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Reports coming out of the US claim Google’s shopping its self-driving car concept around the major US car makers, hoping one or all of them may sign up to deliver cars that can drive themselves. Which would free us up to sit there clicking Google adverts on our phones.
Anthony Levandowski, one of Google’s driverless car engineers, said: “We’re talking to every car company to see what their level of excitement is.”
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google is looking at getting the concept up and running for public use inside the next decade, although there are obviously some rather large safety and regulatory hoops to jump through before any form of auto-car is declared road legal.
Interestingly, the report claims the driverless tech won’t be limited to new cars, with Google planning to offer some sort of after-market kit that can adapt any old motor to use its impressive new driverless systems. [WSJ via Electronista]
Isn’t this going to be one of those catch 22 situations, no-one will make cars till they are legal and there will be no pressure to make them until the cars exist.
I’m sure Google have means to throw a few bribes out there to the politicians.
What bastards bribing law makers so we don’t have to bother driving cars around inner cities anymore – How will we ever forgive them.
That’s not Google’s style. Maybe that’s why they are looking for partners in the automotive industry, who are known for “intense lobbying”
Well we’ve got self parking cars, surely this won’t bee too much of a leap.
So they’ll launch this just after Apple launches a self driving floating car then redesign and forever be accused of ripping Apple off.
Perfect accessory for a boozy night out…
Problem is there online storage system is already called google drive… this will just make it confusing!
Problem is their online storage system is already called google drive…
woaah sorry for the double post…. not sure what went wrong!
Problem is your duplicate posts… It just makes things confusing
Google Vroom! Or Google DUI!
As I understood it, Google’s cars only self-drive on roads that have previously been driven many times by a human. The on-board system then compares what the camera is seeing to the multiple previous journeys, looking for changes. Any hazard is highlighted and avoided because there’s a new object in the way.
This means a self-driving car would only be good for journeys you’ve done many times. Makes the commute easy, but is a long way from fully automated driving.
You’re trying to make this sound like a problem. Cars would share driving data. Just because *your* car hadn’t driven that journey before doesn’t mean it couldn’t download telemetry from the web.