4 ms·
As of last year, Waymo were saying it will take up to 30 years, and they're widely considered to be in the lead: http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/trans
by zb 9y ago
As of last year, Waymo were saying it will take up to 30 years, and they're widely considered to be in the lead:
http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self-driving/google-selfdriving-car-will-be-ready-soon-for-some-in-decades-for-others http://spectrum.ieee.org/cars-that-think/transportation/self...
- MarkMc 9y agoThe article you linked to indicates that places with good weather and good roads could see the technology in 3 years. For all places in all conditions it may take 30 years: "this technology is almost certainly going to come out incrementally. We imagine we are going to find places where the weather is good, where the roads are easy to drive — the technology might come there first. And then once we have confidence with that, we will move to more challenging locations."
- stevenwoo 9y agoEven in the Bay Area, there is periodically bad to less than perfect weather - we had 30+ straight days of rain about 15 years ago in one of the El Nino years, and that would have killed Waymo's steering wheel-less cars' useability. It's almost like none of the people who made that decision were here when that happened.
- Eridrus 9y agoThe Bay Area only has a lot of self-driving cars because the engineers are there, note that WayMo is letting people take rides in Phoenix, not the Bay.
- stevenwoo 9y agoThanks for the clarification. I see them on San Antonio and in out of the way neighborhoods in Los Altos all the time but I guess from this article they are simulating more novel situations for the self driving AI and doing real world regression testing. It was only last year I saw one Waymo slow at every pedestrian crosswalk on San Antonio and there were no pedestrians nearby and the crosswalk lights were not blinking so definitely a necessary step. https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/inside-waymos-secret-testing-and-simulation-facilities/537648/ https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/08/insid...
- MarkMc 9y agoYes the Bay Area is probably not ideal, yet still much better than Jakarta or New Delhi. But even an area that was unsuitable for self-driving cars half the time would see huge demand for self driving cars: half the time the car would drive itself, the other half it would be a regular taxi driven by a human being.