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Google's self-driving cars will be available to 'ordinary people' within 5 years
- MiguelHudnandez 14y agoReluctant to overcommit, Sergey clarified, saying "You can count on one hand the number of years until ordinary people can experience this." If you count in binary, that could be 31 years. More if you count on knuckles and not just entire fingers as on/off. :)
- jwoah12 14y agoBy that logic, you could count to 100k on one hand in base10. If you count your fingers in binary, it would still be 5 years, it would just be expressed in writing as 101 instead of 5.
- tree_of_item 14y agoNo, you can really count to 31 on one hand. http://www.glassgiant.com/geek/count_to_31_on_one_hand/ http://www.glassgiant.com/geek/count_to_31_on_one_hand/
- jwoah12 14y agoI jumped to conclusions there I suppose. I figured he was just taking 2^(number of fingers) and calling that counting.
- rory096 14y agoOnly if you have 10 possible positions you can place each finger in. The grandparent describes a method by which each finger denotes one binary digit. He even mentioned how it could be increased using knuckles to achieve higher bases.
- jentulman 14y agoTime to roll out the xkcd Researcher Translation table http://xkcd.com/678/ http://xkcd.com/678/ More seriously Brin is quoted "You can count on one hand the number of years until ordinary people can experience this." which is not equivalent to owning them, which I think the title baitingly implies.
- jws 14y agoI predict "ordinary people can experience this" means as an E-ticket ride in Disney's "Tomorrow Land".
- jentulman 14y agoI'm trying to be optimistic that it will mean at least a few taxis or some form of public transport running in (probably tightly controlled and limited) inner city areas.
- dandrews 14y agoIt'll likely be another ten years after that before the Googlecars are trusted to drive by themselves. I'd love to be able to send my car down the road to pick up my Mom, but the government will probably want to have a responsible driver to oversee the automation. Baby steps.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- dtparr 14y agoFrom the article you linked to: "The regulations would allow vehicles to operate autonomously, but a licensed driver would still need to sit behind the wheel to serve as a backup operator in case of emergency."
- waterlesscloud 14y agoGoogle doesn't make cars, so who is the partner on this? Given the cycle times for car models, they had to have started already...
- roc 14y agoThey could deliver a taxi service initially. Given that the sensor tech is only theoretically going to become affordable as production ramps up, they may have to start there to keep pushing things forward.
- danboarder 14y agoThe idea of autonomous taxis has been a part of the conversation for some time, I recall this was one scenario when Google was lobbying in Nevada. (think self-driving taxis on the Las Vegas strip). This NY Times article from last year hints at the same: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/science/11drive.html http://www.nytimes.com/2011/05/11/science/11drive.html
- thematt 14y agoHA! Yeah right. Look at the outrage that is coming just from Uber offering a service that is basically a comfortable taxi you can hail from your phone. Now imagine what the reaction is going to be when you tell them you want to eliminate the need for a driver altogether. It'll inevitably happen, but there's a ton of legal battles that will need to be fought between now and then.
- roc 14y agoMedallion/contract holders would get to squeeze out the overhead costs of employing drivers and would no longer need to ensure/insure the drivers' personal safety. This sort of automation promises to increase their profits directly. So long as this was pitched as a service for them as opposed to competing with them, I doubt they'd fight it. The only place I think you'd see push-back, is where drivers are not medallion/contract-holders but have (union) contracts that protect their place as the vehicle operator. But that's far from universal.
- tokenadult 14y agoI think the article "Why Driverless Cars Are Inevitable--and a Good Thing" http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390443524904577651552635911824.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000087239639044352490457765... by Dan Neil of the Wall Street Journal, published two days ago, is a good commentary on why "ordinary" people will mostly be glad to use driverless cars, and regulators and insurers will be glad to nudge drivers to use them. "As a mature, postindustrial society, the U.S. has in many ways topped out economically (population growth, consumption) compared with younger competitors on the world stage. Americans are learning hard lessons about the value of their work in a race-to-the-bottom global economy. "The one brilliant part of the U.S. economic profile is productivity. It turns out, Americans are a little nutty when it comes to work. "If autonomy were fully implemented today, there would be roughly 100 million Americans sitting in their cars and trucks tomorrow, by themselves, with time on their hands. It would be, from an economist's point of view, the Pennsylvania oil fields of man-hours, a beautiful gusher, a bonanza of reverie washing upon our shores." The statement in the article submitted here from Sergey Brin "You can count on one hand the number of years until ordinary people can experience this" is an ambitious prediction, and I wonder what that suggests about the cost of the self-driving system, as fewer and fewer cars look affordable to many "ordinary people" these days. I would especially like to see self-driving cars introduced in this state as soon as possible, where I expect they will perform on the roads much better than the typical licensed human drivers here.
- stephengillie 14y agoReally well written article. I'm enjoying the "self-driving digital divide" section. Who wants to start a group to retrofit older cars with self-driving tech?
- uncoder0 14y agoThis shouldn't be very hard and I plan on doing it once Google brings the sensors to mass production then I should be able to easily afford it. I already have the software too but I would much rather use Google's... Since mine is about five years old :p... I can't wait until I can get a Velodyne for <$20k
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- smokey_the_bear 14y agoMy husband and I are expecting our first child very shortly. We were having a slightly worried conversation about how it would be teaching our son to drive, since we both grew up in the midwest where driving is a little more laidback. Then we remembered cars would drive themselves by then!
- hnriot 14y ago...and they will fly too.
