Even the computer likes to have fun sometimes!
Well, it’s official folks — the robots are taking over. A new study by IHS Automotive suggests that nearly all of the vehicles in use after 2050 will be self-driving, getting rid of the weakest link in the automotive chain of being — the driver. And while the self-driving car definitely seems slated for mainstream sales within the next 10 years, the time frame provided by this study strikes me as a little ambitious.

The study predicts that we’ll see self-driving cars account for 0.2% of worldwide sales in 2025, but that will proceed to increase rapidly to 9.2% in 2035, putting roughly 54 million of the vehicles on our roads. This is partly due to the predicted price premium for a self-driving car. IHS says the technology will add between $7,000 to $10,000 to the sticker price in 2025, but that will drop to $5,000 in 2030 and $3,000 in 2035. As that price difference continues to drop, they predict the demise of the human-piloted car “sometime after 2050.” At first thought, the prediction appears to make sense. Manufacturers have been making great strides in the field of autonomous vehicles — BMW went as far as showing off a self-drifting car at the Consumer Electronics Show this year (featured at the beginning of this article). Nissan has even promised to have multiple autonomous vehicles on sale by 2020. Plus, to most folks driving is merely a chore, and they ought to welcome their rob...