Two thousand fifteen. Twenty fifteen. 2015. It feels weird typing that. It feels weird reading that. As a child of the 70’s and 80’s the year 2015 was the far off distant future. We got a glimpse of that possible future in the movie Back To The Future Part 2 when Marty McFly travels to 2015 from the year 1985.
The second installment of the trilogy was my least favorite of the three movies, but now that we are actually in the year 2015, a lot has been made in the last few weeks about the future predictions the movie got right and wrong.
The movie correctly predicted a Major League Baseball team in Miami, large flat screen TVs, drones, video conferencing and Google Glasses. Pretty remarkable considering where technology was in 1985.
There were some big misses in the movie however. Aside from the complete lack of cell phones and smart phones, we do not yet have pizza hydrators, self tying shoes, home fusion devices, hover boards or of course, flying cars. Flying cars was perhaps the biggest miss, and in my opinion the biggest disappointment of 2015.
From the Jetsons to “Back To The Future,” it has always been assumed that flying cars are an inevitability. Maybe someday we’ll see flying cars, but more realistically, self driving (on the ground cars), are more likely in our immediate future.
So what features in automobiles in 2015 could be considered “futuristic” and might have been jaw dropping had they appeared in a movie in 1985?
Certainly cars that feature internet access are Jetson-like. On board navigation systems, satellite radio, and in-car entertainment systems would have blown Marty McFly away in 1985. Heck, even the explosion of electric cars is pretty futuristic.
I’ve recently discovered new features that while not mind blowing like the internet, are definitely things we didn’t imagine in 1985.
During my December vacation I traveled to Connecticut to visit my parents. While there I rented a car so my folks wouldn’t be burdened with driving me around all the time.
While at the rental car place, I chose a new model SUV with all-wheel drive just in case I encountered snow during my visit. The SUV had all the normal bells and whistles that you would expect from a newer model car, but it also had one that I had never seen or even heard of: the engine turned off when the vehicle was stopped. Not when I turned it off, just when I came to a stop.
Imagine my surprise the first time I pulled up to a stop light and the engine turned off! As soon as I lifted my foot off the break pedal, the engine started again. So strange. It took me a few days to get used to this new feature, which I assume is there to help with fuel efficiency.
Another rental car I recently drove had “smart” wipers. The windshield wipers, on their own, would determine how fast or slow they needed to go. I no longer had to fiddle with wiper speed. The smart wipers knew when to go and when to stop. Amazing.
Flying cars are not yet a reality, but the automotive advances we’ve seen over the last 30 years are still quite impressive.
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