Why driverless showers are key to the housing crisis

Although it is commonly assumed that faster-than-sound passenger travel died with Concorde, this isn’t quite true: it overlooks the Caledonian Sleeper. With a few whiskies inside you, this is as close as you can get to teleportation. Yes, according to the timetable it takes about eight-and-a-half hours between Perth and London, but as you are asleep for eight of them, this makes for a supersonic speed of 900 miles per conscious hour.

Quite simply, if you are asleep, or otherwise productively or pleasurably engaged, travel time isn’t that important. And if you accept this principle, it becomes clear that Google and Tesla’s Elon Musk have missed an opportunity to really innovate with their ideas for self-driving cars.

The idea behind the driverless car is that instead of driving, people will be able to read, write, watch films and otherwise amuse themselves on journeys. The only problem with this idea is that, outside the US at any rate, it is already possible to do this with a pre-existing technology: it’s called
a train. Admittedly there is a driver on the train, but with his wages divided between all the passengers, he does not really cost very much.

No, Google and Tesla need to think bigger.

All that’s required is to raise the height of their vehicles, then to add frosted glass, a shaving mirror and basic plumbing fitments. Now, with a Google Driverless Toilet and Shower (or The Grohe-Armitage-Shanks Model S), everybody is 30 minutes closer to their place of work. We could simply stagger straight from our beds into our car in our pyjamas, and then emerge 30 minutes later, fully dressed and perfectly groomed, at the office. Car manufacturers are already wise to the practice of in-journey toiletry — which is why the passenger’s sun-visor contains a lighted make-up mirror.