magazine Octane, and has just
published a collection of his essays
from the same, entitled Age Of
Combustion. It’s an age which
Bayley reckons is about to come to
a screeching halt, and not merely
because we will be driving cars
powered by batteries.
“There's no doubt in my mind that
it's sort of five minutes to midnight
for the motorcar, as we know it.
It's probably not going to go away
entirely, but its form is going to be
so different. We can now see the
past century of the car as a finite
historical period. When we get car
autonomy, if we ever get it, cars will
become very different. They would
no longer be expressions of status,
power desire, privilege, and that may
be a very good thing.”
Autonomy—the idea that control
of a car can be turned over entirely to
computers, radars, laser sensors, and
cameras, allowing you to be driven
rather than driving—has grown up
more or less in concert with electric
cars, and the two combined could—
probably will—transform the literal
landscapes of our lives in the next
20 years. Bayley’s vision has it that
cars that drive themselves cease to
become a symbol of our own personal
success, and instead become mereDECEMBER 2021 • 79READER’S DIGEST