From Knight Rider to Jurassic Park, six times when Hollywood went driverless!

Driverless cars were once the reserve of science fiction. But you can now buy a Tesla electric car with an advanced autopilot mode, or head to Pittsburgh and hail a driverless Uber taxi. Admittedly, we are still in the early days of the driverless car revolution. But Hollywood has long been obsessed with driverless vehicles – if only to show the folly of investing too much trust in them. Here are some of the popular driverless cars from the silver screen:

Jurassic Park Explorer
The Jurassic Park Explorer is possibly the most primitive of the driverless cars in Hollywood movies. It has a killer paint-job (and some really
early touchscreen tech), but it was confined to an onrails track.

When the park systems fail and the central computer connection goes off line, the cars are essentially left stranded, turning them into tin cans full of human-shaped food for the T-Rex.

I, Robot


The Audi RSQ from the movie. (Image: Facebook)

Will Smith’s take on Isaac Asimov’s rules of robotics, I, Robot saw Smith cruising the futuristic streets in a soupedup, AI-aided Audi. With a manual driving mode, it’s one of the closest to the current realities of driverless cars. That’s if you could see it through all the blatant product placement throughout the film.

The Fifth Element
The Fifth Element gains double points for featuring not only driverless cars, but flying driverless cars. And they look great too ...which Bruce Willis unceremoniously trashes.


Flying driverless cars were seen in the movie. (Image: Facebook)

Though there’s an auto-pilot mode onboard, Willis insists on driving through the sky lanes in manual mode. As you can see, there’s a trend emerging here — though driverless cars are seen as futuristically cool by filmmakers, there’s still a little scepticism surrounding their abilities.

Knight Rider’s Kitt
Many of you didn’t see it, but yes, there was a Knight Rider film. Knight Rider 2000 came out in 1991, making it eligible for this list. It was terrible, but Kitt, Knight Rider’s optionally driverless car, remains the high watermark for many future-car fans. Kitt could do everything from sniff out bombs to analyse vocal stress, equipped with a medical scanner, flamethrower, tear gas launcher and more.

Total Recall Johnny cab
Total Recall is essentially Uber’s business plan in movie form. Get a fleet of cars, bung a robot chauffeur into them, bundle Arnold Schwarzenegger in the back and then... take over the world? Nah.

With Uber starting to roll out its own driverless cabs, we’re hoping that there will be some sort of Johnny Bot up front so we can still have an awkward chat during the ride. Arnie is optional.

Minority Report’s Lexus 2054
The first car on this list that you might actually want to be seen on your streets. Director Steven Spielberg got the Lexus on board for Minority Report given the love his own manually-driven Lexus.

The aptly-named Lexus 2054 is part of a networked transit system that encompasses all cars on the road. With a colour-changing paint job, the Lexus features a manual-override — which allows Tom Cruise to show off his mad skill on the road.