrify yourself, the automation system can be fitted on an M3.
  • The NCIS episode "Driven" involved the autonomous vehicle "Otto." Incidentally, it had also been programed to kill a human occupant.
  • Lightning Cruiser and Storm Blaster from Power Rangers Turbo.

Tabletop Games

  • In the Shadowrun universe, automobiles in many of the larger cities become part of the Grid Guide system , which is designed to allow vehicles to traverse traffic in the easiest, most efficient way possible while eliminating the chance for human driving error. In such a way, cars can move at nearly top speed, and shift and turn instantly only inches from one another with little risk. The trope differs from normal in that the cars themselves are not automated, but rather are slaved to a traffic management system that directs the cars from a central location.
    • The cars are indeed automated, they're just not autonomous.
  • In Transhuman Space, everything with computing power (which is everything) runs at the very least a non-sapient AI. Some supplements have suggested it might be illegal for a human to drive a car (especially an aircar), since they wouldn't have as much awareness as an AI treating the vehicle as a cybershell.
  • In the Millennium City setting for Champions, all cars within the city limits must have Vehicle Control Chips installed and functioning. The cars are driven by a central computer, rather than an onboard system. Presumably, the cars still have regular human controls as well—the sourcebook states that cars from other areas can enter as long as they have VCCs, and the system is only really in place in Millennium City, so you would be driving manually up to the city then switching to computer control. (This editor doesn't know if VCCs are used for cars in the Champions Online version of Millennium City.)
    • As the cars in Champions Online 1 ) have opaque windows, making it impossible to see if anyone is in them, and 2 ) Only exist as indestructible, moving scenery that occasionally bump (harmlessly) a PC or NPC, the point is actually rather moot.
  • In the angels-vs-demons game In Nomine, the angels called "kyriotates" specialize in possessing people and animals (benignly). Kyriotates in service to the Archangel of Lightning can also possess machines and have been known to possess cars, to drive their buddies, capture bad guys, and so on,

Web Comics

  • In Schlock Mercenary, automated automobiles are the norm, and AIs are advanced enough to drive lesser spaceships. Also, most civilian vehicles have remote traffic control override, though it can be disabled simply by physically breaking the vehicle's communication unit.
    • In fact, Manual Operation Under the Influence is a crime punishable by death, discussed here. It's described in the page notes as deserving capital punishment because before flipping a switch to be in control, one needs to at least hack AI that prevents this sort of thing and on some vehicles also install manual controls in the first place, so it takes some premeditation in a very sober state to make such a dangerous situation possible.
      • Also, the weakest of gravitics-based vehicles (or even flying low-profile Powered Armor) not only can lift off or otherwise get kinetic energy this implies, but are powered by "annie-plants", that is carry a bubble of an extremely strong exotic alloy covered on the inside with neutronium and containing at least some reserve of antimatter fuel, so while people got used to have what amounts to low-caliber nuke/conversion bomb in armor piercing shells buzz overhead all the time, mishandling of this stuff can get worse than plain "vehicular homicide".
    • Their safety algorithms are too good to use them as stepping stones in flight-belt parkour. Buzzing through high-speed lane can shake off pursuit only if the other party chickens out or cares about traffic violation tickets.
    • Under martial law, UNS commandeered some hovercars to be used as kinetic missiles. In a pinch, it's enough to "void the warranty on the Synthetic Intelligence with a hammer and nodejack"... provided another AI helps with remote control of the now-lobotomized vehicle.

Western Animation

  • Hanna-Barbera gave us Wheelie And The Chopper Bunch.
  • On an episode of The Simpsons, Homer discovers that long-distance truckers secretly allow a computer to do the driving. When the computer finds Homer has the truck on a collision course with no room to brake and not is the original driver, the computer itself escapes the truck.
    • And the Show Within a Show, Knight Boat (a parody of Knight Rider).
    • Parodied in "Homer Loves Flanders": Homer accepts going to a big football game with Flanders. While they are driving trough the stadium parking lot, Homer spots Lenny and Carl and makes Flanders duck so they won't see him with Homer despite Flanders being the one driving. Thus Lenny and Carl see Homer waving at them from the passenger seat of a "driverless" car...

