USA's New Automobile City - Silicon Valley?

I believe the year was 1985 when Doc Brown said, "Where we are going, we don't need roads." Well, lately car manufacturers from all over the world have been piling up frequent flyer miles. Where are they headed? To Silicone Valley to find out what engineers and chip makers in California can do for the cars being designed back in Detroit. Although we are still worlds behind Doc Brown's idea of a flying Delorean, some engineers are predicting that by 2030, "we'll be summoning driverless cars by cellphone to come pick us up at the airport." Sign me up, just please make sure to keep the cost within my budget range of $20,000.00.

At this stage, most of the cars being developed are just prototypes of what the auto makers could produce. Whether there is a market for the cars is an entirely different matter. Most Americans who are cash strapped by the current recession, or "almost depression", would probably sacrifice a little razzle dazzle for extra miles per gallon. If you are a tech person, these types of trends in technology are breathing new life into California's technology companies. By stepping up the abilities of these cars, it could someday affect gas mileage. What I mean, is that if you can build a car that can be summoned by cell phone and can drive to the airport by itself, then surely the technology will be able to do things like regulate speed, and other factors related to fuel efficiency.

It is no secret that cars are continuing to evolve into information systems. Most of the computers in the prototypes rival that of an aircraft. BMW is working with engineers in Silicon Valley to develop the "Driver Assistance System" which is a prototype that can round corners of a race track at 100 mph without a driver and finish the course just short of record time.

Along with the performance aspect of these prototype information cars, they are creating a car that is a system by itself, complete with global positioning, and the ability to be connected to the internet real time pulling whatever data is needed to increase efficiency, or whatever the driver desires. I'm not just talking about Facebook updates, but actually being able to access your home network and control devices that are connected.

There are gaps, very large ones, in between the completely driver free information car and reality. Roads would have to be repaved with proper sensors to communicate with the cars and how do you account for bad drivers?