As summer winds along we here at the VisualCue offices are reminded of summer road trips with our parents. Seemingly endless stretches of desert, plains and rolling hills as the entire clan packed up to go and visit relatives.

While some might moan and groan about the tradition of the family road trip everyone here isn’t too proud to admit that we secretly loved them.

It got us thinking, as most things do, about the future. For example, will there ever come a day when the family road trip, while still taking place on the road, will not have that painful stop by the gas station, or even having Mom or Dad drive at all.

That’s right road trippers, today we are looking at data surrounding electric and self-driving cars!

Juicing Up Your Car

In order for alternative fuels to really take off and be as ubiquitous and easy to use as their fossil fuel predecessors their needs to be just as many places to juice up your car as their are gas stations today.

When you think about it, that’s a pretty herculean task. Think about all the gas stations you see everyday- to retrofit each and every one of them with electric alternatives is going to take some time and serious effort. The good news, however, is that the work has already begun. Just take a look at this map courtesy of ssdtube.com.

electric car data visualization
It starts with the coasts

As we can see here, there are already lots of places where you can juice up your electric car or fill it with alternative ethanol. Unsurprisingly, the electric revolution has started on the coasts and appears to be working its way inwards whilst the ethanol alternative, being a derivative of corn, is more prevalent in the corn-growing states of the middle west. Either way you look at it, it shouldn’t be too long before you can put something besides gasoline in your car!

Or not even driving at all

This is one thing that we are incredibly excited about- the prospect of going on a road trip (or doing any driving for that matter) and not even having to do the driving in the first place. That’s the promise behind the self-driving car, and it’s based on data visualization technology that we are absolutely in love with.

Just think about all the data that goes into a self-driving car! It pulls in data from numerous sources, computes outcomes, applies best practices and then makes intelligent decisions based on the information it receives. It’s data visualization that ultimately means you can take a nap while it drives you to work- someday.

Until next time,

The VisualCrew