Emotionally Intelligent cars will soon be on the roads helping us drive in a safe way while understanding our emotions and environment. But what is emotional intelligence in this context?

Daniel Goleman, author of the bestselling book - Emotional Intelligence, introduced a Mixed model where he outlines five main EI constructs for human beings.

• Self-awareness: Knowing one's emotions, strengths, weaknesses, drives, values, and goals
• Self-regulation: Controlling or redirecting one's emotions and adapting to changing circumstances.
• Social skill: Managing relationships to get along with others.
• Empathy: Considering other people's feelings when making decisions.
• Motivation: Being aware of what motivates them.

Let us see how this translates to an Emotionally Intelligent car.

Self-awareness

The EI Car will be able to understand it’s capabilities and shortcomings. It can understand the power of its engine, how responsive it is, its fuel level, condition of its tyres and so on. It can know how fast it can accelerate or decelerate with the current passenger load. It knows the goal it is driving towards – both in terms of distance and time.

Self-regulation

While the driving infrastructure such as highways, refuelling points would have improved significantly, challenges are going to be there. The EI Car will be able to overcome these with their capabilities and adapt to changing circumstances. It will ensure it runs as per the wish of its associate based on his present state of mind and health.

Social skill

Of course, the number of cars in the road are going to increase forever stretching common resources such as roads, chargers, intersections, etc. The EI car will be able to communicate with these external infrastructure and other cars with V2X technologies and make the best out of the available resources.

Empathy

The EI car will be able to understand its human associate and act suitably. More importantly, the EI car will be able to understand the other EI Cars in the vicinity. Human drivers understand others using various cues and decide. Similarly, the EI car will be able to understand how the other cars are driving, their urgency and make informed logical decisions.

Motivation

The primary motivating factor of the EI car will be safety – both of its occupants and others outside. Apart of that, the EI car will strive to be better than it was earlier. It will keep on learning and evolve as it must be connected positively to its associate and prolong its utility. This will be the only way to ensure continued revenue for its OEM.

With these attributes and an ability to evolve and update themselves, undoubtedly Emotionally Intelligent Cars will be the future of personal transport.