Kia Reveals Its Intriguing Vision Of The Future Of Motoring

Plus, there's plenty of historical precedent to demonstrate that, whilst some theorists were on point, a lot of their predictions were some way off the mark. Nevertheless, despite this skepticism, we still took interest in what Kia UK reckons our cars will be like within the next 25 years.

Compiled in part to mark 25 years of Kia's presence in the UK, this presumptive study was completed in partnership with the futurologist Dr. Frank Shaw, and - despite not telling us anything we aren't already aware of - does reveal some interesting little titbits. For instance, Kia's British outpost is confident that at least half of all the cars sold in the UK will be fully autonomous. Beyond that, Kia UK and Dr. Shaw also suspect these self-driving cars will trigger a complete re-invention of the country's road network, resulting in road signs these self-driving cars can "communicate" with and even their own specific lane on Britain's motorways.

Of course, such a future only exists as a fanciful work of fiction at the moment, though the fact a carmaker is co-announcing these predictions with "one of the top ten influential thinkers in the world" does perhaps mean we should heed these words. Even if you think we won't see advancements like this by the year 2041, you've surely got to concede that Kia's probably got technology like this cooking up in an R&D plant somewhere. Considering it's already covering pretty much every powertrain base you can think of, it's not too much of a jump to expect Kia to also have plans to implement at some point the 'level four' autonomous tech we know will definitely be coming to our road cars within our lifetimes.