It may soon be time for the truly automatic consumer automobile to arrive. Several major technologies that are necessary are here right now, in production and being offered to the public.

First, GPS. Yeah, yeah, no news here. Add a moving map display, route planning and a yellow-pages-like address book, and there you go. You can find one in just about all new luxury vehicles, and are available in many mid-level cars, too.

Add to that real-time traffic monitoring, via satellite or radio uplink.

Then there's the automatic cruise control, the first of which I have seen was in the 1985 Nissan Cue-X concept, but wasn't put out to the public until the oughts by Mercedes. Basically, it uses a range-finder to maintain a set distance following the vehicle in front of you, controlling both the throttle and the brake.

Finally, you can now (as in, new late last month) get a car that nearly parks itself (you still need to tell it where to go and hit the brakes when it arrives). The 2007 Lexus LS has all four available.

Welcome to the future.