Lenny: Hey look! Homer's got one of those robot cars!
[A loud offscreen crash is heard]
Carl: One of those American robot cars!

  • Several times, when the Mysterons re-create a vehicle, they don't bother re-creating the pilot/driver. The Mysterons being invisible, it's never quite clear whether they're controlling it from afar or whether they're invisibly there behind the wheel.
    • It's almost definitely the former case the one time they directly steal a nuclear transporter while the driver is still in it. After the truck has driven itself into a safely hidden underground carpark, the driver then helplessly watches the nuclear device arm itself...
  • The Futurama episode The Honking had the Planet Express crew dealing with the legacy of the accursed Werecar. Said Werecar and its victims naturally drove themselves.
  • The animated Monty Python's Flying Circus sketch Killer Cars was about this trope.
  • The star of the short-lived 80's cartoon, Turbo Teen was a teenager who turned into one of these.
  • The equally short-lived Pole Position cartoon of the mid-80s featured TWO of these—a classic Mustang look-alike called Wheels, and a retro-futuristic stunt car with gull-wing doors called Roadie.
  • Happened at least twice in The Real Ghostbusters. Both times, Ecto-1 was possessed by a malevolent spirit and attacked the Ghostbusters. The first time it immediately transformed into a monstrous version of itself, but the transformation was much slower and subtler in the second instance; the car spent half the episode screwing with Winston's head before taking off on its own.
  • C.A.R. from The Replacements.
  • Stroker and Hoop had a sentient automated car named C.A.R.R. Although he wasn't always helpful considering his vengeful, paranoid, somewhat racist, and rather effeminate (although he denies it) personality.
  • An episode of Danny Phantom had him and his friends attempts to find three Power Crystals capable of Rewriting Reality if placed in a special Reality Gauntlet. One of the gems, which had the power to control life and death, potentially gave life to a space shuttle which culminated in a chase between Danny and the aggressive aircraft before removing the gem animating it and returning it back to normal. It and the other two gems were also used by the villain to turn a bunch of train cars into robots.

Video Games

Real Life

IT'S 8 a.m., Tuesday, Nov. 18, 2008, and you are headed for a business appointment 300 miles away. You slide into your sleek, two-passenger air-cushion car, press a sequence of buttons and the national traffic computer notes your destination, figures out the current traffic situation and signals your car to slide out of the garage. Hands free, you sit back and begin to read the morning paper—which is flashed on a flat TV screen over the car’s dashboard. Tapping a button changes the page.
The car accelerates to 150 mph in the city's suburbs, then hits 250 mph in less built-up areas, gliding over the smooth plastic road. You whizz past a string of cities, many of them covered by the new domes that keep them evenly climatized year round. Traffic is heavy, typically, but there's no need to worry. The traffic computer, which feeds and receives signals to and from all cars in transit between cities, keeps vehicles at least 50 yds. apart. There hasn’t been an accident since the system was inaugurated.

  • Guided buses have automatic steering.
  • Automatically driven trains are becoming quite common.
  • In Germany there are serious plans for autonomous taxis that are already in concept proof stages. Yes, they use an iPad to summon the car and follow its progress in real time.
  • An Omnibus program from the mid-50s showed a car with "sniffers". These would "sniff" the signal on a guide wire buried beneath the surface of the roadway.
  • At the Sci Fi Drive In in Disney World, the film being shown shows some toy cars being automatically driven at the RCA Research Labs in Princeton, NJ in the 50s.
  • The Toyota Prius 2011 Advanced Technology Package includes Dynamic Radar Cruse Control and Lane Keep Assist. Not to the point where you can get on the highway, set the speed, and let the car keep driving until you get to your turn off, but getting there.
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