The world of Cars is full of cars, which is strange because cars are designed to be used by humans. This fact may not bother the children watching the successful series of Pixar movies, but on an existential level, it’s a little weird: Where did these vehicles come from in the absence of human design? Why do they have doors, if there are no people to step into them? Why do they speak English? Why do they have personalities? Screencrush’s Matt Singer heroically confronted the Cars universe’s creative director Jay Ward, who recently wrote a book about Cars, with the question of where these cars might come from, and while Ward insisted that his ideas were in no way Pixar canon, he did have some horrifying theories:
If you think about this, we have autonomous car technology coming in right now. It’s getting to the point where you can sit back in the car and it drives itself. Imagine in the near-future when the cars keep getting smarter and smarter and after one day they just go, “Why do we need human beings anymore? They’re just slowing us down. It’s just extra weight, let’s get rid of them.†But the car takes on the personality of the last person who drove it. Whoa. There you go.
Frankly, it’s troubling that Ward is taking the threat of Rise of the Planet of the Cars so casually. Someone alert Google! Call your senators! Go back to bicycling! And avoid Los Angeles, which will surely be the first city crushed beneath the tires of the bloody automobile revolution.