I’M SITTING IN the passenger seat of a Hyundai Nexo on a tree-­studded Canberra street. It’s stopped to reverse into a parking spot, but no one is driving – an ultra-­luxury ghost car.

Scott Nargar, Hyundai’s ‘senior manager of future mobility’, stands in the middle of the road holding a remote control. He presses a button; the steering wheel spins on its own and the car rolls backwards until parallel to the kerb. From a nearby apartment window, a black cat gazes unblinkingly at this fusion of the supernatural and the mundane. And I wonder: is this what the future feels like?