Comments on: New Report on Self-Driving Cars

By: the highwayman

the highwayman — Thu, 20 Sep 2012 02:08:12 +0000

When the “libertarians” relish in relinquishing personal control of their cars to big brother, that sounds very very scary!

By: Frank

Frank — Sun, 16 Sep 2012 03:55:16 +0000

If you would have said “semi-intelligent” I would have chuckled. No chuckle though.

I’m with John Thacker. These are indeed exciting times.

By: Sandy Teal

Sandy Teal — Sat, 15 Sep 2012 15:48:24 +0000

“Semi-autonomous” must be a synonym of “semi-pregnant”.

By: John Thacker

John Thacker — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 16:47:06 +0000

The Google fully autonomous car costs $70,000, true. But there are solutions out there that are cheaper by an order of magnitude that aren’t fully autonomous, just semi-autonomous, like what Continental Tire is doing. The semi-autonomous systems build on sensors already in many luxury cars (and spreading to common cars) for existing “driver assist” type feature like adaptive cruise control, lane avoidance, and other systems.

It may be that autonomous cars come from the bottom up, as these driver assist features get more and more sophisticated while remaining cheap, instead of Google’s “moon shot” being the answer. Who knows? Exciting times.

By: bennett

bennett — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 14:41:44 +0000

“The main thing government needs to do is get out of the way.”

Easier said than done. When the first (and inevitable) accident occurs many would look to the government’s lack of investment and regulation as a contributing factor. When it comes to safety (opposed to say… finance), non-government stances are harder to justify.

By: FrancisKing

FrancisKing — Mon, 10 Sep 2012 12:27:09 +0000

“But that cost may come down, and Google seems committed to mapping the nation, state-by-state, to standards that self-driving cars will require.”

Even if the costs come down, it will still be more expensive than the existing default position of a free car driver. Therefore, probably more useful for transit, where the cost of the driver makes up a large proportion of the running costs.