People who remain skeptical of self-driving cars simply aren’t paying attention. The biggest news in the past week is that Ford’s chief executive, Mark Fields, has pledged that his company will have “fleets” of totally self-driving cars–with no steering wheels or pedals–in American cities by 2021.
His wording makes it appear that Ford will not only sell the cars to consumers, but offer Uber-like car-sharing services itself. To help it reach this goal, Ford recently purchased SAIPS, an Israeli company specializing in machine learning and sensing.
General Motors, meanwhile, spent $1 billion acquiring Cruise Automation, a company that the Antiplanner considered to be pretty fly-by-night. This company had promised to turn any 2012 or later Audi into a self-driving car for $10,000. I think all it really did was add adaptive cruise control and lane centering, so cars could drive themselves on freeways, but not on city streets, nor could they navigate from one place to another. Yet GM appears to have been impressed.
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Uber has also agreed with Volvo to have each company invest $300 million in self-driving car technologies. They are beginning their partnership with the introduction of 100 self-driving vehicles in Pittsburgh. The cars will have a driver ready to take over if necessary and their service will be limited to the downtown area, but they are planning to offer free rides, at least to start. Volvo has already been testing its self-driving XC90 in Stockholm and has offered to test them in London.
It’s clearly a race, with GM, Ford, Volvo, and other traditional auto makers competing with Google and other high-tech companies (which probably should include Tesla), while Uber and Lyft (which received a $500 million investment from GM but failed to persuade GM to buy it outright) ready to apply the first self-driving vehicles to their fleets.
The Antiplanner doesn’t like to make predictions, because it simply encourages the planners. But in this case, I continue to predict that self-driving cars get here sooner than most people think and that they will change the world in ways that few people can conceive of today.
What do you do with the 25 minutes commute time when you don’t have to pilot the vehicle? What do you usually do before you go to work and when you get home from work? Eat. Ordering your shared, sealed compartment ride preloaded with your favorite breakfast or dinner might become a part of daily life. A warming compartment and micro-fridge in each compartment would be required.
inb4:
Are you crazy? This is totally science fiction!
Americans love to drive cars!
Are you crazy? My computer crashes all the time!
GPS isn’t reliable!
People want to own their cars!
We need more transit, not more cars!
Robocars and regular cars can never coexist!
Robocars will need special highways!
Robocars will lead to a lack of privacy!
Robocars are not safe! I’ll never trust a computer with my life!
Robocars will get hacked by terrorists!
The Antiplanner wrote:
People who remain skeptical of self-driving cars simply aren’t paying attention. The biggest news in the past week is that Ford’s chief executive, Mark Fields, has pledged that his company will have “fleets” of totally self-driving cars–with no steering wheels or pedals–in American cities by 2021.
Wonder if they will continue to offer cars that can self-drive or allow the driver to drive?
His wording makes it appear that Ford will not only sell the cars to consumers, but offer Uber-like car-sharing services itself. To help it reach this goal, Ford recently purchased SAIPS, an Israeli company specializing in machine learning and sensing.
Wonder when we will see self-driving transit buses?
And what about trucks of various kinds? Self-drive technology potentially means that millions of jobs are going to disappear.
Europe already has a few self driving transit buses. They are small, slow, and travel short circuits but they already exist. I believe they are in use in Finland, France, and Switzerland.
Here are two examples:
http://www.maddogslair.com/blog/another-self-drive-bus-on-the-road-in-helsinki
http://www.maddogslair.com/blog/another-self-driving-bus-to-begin-operation-in-europe
If you are interested, I also write about self drive vehicles, and myriad other things at my blog Maddog’s Lair.
Mark Sherman
Self-drive technology potentially means that millions of jobs are going to disappear.
Same thing happened in agriculture when tractors and other mechanized equipment was invented. People seemed to adjust.
That won’t be up to manufacturers so much than the general public and the people they elect. No doubt metropolitan areas will slowly start banning self driving during certain times. Eventually self-driven private vehicles will be completely banned in metro areas.