- agumonkey 14y agoI wish there could be synergy between google cars and tesla/solarcity grid.
- jareds 14y agoAs someone who’s been blind since birth this is the most conflicted I’ve ever been about wanting to be an early adopter or beta tester.
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- freehunter 14y agoSo far, the laws require one or more licensed and legal drivers in the car in case it needs to hand over manual control.
- Qworg 14y agoUntil they can solve the sensor issues, they won't be. Heavy rain, snow and fog are still damnably difficult for them to deal with in a reasonable fashion.
- hnriot 14y agoin the form of airport shuttles between terminals maybe. but as great at tech as Google are, they haven't even thought about the real world issues. Even something as simple as who the technology puts out of work. And aside from the hn community who aren't even all for this, I wonder if this is something that regular people even want. if they don't the economics wont work out. you need mass demand to drive down price, and i am not sure there is mass demand. I bet the next quarter century will see this come to high end cars, not as self-driving, but as augmented safety, like a glorified cruise control that tracks other vehicles, intervenes when the driver is txting and fails to notice the cars in front are stopped, that kind of thing. Then very slowly the car will take on more and more of the role of driver and the cars the tech is installed in will eventually make its way down to the family Honda and computer augmented driving will be the norm. But that's probably mid century.
- VMG 14y agoWhy only airport shuttles? Why not as taxis? How cheap could that kind of taxi be? Would you even need a personal car if self-driven taxis are cheap?
- hnriot 14y agobecause airport shuttles run on highly constrained routes between terminals and parking areas. why would self-driven taxis be cheap? there's still the cost, the maintenance and the security issues.
- mahyarm 14y agoIn the medium term, you can manage fleets of electric cars which would be cheaper that any gas powered taxi. Parking fees would also be reduced. It should be cheaper than owning a car personally since those companies can use economies of scale that no one person can.
- NegativeK 14y agoI was discussing this yesterday. With self-driving cars (or buses), you can have completely dynamic routes for ride sharing optimization. Think Zipcars with carpooling.
- stretchwithme 14y agoCan it drive in the rain and at night? Can it stop when a dog runs across its path? Before robotic cars are viable, we'll first need cars that prevent human drivers from causing an accident. If a car can't stop a human driver from crashing, how can it stop itself? And if people were to see accident rates plummeting for new cars, they would have the confidence that robotic vehicles will be safe too. We can test robotic safety before the first robotic car takes to the road.
- tomkarlo 14y agoA robotic car can adjust to inclement conditions more effectively than a human will - not only can it use detection systems that are less hampered by rain than our vision, it also can adjust its driving to account for the change in braking distances, etc. We already have cars today that can stop a human from crashing - there are cars that will automatically apply the brakes to avoid a collision (Volvo has one for pedestrians, Toyota for objects, some are in production), and can maintain a set distance to the car in front of them on a roadway (auto cruise control). Those are both a form of automation / robotics, even if the car makers don't like to call it that.
- Qworg 14y agoNo, sorry, it can't. It comes down to sensor systems. The Google Car uses a Velodyne - and it is terrible in heavy rain, snow, or fog. It has radar, but that isn't accurate enough to allow driving. The human eye is an amazing sensor, one we can't even get close to with our current technology.
- tomkarlo 14y agoSo you're taking the current state of the prototype, and projecting it out five-odd years to the capabilities of the final projection model? Google can make the sensors on the car better in each iteration, but our eyes aren't going to be changing. The human eye is amazing, yes, but it has severe limitations relative to other types of sensors, which we have to compensate for with systems like headlights and street lamps. It's also backed by a recognition system that wasn't really ever designed to work at >20 MPH.
- saberworks 14y agoIf you have a problem with your Google-branded self driving car, don't bother looking for a phone number to call or a dealer to talk to. Instead, you can visit their support forums, which may or may not be visited by a google employee in any given month, and your issue may or may not be read, and even if it is read, it may not be responded to. But you can definitely look through the google knowledge base which will helpfully describe how the self-driving car is supposed to work.
- timothya 14y agoRight, presuming you got your self-driving car for free. Google has good support (including phone support) for the services that you pay for. And if you want to contact the teams without using the product forum, try using Google+; I've seen that teams are often very responsive on there.
- Evbn 14y agoAndroid and the Galaxy Nexus (sold direct by Google) is the obvious counterexample to this claim.
- saberworks 14y agoI appreciate the sentiment and wish it were true. Here's another example: http://consumerist.com/2012/09/27/google-voice-customers-cry-out-for-help-no-one-at-google-hears-them/ http://consumerist.com/2012/09/27/google-voice-customers-cry...
- tomkarlo 14y ago"...Google CEO Sergey Brin said on Tuesday." It doesn't say great things about the reporting or fact checking here that they got the CEO of Google wrong in a publication entitled "Computerworld".
- unholycrab 14y agoAny clue as to how much they will cost?
- FireBeyond 14y agoRight now, prohibitive... I believe the LIDAR system alone is around $80,000 on the current prototype cars. But down the road, we'll see.
- Aloisius 14y agoI will buy one. Maybe not the first year, but certainly after they've been out for five years. I don't care if they can't drive in the snow, heavy rain or fog. As long as the car can tell when driving conditions are too difficult for it and pull over to let me take over, I'm happy because 99% of my driving time is in decent conditions. Even if I drive to Tahoe in the winter and have to deal with driving perhaps as much as 75% of the time, I'll still take automation the other 25%.