Car of the nearest future

Recently I've been driving some couple of thousands km in a couple of days (from Frankfurt to Zadar to Scalea to Frankfurt) and you might know that 37 hours driving can be very boring. It's during this long boring time I was dreaming of what my car could become in the near future.

Here are my dreams listed in no particular order. Now that own Prius II and like it, I've taken Prius III as a base (pretty advanced vehicle, BTW) and thought of some extra features.

A couple of futuristic features which make Prius III a good base candidate for “the car of the future”:

• It has a “Lane Assist” feature keeping you in the middle of the lane.
• It has a “Smart Key” feature allowing you to open and close the car without touching you car keys.
• It has a “Pre Collision System” which applies brakes when you’re about to crash into something.
• An “Intelligent Parking Assist” which can park the car in the relatively narrow space automatically.
• “Head-Up Display” like in the Jet Fighters.

Now my extension requests:

• Hey Toyota, get a softer arm rests both on the door and in the middle arm rest. My elbows got hurt and I had to put towels to soften it. This is my priority #1, but maybe it's fixed in Prius III though.

• The fuel indicator could be more sensitive and show the fuel level in percents instead of 1/10 of the tank.

• Get some way of smelling diesel and stop fuelling with wrong type of fuel (yes, it happened to me).

• Even the stupidest of cars shows how many km you can go with the fuel rests that you have.

Update: Prius III has it

• The vehicle could notice the low fuel level and automatically search for the next fuel station along the route, add it as via point and inform the driver whether it's the last chance or he can go further to the next fuel station still.

• Automatic tire pressure detection and pumping (there was a post apocalyptic movie with such feature about 20 years ago).

• Or even better use the Tweel.

• The current windshield can be made into a large semi-transparent LCD display able to show additional information about the objects visible to the driver. It could show the speed of the cars in front of you, detect make/brand of them, show full-screen (full-windshield) driving instructions and many other things.
  

• It could also detect road signs (with speed limits for example) and display them in the corner of the windshield while this road sign is due (see the image above).

• Install rain sensor into Prius, it exists for many years now.
  

• Turn off the cabin and headlights (to save the battery) if the car is locked and nobody is inside (Prius has a seat-belt warning, so it’s not a big deal to detect peoples’ presence).

• Allow driving in a follow-the-leader mode where I can track the car in front of me (on the Navi or on the LED-windshield) and follow it. This will allow me to catch up even if I get lost (like in GTA).
  

• The “Select User” function should also remember the left and right mirrors orientation (similar to the feature in one of the sports cars). Ideally it should detect the driver automatically (by the weight, fingerprint reader on the On/Off button or any other means).
  

• Driving backwards could detect obstacles and brake automatically (in the case of a sudden child on the way or a dog, which is easy to overlook because of their low height).

Do you have more realistic ideas for the future car improvements? Send a comment, I’ll post best ideas in the update to this post.