Mega-Tech Predictions: Will We Finally See Flying Cars in the Streets?
Predicting the future has never been easy, even for people like Elon Musk who announced his trips to Mars and hyperloop years ago. Or another great example is Jeff Bezos with his delivery drones that get packages from Amazon warehouses to clients. They should have appeared by 2018, still, we saw only prototypes that have to be approved by the US government before passing the testing stage.
Nevertheless, let’s be optimists and hope that we won’t be 90-aged grannies and grandpas when the first flying car of the future appears. We can forget that deadlines don’t work for technological fantasies, so let’s do that!
And now we will take a closer look at the most fascinating predictions for this year. Will this technology be implemented in 2020 or is this just fantasy? Will see…
Is the First-of-its-kind 60-Mile Hyperloop Any Closer?
Seven years ago, in 2013, Elon Musk presented his vision for a new level of transportation that will help people get from point A to B with a speed of 800 mph! Together with tech entrepreneurs, Elon Musk started working on the concept – it was inspiring! After a year of work, in 2015, they told the publicity that a 60-mile hyperloop will be built in 2020. The CEO of Hyperloop Technologies, Rob Lloyd, was very confident in the date and even shared this with the Popular Science magazine.
Many years and events have passed since those times, and today’s company called Virgin Hyperloop One with its 1600-foot track in California (you might have already heard about this test track, right?) are going to build a 22-mile track. And you will never guess where they are planning to do that! In Saudi Arabia!
Elon Musk is going to build his system of hyperloops in Las Vegas together with his Boring Co. The loop system starts with a mile-long track – a tunnel where Tesla cars are moving around 155 mph. Not a cosmic speed for Tesla, as well as for any other car, but who knows, maybe in a couple of years we will witness first 800-mph hyperloop!
Flying Cars Will be Introduced by Uber
You might think that better Uber introduced normal service first, still, the company decided to focus on technology and flying cars 2020. They did it in 2017 and are still going to demonstrate something interesting in 2020. However, we are sure that everything will end after the demonstrations as you can’t just get a flying car and make it work as a taxi!
You are wondering are there some good news, and it is really so!
In 2019, they added helicopter rides above the New York City (these are not new about flying cars 2020 but helicopters, yes) and are going to develop aerial ride-sharing till 2023. Uber cooperates with the Joby Aviation startup to achieve this goal faster. Their CEO Dara Khosrowshahi wrote ‘Getting closer’ in her Twitter, still, ‘closer’ doesn’t mean they are already there.
Is Toyota Going to Present Self-Driving Cars?
Automotive and technological companies are sure that cars will soon drive more accurately and safely than people. We are not discussing Tesla AI now but Toyota’s plans regarding that! Five years ago, a Japanese automotive legend promised to introduce smart self-driving cars by 2020. Everyone was very excited about this fact, especially those drivers who can’t handle even the easiest parking task. However, this hype wave stopped in 2018, when Uber car collided with a pedestrian. Unfortunately, that person died.
Regardless of all the prejudices, Toyota didn’t stop its progress and in 2020, Lexus is going to introduce a car with the option of self-driving on highways. Improving AI is a top priority for the corporation now, but we hope that things will go as planned and we will see the first Lexus with artificial intelligence this year.
1 Bitcoin = $1 million
John McAfee, who might be familiar to you thanks to the McAfee antivirus software (which is very hard to delete from your computer, by the way), is kind of an influencer among crypto investors, estimated that the price for one Bitcoin will be around $1 million in 2020. He tweeted this prediction in late 2018, weeks before the notorious Bitcoin crash. The cryptocurrency has fallen by 83%!
It has slightly recovered to $7+K, it’s far from John McAfee’s hopes. Anyway, everyone who owns even 0.1 BTC wants it to grow to $1 million. We wish them patience and no despair!
Innovative Computer Chips with Zero Energy Consumption
If you are interested in technology, you might know Gordon Moore who is famous for developing advanced and cheap computers. He is the co-founder of the Intel Corporation, which predicted chips with zero energy consumption. This happened in 2012, eight years ago. Nevertheless, this optimistic forecast did not meet the reality, so even the latest Intel’s top-notch chip needs 165 Watts to work properly. For example, a 65-inch TV needs around 80 Watts, so we need to leave our high hopes regarding phones and computers that won’t need additional charging during weeks.
Almost Everyone Will Become Mobile Users
9 out of 10 people of 6+ years old are pretended to have a cellphone in 2020. Six years ago, in 2014, Ericsson stated that 90% of all the people living on Earth over age 6 will have a mobile phone. Though we can’t measure this statement, visiting one of the developing countries might be enough to see that we are nowhere closer. Statistics shows an indicator of 67% for global mobile penetration.
By the way, although not everyone uses phones, the number of subscriptions has exceeded the global population, according to the World Bank. This happens due to thousands of people who use multiple devices with the services of different mobile operators.
The Breakeven Point for the Jet.com Startup
The Jet.com unicorn startup became so even before the world got an understanding of this term. This online retailer was founded by Marc Lore after the acquisition of his previous company by Amazon. The main idea and mission of Jet were offering cheaper prices and creating a subscription that was intended to overcome Amazon Prime in all perspectives.
The startup raised more than $700 million in 2015, Lore even told Bloomberg that the project will break even in five years (= literally, by 2020). Still, many experts and critics were not very optimistic about his plans and stated that the project won’t ever be profitable.
What can we see now? Another US retail giant Walmart decided to buy Jet for $3.3 billion and make it kind of e-commerce part. According to the news, they now face a loss of $1 billion at the e-commerce division headed by Marc Lore. Who knows, maybe they will break even next year or at least to mid-20s.
Skyrocketing of Google’s Cloud Services
Google is widely known for its search engine and advertising options – almost every western company uses AdWords, Analytics, and other services for advertising and promotion. But the achievements of Amazon, Alibaba, and Microsoft by selling cloud services definitely does not give rest to the world’s search engine giant.
Due to this, in 2015, Urs Hölzle – one of Google’s executives – told everyone that Google’s revenue from cloud services will overcome advertising in five years.
Their results for the last year – 2019 – were as follows: 15% of the company revenue was brought by cloud services while 85% – by advertising. This is proof that it will be extremely difficult for Google to overcome the mentioned above cloud service providers. People are still used to consider Amazon the main provider of this service. We can wish good luck to Google and its strivings.
Is Huawei’s Superphone Almost Here?
Huawei is known as one of the Asian tech giants and their smartphones are really cool – they are cheap and the functionality can make a huge competition to Apple and Samsung, which are traditionally the leaders in the industry.
In 2015, Huawei predicted issuing a superphone by 2020. The marketing strategy president of Huawei – Shao Yang – stated that the concept is inspired by the evolution in biology. The device was intended to evolve as humans did. It had to be intelligent, enhancing perceptions and enabling humans to achieve even higher goals.
Well, speaking broadly is in the Asian culture, and we don’t know what that means exactly. Still, observing new Huawei’s phone models we can state that they haven’t presented a superphone yet. This might have happened due to Huawei’s crisis on the US market, so they are focusing on cheap phones for the Asian markets. No more competition with Apple! However, Huawei offers a variety of fascinating, powerful and beautiful models, so they don’t suffer from the lack of new clients.
