A calm AI voice told me driving would survive, but it felt oddly like being reassured by someone reading the instructions for a Temu lawnmower

So I’m driving along, in a plug-in hybrid test car, contemplating important matters like the fate of petrol stations, why people keep buying grey cars and what it would be like if we couldn’t drive anymore. This scenario would, of course, unfold at the advent of an AI era that removed the necessity to pedal and steer a vehicle, handing such duties to sensors, cameras, radars, lidars, a computer brain and, naturally, the all-seeing mysterious Cloud.

So I thought, you know what, let’s ask it. Let’s put to it the big, existential questions about cars, freedom, petrolheads and whether the steering wheel is about to join fax machines and Sony Walkmans in the museum of things we most miss.